Happy New Chess Year

Happy New Chess Year!!

It is 2018 and the FIDE ratings are out. Magnus Carlsen still tops the Classical list with Caruana second, just 23 points behind. Mamedyarov is third after his amazing year. With it being a World Championship and Olympiad year, I think chess will be great to follow in 2018.

Is your rating where you want it to be? I'm very happy to have risen over 50 points last year to 2183, the highest I've been in over 10 years, and getting close to the highest I've ever been which is about 2230. I had an epiphany about my chess in 2017. I played a game early in the year which I lost and it was almost as if I hadn't really been too bothered about the game, before, during, or after. I asked myself why I'd even bothered turning up to play, and whether it was worth the effort to keep playing if there were games that I couldn't really care about. From this I took the most valuable lesson, and since then I have tried to put 100% of effort into every game that I've played, with some preparation, full focus at the board, and analysis after.

I am now 51 years old, but even a player my age can work hard at the game, strengthen small details in play, gain knowledge, and improve general calculation skills to become a better player. Setting goals help, so set a long term goal (make it a realistic goal) with some stepping stones along the way.

Most of all, enjoy your chess in 2018 (if you're playing in Sydney at the Australian Championships, I wish you all best and have some enjoyable chess)

In 2017 I visited England, and was there at the time of the Isle of Man International. Here's a photo I took :) (I'll add some more stuff in the coming months)

Number 1 on Jan 1 FIDE ratings list, World Champion, Magnus Carlsen

Out Of Retirement

It is time to bring this blog back out of retirement. I mean, if Kasparov can come out of retirement to play in the Grand Chess Tour, then chess lovers of the world should all be excited. And that isn't the only exciting thing in the chess world. Magnus Carlsen has become less dominant so we have a great situation at the top of the game where there are a whole bunch of players challenging to take the number 1 spot on the FIDE rating list. Magnus has a small 10 point lead over Kramnik with Wesley So only 12 behind, Aronin 13 behind, Caruana 15 behind and Mamedyarov 22 off the top spot. I'm not sure I ever remember such a tightly packed group at the top and it makes it an exciting time at the top of the game.

While the elite side of the game intrigues me, it is difficult to get to grips with their ability and I therefore tend to concentrate more on other things when I'm studying chess. I love the history of the game and I've ordered a book of the 1922 London International tournament. This was a great event won by Capablanca ahead of Alekhine, Rubinstein etc. The tournament book was written by Maroczy who was competing in the event, and I'm quite excited to read this book as I've never read any of Maroczy's writings before.

As a chess coach I'm also interested in junior chess, and it is an exciting time with Chinese superstar Wei Yi heading towards the top 10 in the world, and Indian super kid, Praggnanandaa trying hard to beat Sergey Karjakin's 15 year old record of being the youngest Grand Master in history. Pragga is not yet 12, and has come close to scoring GM norms already. His rating is sitting at 2479 which is absolutely amazing. If you want to know more about Pragga, then follow Chessbase India, which I've recently discovered, and which I find excellent. There's plenty of information about the players making these super players more accessible.

We in Australia might not have a talent quite like Pragga, but we do have some great juniors and I obviously find Australian chess interesting. I'll be following it as best I can. I've been playing lots of chess and have some things to write. My club, the Melbourne Chess Club, is as active as always and I'm currently playing in the Victorian Championships.

I'll also be writing about women's chess, or at least my take on women's chess. I've written here before that I don't like the way that women are treated in our chess community and I'll continue to write about it until things change! I've worked with a number of girls in Australia and I have listened to their concerns about the game of chess and their place in it.

I was recently coaching on a camp and I showed a game from London 1922, the fantastic Alekhine-Yates game. If you haven't seen it, then take a look. It is a strategic masterpiece with a beautiful finish. Yates weakens his e5 square and Alekhine uses it as an outpost for his knight as well as dominating the c-file. He skillfully transfers his rooks from the c-file to the seventh rank and then brings up his last reinforcement, his king as an attacking piece in the middlegame. The final position is wonderful!

