MCC Championship Resumes

After the week off for the Ballarat Weekender, the Melbourne Chess Club Championship resumed last night. I thought it was very considerate of the London Candidates to schedule a rest day so as not to clash with the MCC Ch. However, it was unfortunate that the live coverage of the top board game seemed to stick after about 20 moves when things were getting interesting. IM Guy West was leading the tournament with 5/5 before the week off. Last night he played young gun Justin Tan. To be honest I was not sure about the play up to the loss of transmission. First I thought Justin was doing ok when he advanced e5, then I thought Guy was doing ok when Justin sacrificed a pawn in the centre (I thought Guy should have taken with the pawn, but I could understand the queen capture as well). In the position at the end of transmission I couldn't work out who I'd rather be.

It's white to move, and although he is a pawn ahead, he has to lose his e4 pawn, and the e3 pawn will be a permanent weakness. However, the 2 bishops and the open centre give compensation, and the split of pawns with no majorities would lean toward drawish tendencies. In fact the game ended in a draw, which keeps Guy outright leader on 5.5. Ari Dale closed the gap with West to half a point with a big win against FM Dusan Stojic, while a further half point back are FM's Chris Wallis and Domogoj Dragicevic.

There were also some upsets in this round. Paul Kovacevic continued his excellent tournament drawing with David Beaumont. Jason Chew caused a bigger upset winning against experienced campaigner Richard Voon. But the result of the night was Finley Dale's draw with IM Mirko Rujevic. Mirko is not having his best tournament, but nevertheless this is a huge result for young Finley.

There are still 3 rounds to go and a lot of chess to be played here. I would say that anyone within 1.5 of Guy still has a chance (slim, but still a chance) while almost half the field could finish in the places with a 3/3 finish.

A Coffee House Player

According to a definition I found in Wikipedia Coffeehouse chess is:

"..a move, player, or style of play characterized by risky, positionally dubious play that sets traps for the opponent. The name comes from the notion that one would expect to see such play in skittles games played in a coffeehouse or similar setting, particularly in games played for stakes and/or blitz chess.."

Now having played a number of players who could be described in these terms, I know that typical Coffeehouse Chess players can be pretty strong, especially tactically. But there have been some pretty strong players over the years who have been called Coffeehouse players in a derogatory sense, with Judit Polgar springing immediately to mind. Judit is an excellent tactical player, who has played for many traps during her games. But that doesn't mean she doesn't understand how to play positionally. I don't think anyone who makes it to the top 10 in the World should be described as weak positionally.

The latest victims of the label Coffeehouse player is the current leader of the London Candidates tournament, World Number 3, Levon Aronian and the man he just beat, Vassily Ivanchuk. When commenting on Ivanchuk's play, Aronian said:

"I tend to do things like this and friends tell me I'm a coffee house player"

Well, that is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and anyone who can trap a top 20 player tactically should be pretty happy with themselves. That is what Aronian did to last year's defeated World Champion Boris Gelfand in round 2.

Gelfand as black had just played 24..Bd8 and Aronian's thinking is interesting. "After Bd8 I was thinking which move should I play to provoke Rc8" said Aronian after the game. Aronian played 25.b4 in the hope of his opponent playing 25..Rc8 which he duly did. Aronian had set a trap which Gelfand walked into. 26.Bh6+! which wins a pawn. Gelfand played 26..Kg8 (26..Kxh6 27.Rxc8 Bxc8 28.Nxf7+ followed by 29.Nxd8 is the point) 27.Rxc8 Bxc8 28.Nc6 winning material as the knight threatens d8, a7 and another fork on e7.

Going into the first rest day, Aronian is clear leader on 2.5/3. He is followed closely by Carlsen and Svidler on 2/3, Kramnik, Radjabov, Grischuk 1.5/3 and Ivanchuk, Gelfand .5/3. There is a long way to go, but I'm hoping the Coffeehouse player can stay ahead of course. Here are his 2 wins in the tournament so far, where he shows how to be a coffeehouse player, and how to beat a coffeehouse player.

