The Last Day at Ballarat

It was a beautiful morning in Ballarat. I went for a run at sunrise helping me to wake up, and getting some hill practice for my race against Puffing Billy later in the year. I have to admit, I felt pretty terrible after the run back up to my apartment in Sovereign Hill but it will help me later in the year. Getting better at anything involves practice and training which as close as possible follows the activity you're taking part in. The same can be said for chess, and I will repeat as in an earlier post, it is vitally important to work on your endgames. But more about this later!

The top of the tournament is thinning out, and it is being dominated by youth. After 3 rounds, there are only 3 players on 5/5, FM Chris Wallis, IM James Morris, and last year's joint winner, Brodie McClymont. Youth is the order of the day, as Zachary Loh, Yi Liu, Karl Zelesco, Justin Tan, Ari Dale, and Jack Puccini all find themselves on the top 10 boards. Round 4 saw the clash we were all waiting for as the 2 top IM's went head to head. The result was a win for James Morris against Stephen Solomon. I asked James if he could sum up how he won. He just replied, "Endgame!" James apparently won a drawn opposite bishop coloured endgame against one of last year's winners, Domagoj Dragicevic, while against Solomon he went inot a rook ending a pawn up and converted the material advantage to a win.

Sticking with the theme of youth, the youngest player in the top 10 boards is 11 year old David Cannon, who in the past has been Australian under 10 champion. David is moving around with crutches at the moment because of a badly sprained ankle which makes it even more remarkable that he is able to focus so well. Let's hope he continues his good form, and gets well soon! Also 13 year old Karl Zelesco is right up there, after having to go through a difficult game when the accelerated pairings came off in round 3. Karl was expecting a really tough opponent in round 3, perhaps McClymont. The draw put him against 1000 rated Regan Crowley. This came as a disappointment to Karl who was revved up for a big game, but his reaction was perfect for the situation. Apparently, according to Karl's dad, he just worked out that he needed to knuckle down, win this game and then he would get his reward of a tough game. This is incredibly encouraging, as one of the problems that many people suffer from is not being able to get fully enthused for lower rated opponent's (in fact, Regan is a fast imroving player and not to be taken lightly). But, of course, the danger then is that the dreaded upset will happen, and most of us have been in that position!

Zac Loh on board 3

Karl Zelesco has a great attitude

David Cannon performing strongly despite an injury!

Ballarat Day 2

If you've never played a tournament where you have to play 3 games of 90 + 30 in one day, then you're one of the lucky ones! It is a question of stamina, and there are some very shaky looking players by the end of the evening, as the games start at 9.30am in the morning and can finish up to midnight (or even after as I believe one did last year). The conditions in the playing area are also not ideal with little or no aircon, so I'm guessing there will be quite a few headaches literally later on this evening.

So as the tournament reaches the half way point, most of the elite players are still around the top of the pairings, though they are now coming into contact. Of course, it is no surprise to see Solomon, Morris and McClymont among the players on 3/3, and it may be that these are the players to beat in the event. However, every tournament needs a hero, and we have a couple who have worked their way into the top pairings. The surprise pairings on the top boards is on board 6 where Luis Chan (1189) is playing Marko Grabovac (1390). Both these young players have created a number of upsets already and it great experience for them to be in and among the greats of the tournament.

The other hero of the tournament of the event so far is MCC stalwart Angelo Tsagarakis. So far Angelo rated 1749 (somewhat below what it has been in the past, and should be) has taken out Bill Kerr (2040), Doug Hamilton (2017), and in the last round Justin Tan (2298). Apparently, Angelo's last game was a real beauty, and it's great to see a regular club type player playing so great and being so happy.

There was a bit of dissension over the pairings for the fourth round, but they have been unchanged. David Hacche's second round complaint was apparently correct and a redraw was made. Unfortunately for him, he moved as black against Solomon to white against McClymont and got severely bashed. I couldn't help reminding David that Stephen Solomon lost in round 2 last year with the white pieces....hmm, I wonder who that was against :D

Funnily enough, the Hacche-McClymont game had a position unlike any I'd ever seen before. At one point all their pieces which have doubles (ie rooks, knights, and bishops) were situated next to each other. Quite a nice effect on the board!