Alekhine as white has just played Ke5 trapping black's rook, while mate will follow soon. Here's the full game which I look forward to analysing in some depth with Maroczy's guidance.

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Ratings

Ratings are just numbers, right? They are a constantly shifting mass of levels, which suggest roughly where any given player stands vis-a-vis the rest of the chess world. The stronger a player is, the higher their rating, and a set of good results will push the rating up, while bad results will drag it down. There are different rating systems, but the one that is mostly used is the ELO system which many countries use for their national ratings, and the International federation, FIDE, use.

Some important rating milestones:

2200 Candidate Master Level
2300 FIDE Master Level
2400 International Master Level
2500 Grand Master Level
2650 Top 100 Level
2800 Super Elite Level.

The current World Champion has seen his rating plummet this year, and in the latter half of the year he isn't the only top player to have dropped. Magnus Carlsen has a "live rating" of 2829.4, and it wasn't that long ago he was above 2850 with the highest published rating in FIDE history.

Now I'm not a big one for ratings, but I couldn't help but notice that Chinese 16 year old prodigy Wei Yi pushed his live rating up to 2729.5, within 100 points of Carlsen. Wei Yi sits at number 27 in the December FIDE list, and the 2 are to meet at the Corus tournament in January.

Carlsen is still number 1 on the list and is the only player with a live rating above the 2800 barrier. But somehow his dominance seems to have been questioned. In London he has so far been unable to win a game, though at least he hasn't lost any. Will he be able to get his mojo back? Will he be overtaken? Things are getting interesting at the top of the game, where the gap seems to have closed.

It won't be long before Magnus can be challenged by someone else and not have to be content to play himself.

Australia's Premier Event

Annually, the top event in Australia is the Easter long weekend Doeberl Cup in Canberra. This year, the organisers have assembled perhaps the strongest field to date for their premier tournament with 75 players listed of which 11 are Grand Masters, 10 are International Masters, 3 are above 2600 and 18 are over 2400. Besides the Premier there are 3 other sections, for players rated below 2000 ACF, below 1600 ACF, and below 1200 ACF. The numbers of participants in each of the fields is good, with 72 in the U-2000, 50 in the U-1600, and 43 for the U-1200.

I really like tournaments with rated sections, rather than one big open tournament. I feel they are more inclusive, and allow players to step up into a harder section, or to try to win a prize within their rating group. As a promising player in the UK a long, long time ago, I spent a year playing in weekend tournaments sometimes playing in open's for the experience and sometimes trying to win limited rated sections. Eventually I had to play only in open sections, but the value of working my way through 'novice', then 'minor', then 'major' sections built my strength gradually and assuredly. My improvement was constantly being challenged by others rated above me, and by those who were improving with me as we tried to progress faster than one another.

Unfortunately, there are few tournaments in Australia that offer ratings limited sections, especially in Victoria and I wonder if this is a deterrent to some players. As a 1400 strength player I'm not sure I would be happy about continually being pushed into events where I was a bottom seed by a long margin. I would be happy to step up once in a while, but I would also like to try to win a section designed for players around my ability, say for instance, an under 1600 tournament.

I have fond recollection of playing as a junior and a lower rated player in tournaments where Grand Masters also competed, but in different sections, the annual Hastings Congress being a prime example. My first Hastings saw me playing in a minor, but I eventually progressed to the top amateur section. Meanwhile, next to me Masters and Grandmasters competed in the "Challengers" and "Premier" sections. This meant that I was able to compete at a comfortable level, while also rubbing shoulders with some of my heroes, and learning about other players who would become players I would be continually trying to match myself against.

I will be keenly following the events in Canberra, and not just the strong Premier event. I have friends and students playing throughout the sections so each tournament holds a special interest for me. There are live games which actually start about now. There will be the top 4 boards of the Premier which starts today, and from tomorrow there will also be the top board from the U-2000 and U-1600 sections.