Formula 1 on St Patrick's Day

I was driving down Jacka Boulevard through St Kilda on my way to Port Melbourne. If you've never been to St Kilda, it is a bohemian wonderland that doubles as a tourist magnet. It has it's good sides such as a beach, great cafe culture, art and artists and excellent clubs and venues. It also has it's bad sides with drugs and prostitution openly available and it gets madly overcrowded throughout the summer and most weekends through the year. I personally dislike crowds too much to want to be in St Kilda at the moment, but I like hanging out around Acland Street when it's colder and there's room to move.

Anyway, as I was driving through St Kilda I saw signs by the road saying that it's an alcohol free zone, as is a big expanse of suburbs around the Grand Prix in Albert Park. To be honest, it was no skin off my nose as I don't drink and drive but I wondered how long this drink ban was going on for and whether it would be successful in keeping alcohol off the streets. The same policy was used during the St Kilda Festival a few weeks back which to my mind makes a lot of sense with so much emphasis on providing attractions for families. But today is not family festival day...

Today is, in fact, St Patrick's Day. Again, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and so this day has become a celebration of the great Irish tradition of getting absolutely pissed. This can be done in a number of ways, but it is usual to wear something green that identifies you with the Emerald Isle, find an Irish Pub of which there is at least one pretty much anywhere you travel in the World, and drink as much as you can while complaining about how bad Guinness tastes outside the homeland (whether you've been to Ireland or not!). In fact St Patrick is a fairly serious Saint who has been mythologized and celebrated throughout the centuries. There's a pretty good article about him here.

I also noticed a strange phenomenon concerning the scheduling of the the London Candidates tournament. The tournament started slowly and was eclipsed by the media heavy Red Nose Day in the UK. Coinciding the start of a mind sport event such as chess with Red Nose Day (comic relief) seems a bit strange, but then the tournament is scheduled to end on April Fool's Day. I wonder if someone in marketing is trying to make chess appear a more fun event to the general public? Unfortunately, none of the players wore red noses on the opening day of play, but I have hopes of perhaps a big green hat being worn by one of the players today. And if not, maybe we'll be lucky enough to see Magnus Carlsen in the last round needing to win and reaching for his h-pawn, hovering his hand over the flank pawn, and then smiling and saying "April Fool"!

While round 1 was a bit lame, round 2 came alive with 2 of the games decisive. I was watching Carlsen-Kramnik and you just have to admire Kramnik's ability to not lose games of chess. I mean, I know he does lose games, but he really found equality easily with the black pieces against the world number 1. The decisive games came when the old guys Gelfand and Ivanchuk (damn, both younger than me), lost to the number 3 (Aronian) and 4 (Radjabov) in the World. To be honest, the games were not classics, with the losers playing badly rather than the winners playing excellently. The other game between Grischuk and Svidler was a draw which leaves Aronian and Radjabov as the early leaders of the event.

More Elementary Endgames

It was a pretty tame opening to the London Candidates event. There were 4 draws with none of the players seemingly willing to risk much early on in the tournament. The game between Ivanchuk and Grischuk did give me a chance to explain the square of the pawn to some students today. One of the kids asked me why they had agreed to a draw, so we had a look at the endgame.

It is white to move and it looks like black's 2 queen side passed pawns give him an advantage. However, white's king can block those pawns if it heads to the queen side (rather than trying to win the h-pawn which was what some of the kids thought of straight off...kids are so materialistic!). Basically, a quick calculation can be made based on making a square which has where the pawn currently stands (b5) and where it wants to get to (b1) as one side. The other corners of the the square ill be f5 and f1. The golden rule here is that white's king must be able to enter this square if it wants to prevent the pawn from promoting. So white could play 1.Kf4 here, and still be able to get into the square of the pawn after 1..b4 2.Ke4 b3 3.Kd3 b2 4.Kc2 b1=Q 5.Kxb1.

Ivanchuk wasted no time in heading off the pawns, playing 1.Ke4 and after 1..a5, he started on creating his own passed pawns on the king side with 2.f3. They played 2..a4 3.Kd3 Getting inside the square of the a-pawn (a4, a1, d4, d1), 3..a3 and a draw was agreed!