Pieces sitting beside their doppelgangers

It was good to see spectators IM Guy West and Jean Watson. The heat of the playing hall must have deterred them as they went off to see the Begonia Festival. It's funny that Ballarat has this great festival over this weekend annually, but the chess players never get to see it. The playing schedule is just too demanding. Guy was happy not to be playing, though he intends to turn up for the big 50th bash in a couple of years time. It was clear that Guy was fairly happy to see Angelo doing so well. When asked about the acceleration, he said he wasn't a fan but could see the logic to it. Jean thinks that Brodie McClymont will be the man to beat (or Mr McBrodie as I've heard him called!).

There's no doubt that the arbiters have a difficult time with the pairings here. FA Jamie Kenmure has said that he isn't a fan of accelerated pairings, and that part of the trouble has been to do with the pairings instructions from FIDE which aren't necessarily clear. When asked about the fourth round pairings which saw a big clash between Morris-Dragicevic while high rated Stojic was floated down this was what Jamie said:

Jamie was able to answer questions quite easily. Angelo Tsagarakis couldn't float down as he already had in round 2 which meant Dusan was the lowest rated player in the white group. So why was Luke above Domagoj when his rating is much lower? Because the ratings displayed on tornelo are not the correct ratings and Luke Li actually has a rating above Dragicevic. Both arbiters, Gary Bekker and Jamie Kenmure were disappointed that they couldn't get the SP master file from the ACF as that would have made their lives easier.

IA Gary Bekker to the left of FA Jamie Kenmure

More on Ballarat

A couple of nice moments from the first round. I was looking into the top board "pit" area when Domagoj Dragicevic found a nice tactic to trap his opponent's sidelined knight.

Domagoj now played the odd looking 23..Qg4. However, when you actually think about it, it traps black's knight. Black can't take because that terrible looking isolated h-pawn will become a star and trapped black's knight. Balck tried 24.Qxa2, but the intermediate 24..Ne7+ removes the knight from danger and gains a tempo to win the knight on h5.

While I was looking at this, IM James Morris pulled me aside and asked me if MCC member Anthony Hain was just winning with a central capture. I have to admit, I wasn't looking at the game, but when I went back to the board, it seems James might have had a point:

Here Anthony played 17.a3 to open lines on the queen side for an attack. James suggested 17.Nfxd4 the move favoured by Stockfish! the point is 17..exd4 is impossible as 18.Bf4 wins material.

The top games from Ballarat are being published on Tornelo and I'll add a couple of good wins by MCC members David Beaumont and Angelo Tsegarakis.

Ballarat

It's the Labour Day Long Weekend in Victoria which ironically means a day off for everyone! Chess players in Victoria know this weekend to be the time of the year when the Ballarat Weekender occurs. Ballarat is traditionally the strongest weekend event in Victoria and the biggest. This year 125 players are competing including 2 IM's, Stephen Solomon and James Morris.

Young Victorian IM James Morris

Top seed IM Stephen Solomon

The tournament is in it's 47th edition (only 3 years to the big 50!) and Ballarat continues to attract top class fields. Though last year may have been the strongest of all, this year's field comprises 2 IM's, 5 FM's and 21 players above 2000. The event has again been accelerated which is not necessary in my opinion but as I'm not playing I'm not going to complain too loudly. I will complain about the drive to Ballarat which took me for ever as there were big traffic jams due to careless driving crashing into each other on a very hot day. So I arrived just as the opening ceremony was taking place. In fact I walked in the door and the first thing I knew was Thai Ly shouting my name out.. So much for a quiet entry! In fact I was selected for an appeals committee, which hopefully won't mean me doing too much!

The opening ceremony saw IA Gary Bekker welcoming the players and setting out the rules. Ballarat Chess Club, the organisers of the event was represented by Patrick Cook who then went on to cause one of the biggest upsets of the round drawing with ex-Australian Champion FM Doug Hamilton. The other speaker was President of Chess Victoria IM Leonid Sandler who like me is a non player.

IM Leonid Sandler, CV President

The first round went without too many upsets. The main upset has been about use of accelerated pairings, and before round 2, there was already an official complaint from FM David Hacche who was black in round 1 and then was paired as black against top seed Stephen Solomon in round 2. It has to be said that 2 blacks in a row feels harsh, especially when you get paired up on board 1. The arbiters are with him at this moment. One person with no complaints was James Morris. Before the first round I asked him what colour he would prefer in the first round. With no hesitation he replied black! To his reasoning it should give him white in his first big round against a very strong opponent in round 5, assuming he wins all his games up to then....also he said he prefers playing with black!