Good luck to all the competitors. I will be following this closely as I'm sure many other Australians will be, and I will be especially cheering along my fellow Victorians and MCC players who have made the trip to Canberra.

Chess Numbers

There are loads of numerical theories (eg) that pertain to chess. Whole sets of maths puzzles are based around chess, and I wouldn't be surprised if some numerologists have tried to put together some greater meaning behind some chess related number patterns. This post has got nothing to do with that but is just a random post about some numbers that I have found interesting.

2693 This is the FIDE rating of Pavel Eljanov and Gabriel Sargissian who are playing each other in round 5 of the Olympiad. What I found particularly interesting  about this is that 2 players with such whopping ratings should find themsleves on the bottom board for their respective teams. The Olympiad is now going through a tough phase (especially as they are using match points as the first determining factor of rank) where the top teams will all have to play each other. Hungary against Russia is another mouth watering pairing, where a repeat of the 2004 World Championship match between Kramnik and Leko is being played out on board 1.

46 (No, not the age I'll be turning next birthday!!) Australia's men's team rank before round 5, 15 places above their starting rank. I'm not sure what the team will consider a good final placing but it is an interesting subject. If Australia finish in the top 50 this may be considered a good result for a team starting from 61st place. Maybe top 40? Will it depend on the opposition. So far, the Australian team have done ok beating the teams ranked below them, and drawing with one of the teams above while only narrowly losing to the other. I also wonder if there is a team perspective on this subject or whether the players themselves are left to set their own targets? The women's team are performing a little below par. They have won 2 and lost 2, but one of their losses was to a team ranked below them, so they will not be happy with that. From a starting position of 50th, I guess the women will be looking to finish above that and perhaps challenge the top 30.

33 Of all players born in 1999, Melbourne youngster Karl Zelesco is ranked 33 in the new FIDE rating list published today. His 2116 rating is still a far cry from the top player of that year group, Yi Wei (2453) of China. However, it only seems like yesterday that Karl was coming through Junior rapid tournaments and we considered him a talented Primary School kid. I will be interested to see just how close he is to representing Australia at the next Olympiad in Norway as the improvement of our youngsters seems to know no bounds. Even Karl's international placing is eclipsed by Sydney's Anton Smirnov who currently sits at number 2 for players born in 2001, his 2139 rating just 15 points shy of the 2154 of Iranian youngster Tabatabaei in first place. So with Karl in Melbourne and Anton in Sydney Australian chess playing adults have a long suffering future ahead of us :(

Karl Zelesco

30 The number of moves in the Olympiad before a draw can be agreed. Also, coincidentally, roughly the amount of time in minutes taken for 30 moves to be made in the game Nguyen-Gagunashvili before it was agreed a draw. I guess if 2 players want to make a draw, then its going to happen! Was there any prearrangement here? Of course not!.....Riiiiiiiiiiiigghhhhtt!!!

21 The record number of Olympiad appearances, made by GM Eugenio Torre of the Philippines. Torre moves clear of Hungary's Lajos Portisch who played in 20, while Finnish GM Westerinen played in 19. The top English participants are Nigel Short and John Speelman who have played in 14 a piece, while the top Aussie is Ian Rogers who has played in 14!

The last number I lost count of, which was the number of tweets I ignored about the Melbourne Storm's win against the West Sydeny Tigers while I was trying to find out why Anish Giri hadn't been playing for Holland at the Olympiad. While obviously happy to see the Storm win, I was even happier to notice a tweet from chessvibes not saying why Giri hasn't been playing, but at least saying that he has finally arrived in Istanbul and will hopefully start helping the Dutch pull themselves up to a respectable position. I'll now go back to Twitter to see if I can find out any more info about this and other chess news matters while sifting through the hundreds of tweets about my other favourite team, West Ham who are currently beating Fulham in the Premiership!