So why was a draw agreed here? White must enter the square of the pawn now, so 4.Kc2 seems reasonable. The thing is, black can't stop white from advancing pawns on the king side, so perhaps the game might continue 4..b4 5.g4 hxg4 6.fxg4 when we have a position where neither side can make progress.

White's king must stay close to the black pawns, but black's king can't leave the white pawns to advance. But neither side can advance their pawns far as the kings will block them. Notice that a king that sits between the pawns, such as a white king on b3, cannot take the backward of the 2 pawns as that would leave the other pawn to promote. So neither side can make progress.

Elementary Chess Endings

I was talking to a friend the other day about our favourite chess ending. We spoke about quite a few old classics and each had our particular favourite. Hopefully we will see some more over the next few weeks in London at the Candidates' tournament, and with some great endgame players, I can't imagine there not be a few classics.

But after my post last week, I thought I'd share my favourite classic endgame. I have always liked pawn endgames, and I prefer endgames that actually happened in games compared to composed studies. One of the first endgames I was shown is still one of my favourites, Lasker-Tarrasch St Petersburg 1914.

It looks bad for white. Black has a pawn majority on the queen side, his king is nearer to the queen side than white's king and is also able to easily stop white's pawn from advancing far. Yet Lasker managed to draw this position and it was black fighting for that draw in the end!

1.h4! This wins time against the advance of black's queen side as Tarrasch can't allow white to play 2.h5 1..Kg4 2.Kg6!! Again winning time as white now threatens 3.h5 so black's next is forced 2..Kxh4 3.Kf5 and now white's king "shoulders" black's king in the race to the queen side.

The game finished 3..Kg3 4.Ke4 Kf2 5.Kd5 Ke2 6.Kxc5 Kd2 7.Kxb5 Kc2 8.Kxa5 Kxb3 Draw.

Study of classic endgames is good for anyone. I hope to bring some more favourite classics to this blog :)

London Candidates 2013

This is going to be the biggest tournament since the World Championship tournament of 2007. That was a great triumph for the current World Champion Anand with 6 of the 8 participants from the 2013 Candidates also present in 2007. The current number 1 and 4 in the World, Carlsen and Radjabov, were not playing, and both will hope to be significant factors in London. Meanwhile all the 6 who played 6 years ago will certainly believe they are better players now than then. And so what we have is the promise of one of the greatest tournaments in history, with the fantastic format of a double round robin.

There is a little over 24 hours before the event begins and after last week's whinge about the lack of coverage, my hopes picked up. First Chessbase started to preview the players, with short biographies and results and chances against their opponent's. Unfortunately, they have only managed to preview 5 of the 8 players, which is rather disappointing especially seeing that Carlsen and Kramnik haven't been examined yet! Still, they have looked at Svidler, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Radjabov and Aronian and that is certainly good.

Of course, we in Australia like to tip winners and so when I saw a tweet form Chessvibes saying that some top players had made their predictions I was intrigued. I have to say that it is an excellent article, but I was a little disappointed with the punditry. Caruana completely sat on the fence, as did Ponomariov. Gawain Jones stated the obvious (as did all the pundits) in as much as Carlsen is the favourite, but almost anyone can win (actually Jones only mentioned 6 players with Gelfand and Radjabov missing out). Dutch GM Erwin L'Ami is the only one to stick his neck out and say that Carlsen will win (if he is in form) and the only ones to stop him are Aronian and Kramnik. He also says there could be a surprise outsider such as Svidler but I don't think L'Ami thinks he will win the event. Other tipsters have been Anand (total diplomacy) and Anish Giri who feels Carlsen is 80% favourite to win, while interstingly he doesn't rate Aronian's chances and seems to only rate Kramnik as a challenger to Carlsen.

So it's time to stick my neck out, get off the fence for once. So first I'll state that I'll be happy if almost anyone wins as long as the level of play and competition is high. I'd really like to see Aronian do it, but like Giri I'm not sure I fully believe in him. Nevertheless as the last player to beat Carlsen in a tournament I'm going to go with Aronian to win the event. I guess I could be eating my words after the very first round when the pairing of Aronian-Carlsen comes up, but even a first round loss for any of these players will not spell disaster.