I'll be posting a lot more over the weekend, including some positions from the games. The top 10 boards are being published by the organisers on the tornelo website.

Chess on a Thursday

Time to catch up on what I've been looking at recently. I'm still lapping up anything to do with the upcoming Candidates tournament and it looks like Chessbase is running some regular columns profiling the players in the build up to the start of the event next week. By the way, is Chessbase's new look better than the old one? That's not a rhetorical question, I am personally not sure which one I prefer and wonder how others feel.

The first moment of Candidate excitement came when the pairings for the tournament were announced. The first I saw of it was on twitter from the Chessvibes website. The more I think about this tournament, the more trouble I'm having picking a winner and much will do with the form of the players. Of course, it would be easy to just say Carlsen is in a class of his own, but I'm not so sure. So rather than claiming that I'm hoping one player or another wins, I'll just say, may the best man win and I hope the tournament lives up to the billing of the highest rated tournament in history. Somehow last time's candidates finalists, Gelfand and Grischuk are complete outsiders which seems pretty unfair to me. Dennis Monokroussos agrees and points to an interview with Alexander Grischuk.

In the meantime I've been watching some games from the Women's World Teams Championship. There are some high profile names missing from the event, but it's still pretty strong with Russia and China the favourites to take gold. In fact, it is difficult to split these 2 teams who have won all their games so far except the match between the two which ended in a draw. I was watching a fascinating game a couple of nights back which unfortunately ended with a horrible blunder. The round 2 game Dzaganidze-Ju Wenjun started out life as a Staunton Gambit in the Dutch, a line that was played a long time ago by Jacques Mieses (he even managed to win a game against Rubinstein with black). White was doing good until the following position was reached:

Dzaganidze, rated 2554 played the unbelievably shocking 39.Kxe5 losing an exchange to the simple to spot 39..Bf6+. White played on for a few moves before resigning. There is hope for us all!




I've also checked out some other interesting chess sites this week. Trowbridge Chess Club in the West of England were voted the English small club of the year lat year. Their blog is an excellent combination of local chess news and regional reporting which is what all clubs should be striving for. I also went to the USCF for the first time, and was mildly impressed. The blog section has some interesting articles and I'm kind of surprised that it doesn't show up higher on google searches for chess blogs. Jennifer Shahade is the editor of online blog, but there are numerous contributors. Actually, I think this is a really good idea. It gives a website more diversity and differing opinions. In fact, if anyone wants to regularly write for this blog, then feel free to contact me on carl.coffehousechess@gmail.com. I'm happy for anyone who wants to regularly write about chess or coffee or preferably both!

Why You Should Study Elementary Endgames

I have had a strange sort of day. Summed up, I worked as normal going from school to school teaching chess, until I ended up at an after school class where the classroom that is usually used for chess was unavailable due to parent teacher interviews. So I was directed to another room which was much smaller and with no air con. After an hour in the stifling room I thought I was going to pass out, and was very grateful to get out. I then went to some private group classes at our chess shop and found that I only had to give one class, as my second, more advanced class was being taken by our premier coach IM Robert Jamieson. If you haven't seen Robert in action then you should really check it out. He is consistent, rigorous and has great material both new and old. His lessons challenge students to think, to plan and to produce results in an accurate way. Before leaving I saw the first position he was challenging the kids with and said, "Hey, that's the position I was going to put on my blog tonight!", to which he replied "I thought so".

This position was the culmination of the board 1 game in last night's Melbourne Chess Club (MCC) Championship between Phillip Drew and Guy West. The game had been a hard fought Benko Gambit, where it seemed that the outsider was fully prepared in the opening. IM Guy West got the typical Benko position with queenside counterplay for the pawn, and after exchanges black's position seemed to get better. Eventually an endgame of rook and 4 pawns each was reached where neither side had a passed pawn and the game looked as if it was heading towards a draw.

However, the moral of this game must be that all players would benefit from a study of fundamental or basic endgames. Phillip as white blundered just 2 moves into this position. After 1.Ke4 Kxh4 White is a pawn down and should seek a draw with the opposition move 2.Kf4. However, Phillip played 2.Kf5 which looks plausible but Guy quickly outflanked his opponent with 2..Kg3.