As well as social media sites such as twitter and facebook, I'll be following the news primarily from the official site (at least the FIDE official site as I'm not sure the Agon official site is being fully updated), the internet chess club (icc) and The Week in Chess (TWIC). I'll be passing on my own impressions here but won't be watching the games live due to the time zone difference which means the games will not start until abut 1am here. It's about time we had a big event in Beijing, and if the World Championship is held in Chennai, that will be better for us in Australia!

Ballarat round up.

The finale of the 47th Ballarat was truly spectacular. Going into the last day, 3 players were on a maximum 5/5, IM James Morris, FM Chris Wallis and Brodie McClymont. In the 6th round Wallis beat last year's joint winner McClymont, while Morris was held to a draw by Luke Li. This set up the final round pairings of Morris-Wallis, while McClymont played fellow Queenslander IM Stephen Solomon. The best that the board 2 players could hope for was second place, and Brodie secured that with a powerful performance winning against top seed Solomon. This left the top board game in progress with the winner taking the title. Morris played for the win, taking an Isolated Queen's Pawn and active play, and it payed off after Wallis misplaced his pieces. So IM James Morris adds to his already impressive set of titles with an outright win, and a first prize of $1500. This left FM Chris Wallis in joint second with Brodie McClymont, and they were also joined  by Karl Zelesco and Yi Liu.

Further down the field there were both success stories and disappointments, but this is nothing to do with the tournament which was again organised excellently by the Ballarat Chess Club and run ably by the arbiters Gary Bekker and Jamie Kenmure. There were a few issues that need pointing out, but to my mind these were fairly minor. The playing conditions were pretty tough. The temperature was in the mid 30's outside, and with no aircon to speak of, it seemed even hotter inside. Players were not looking to work their way up the boards but were eager to play on boards nearest the fans that had been strategically placed around the venue. In the final round a player complained of headaches shortly after the round started and offered his opponent a draw on move 1! After consulting the arbiter whether this would cause a penalty if accepted and discovering not, the player agreed to the draw offer. The arbiter did mention the moral obligation of the players to them, but without penalties the players were well within their rights to take that draw. Hopefully the headaches will pass, and I'm sure that the prize money that both players secured through this draw would ease those pains!

The other main issue was the pairings and the tournament management system being used. Apparently I misunderstood the arbiters in one of my previous posts when I said that they had not been provided with the SP master file. They had been provided with a draft SP file, but they were not allowed to use it with the Tornelo tournament management system. So the arbiters had to use Swiss Perfect to create the draw and manually input data to tornelo to display events online. This, of course, created an extra amount of work for the arbiters which to their credit they pulled off, though not without some hiccups. The pairings that were displayed on tornelo were often incorrect until updated manually which sometimes caused players to think they were playing someone when in fact they were playing someone else. There was also a fair deal of criticism of the draw based on the data in tornelo, though some of that data was not correct. To be fair to players, once that was explained to them they accepted it and things ran pretty smoothly and in a friendly manner.

Ballarat has got to be one of the most enjoyable tournaments on the calendar. The Ballarat Chess Club members are very welcoming, and it is always strong and with a good sized field. This was the 47th edition and the organisers know that the big 50 is coming up. I talked a little with Patrick Cook who said they were already talking about the upcoming 50th even though it is 3 years away. They have some big plans and hopefully it will go off well, much like the 50th Doeberl last year. Patrick then reminisced a little about Ballarat chess history. For instance, I didn't know that the first Ballarat chess club was formed in 1856! It would be older than the prestigious Melbourne Chess Club (1866), except it hasn't run continuously for all those years. Patrick also seemed to think the first Australian chess tournament had been held in Ballarat, though he wasn't 100% sure. He was completely sure that the current Ballarat chess club in 2013 was holding it's 48th club championship and that one player, fellow weekender organiser Kevin Perrin, had played in all 48! An absolutely amazing feat, Kevin, and 2 more for you to get to the magic 50 championship appearances!

Ballarat Chess Club's Patrick Cook