Now white is lost, a tragedy for Phillip. But once again, you have to admire Guy West and his never say die attitude. Guy kept giving his opponent every chance to go wrong. It was a challenging opening, a hard fought middlegame with the main theme being positional compensation for a pawn, and then various transitional possibilities to different endgames. Phillip navigated well through all these difficult phases, but Guy kept on into the purely technical rook ending, and finally the theoretical pawn endgame, and it was in this last stage that his opponent finally blundered!

The result leaves Guy clear at the top with 5/5 before the week break for the Ballarat weekender. Guy is now a point clear of Ari Dale and Dusan Stojic and he has played both these talented young players. A further half point back on 3.5 is a group of 5 players, Chris Wallis, Domagoj Dragicevic, Justin Tan, David Hacche and Malcolm Pyke. Paul Kovacevic continued his good tournament with a draw against higher rated Dizdarevic. But there were a couple of upsets last night. First Finley Dale won against Richard McCart. But probably the biggest upset of the night was Tanya Kolak's victory against Jim Papadinis who is rated nearly 600 points higher!

Endgame knowledge is a big problem for most players, especially in today's ever speedier time controls. More emphasis is placed on tactics and openings than other parts of the game, but anyone who has lost a basic endgame, or been unable to win a clearly won position will know exactly how Phillip is feeling now. The answer is to devote a little of one's chess work on endgames. Karsten Mueller's articles at the chess cafe website are excellent, and some even relevant to a study of basic pawn endgames!

Where's the Hype?

In 10 days time the chess world has a most exciting prospect, a Candidates tournament offering the winner a shot at Anand and the World title. However you'd hardly know about this as there has been so little coverage in the chess media and especially by the organisers, Agon. Now when Agon were invited to organise the World Championship cycle by FIDE it sounded as if chess would be pushed into mainstream media and that coverage of the events would be highly jazzed up. But on the contrary, chess coverage is where it has always been and the website for the Candidates Tournament doesn't seem to be something to revolutionise the way chess is perceived.

Am I being a bit harsh here? Maybe the true litmus test will be the World Championship Match proper and the coverage it receives. I mean, do other sports hype the qualifiers for the World Championship, or pinnacle event? And if so, how long before the event does the build up begin? I know that soccer is constantly hyping itself, but it would probably be optimistic to put chess into the same category with the World Game. However if chess does want to grab headline news, then somehow it has to hype itself and events where the top 4 in the World battle out for a single World Championship place seems something that everyone can understand whether they are into chess or not. Add to that elements of youth versus experience, the top 4 players in the World doing battle, a World number 1 who didn't care about the World Championship now competing, and for a country with little World class chess pedigree. I have to say it has some newsworthiness if it was only presented right. Or if it was presented at all!

I've been hyping this championship at my classes and I now enter a class and kids are asking me who is winning. I have to remind them it doesn't start for 2 weeks, but then they get excited about who is going to win. Most kids I teach want Carlsen, some because he isn't from Russia, some because he's number 1 and they like a favourite, some because he is young, and some because his name is a bit like mine! But there are others who want other players and among the hundreds of kids I teach chess to each week, I reckon that every player in the candidates has at least one fan. And we are talking grades prep to 6 (5-12 years old), so not the kind to normally take much interest in the chess world, but who would rather just be trying to beat their best friend.

So let's hype these guys. This is what the kids hear from me:

Carlsen: World number 1 and unbeaten in tournaments for a year.
Kramnik: World number 2 and Mister Solid....the no. 1 from the World's top country.
Aronian: World number 3 and more of a risk taker...the last man to beat Carlsen in a tournament.
Radjabov: World number 4 and the mystery man, a great resourceful player.
Grischuk: World number 10 and great in time trouble which he always gets into.
Ivanchuk: World number 13, ex number 2 and on his day able to beat anybody, but very nervous.
Svidler: World number 14, a big soccer fan and 6 times champ of the strongest country Russia.
Gelfand: World number 18, last year's beaten challenger though he was really close to taking the title.

This is the sort of things the kids can understand, simple qualities that they can relate to and the kids that I'm teaching can't wait for the event to start. But then again, they've had constant weekly reminders for the past 6 weeks.

I must admit I was getting worried that I'd imagined the whole event and have been waiting for some announcements and hype. Thankfully, Chessbase have started the ball rolling with a profile of the players. Perhaps by this weekend I'll be complaining that there is too much Candidates Hype....I doubt it though!