Summer Chess Action

That might seem a funny thing to say for someone who is in mid winter, but up in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summer holiday time and there is an absolute abundance of chess across Europe. Australian GM David Smerdon is currently on 3.5/4 in the Politiken Cup in Denmark, half a point off the 9 leaders, in this 10 round swiss. Things didn't look too clever for David yesterday, but he came up with a great save.

As white Smerdon had lost a pawn, then sacrificed a piece to gain nowhere near enough compensation in the form of activity. Here, he played 25.Rxf6!? Bxf6 26.Bxf6 Rf8, and white should probably take on h8 and try to grovel through a really bad ending a pawn down. Smerdon tried a different tack!

27.Ng4, and got away with it! Black should really now take the bishop on f6, but possibly thought of more. 27..h5?

Ok, so it's white to play and draw! Answer tomorrow :)

(It's tomorrow!!) David played 28.Re7! [threatening 29.Rg7# so black has to move a rook. He can't move the f-rook as there would follow (eg) 28..Ra8 29.Rg7+ Kf8 30.Ne5 and black will have to give up a lot of material to avoid mate. So he has to play] 28..Rh7 29.Nh6!+ Rxh6 30.Rg7+ Kh8 31.Rf7+ Kg8 32.Rg7+ with a perpetual draw, and an excellent save!
Smerdon is on the same points as legends Jan Timman and Lajos Portisch, and I'm currently watch Portisch holding his own as black in a Scotch game against Parimarjan Negi. Meanwhile across the Channel, the British Championships opened yesterday with no acceleration. The 11 round Championship will truly come around in week 2 when the placings are sorted out, but it's still quite interesting to see seeds fall, and some classy GM moves against amateur opposition. My favourite move of the first round (of the games I've seen so far) was GM Tony Kosten's winning move.

Kosten playing white has an amazing position, and just needs to find a coup de grace! There might be a number of winning moves here, but none are as stylish as 27.Rc6! 1-0

Grandmaster Glenn Flear had to concede a draw, but perhaps the biggest upset was William Foo beating IM Richard Bates. I know nothing about William Foo other than he is 16 years old (if you believe chessbase) but his play was mightily impressive against Bates. Bates took one risk too many, and Foo was able to win a pawn, which he converted remarkably easily.


I have to say that the website is excellent (especially so after the disappointment of the World Youth Olympiad website) with lots of info. Apparently, Keith Arkell won the Bullet challenge against Gary Lane on Sunday. You can see pictures and read about it on the Championship blog.

As One Ends Another Begins

It's turn around day for my interests in chess. I have been following the exploits of the Australian teams at the World Youth Olympiad in China for the past week or so. Today was the last round, and Australia 1 had a slight chance of picking up a medal if they won their match, and other results went their way. The only issue was that they had to overcome top seed Russia. The Australians gave it a very good shot, but in the end the Russian team, featuring a squad rated averagely above 2400, proved just strong enough winning the match by the closest of margins, 2.5-1.5. However, this left the Aussies in a disappointing 10th place (=9th). The event was dominated by India who started as the number 2 seeds, but in the end proved the only unbeatable team in the tournament. Second were Russia, and equal third were Turkey and Hungary.

Australia fielded 2 teams and the second team started from a middle ranking. Unfortunately this put them in the line of the host nation's mass of teams. China fielded over 40 teams, and some of the international countries had little chance to play anyone other than Chinese teams. Australia 2 were one of these. Despite this, the team did pretty well finishing in a bunch in the mid 30's out of a total of 72 teams. Reading the reports of team coach Ian Rogers on the chesschat forum, I couldn't help but feel his exasperation at this situation with the huge number of Chinese teams. Ian is a respected journalist, and not scared to speak his mind, so I will be keeping my ears open for his analysis of the tournament.

Individually, there was quite some success for the young Australians. Ari Dale secured an individual Silver medal on board 4 for the 1st team scoring an excellent 6.5/9. Bobby Cheng managed the same score on board 1 for the 1st team, a tremendous performance and finishing 5th best board 1! Yi Liu scored 5/8 on board 5 (finishing 5th), Anton Smirnov, playing well above his age bracket scored 4/8 on board 2 (11th), and Justin Tan 2/6 on board 3 (9th). The second team also had great performances, the highlights being Jack Puccini's 6.5/8  (15th) on board 3 and Zach Loh's 5.5/9 on board 2 (23rd).

And so my attentions immediately shifts from China to England, where the 100th British Chess Championships start today. Actually, there have already been some warm up events such as a 14 board simul given by GM Nick Pert, and an hour long bullet match between GM Keith Arkell and IM Gary Lane. I don't know what the final score was here, but I do know that Keith is an unbelievably strong fast player. There are some events that take place in the mornings and these will also have started, but the main opening ceremony is set for about 2 hours time, and the main championship will start about 30 minutes after that. For followers here in Australia, the games are starting about 11.30 pm. Shame for me, as I would have liked to have followed the events live. Never mind, I'll just catch up on the action the next day.

Now you'd think that a tournament without Michael Adams (leading in Dortmund so GB can hardly complain about his absence), Nigel Short, Luke McShane and Matthew Sadler could be considered a let down, but really this is looking like a pretty good championships. A grand total of 13 GM's have entered out of a field of over 100. I'm glad to say there are a few names I remember, but it is also heartening to see many new players reaching this level. While I would wish everyone good luck, it is with the proviso that we all like to see a good upset once in a while!

Now that's a lot of writing with no chess. So, I noticed that Aussie GM David Smerdon is playing the Politiken Cup in Denmark that started a couple of days ago and has started with 3/3. The tournament has some other interesting characters, notably legends of the board, Lajos Portisch and Jan Timman. Now they might not be as great now as they once were, but I'd love to be sat in the same tournament as them! Timman finished his game yesterday pretty quickly! His opponent somewhat imploded at the end!

MCC Update

Since I moved to Australia about 8 and a half years ago, there have been 4 players who I've had a particularly bad record against. IM Guy West I have never managed to beat, I've scored a few draws, and lost quite a few. FM Dusan Stojic I have managed to win against, and have picked up the odd draw, but I must be at about -6 against him. My record against IM Mirko Rujevic perplexes me as I seem to get decent positions, but his sharp and imaginative sense at the chess board usually allows him to come out of things well. While I've beaten him, and drawn a few, I reckon I'm at -5 at least. And against Malcolm Pyke I have had a bad time. I don't remember the exact score, but he won a whole load back to back. I'm either up, level or no worse than -2 against everyone else I've played in Australia. (A bold announcement and if you are someone I've forgotten, then please don't hesitate to remind me)

Guy West and Dusan Stojic

What made me think about this was seeing the field for the Melbourne Chess Club's latest Monday night tournament, the Malitis Memorial. This mid year 7-round swiss has usually had small turn outs compared to other MCC events, but this year the tournament seems to holding it's own with the previous City of Melbourne Open and a field of 29 players are currently competing compared with 23 for the previous event. The top 2 seeds are from my nemesis group, Rujevic and Pyke and these 2 are currently on 2/2 and in the leading group of the event along with David Lacey, Tom Kalisch and Paul Kovacevic. It's still, of course, too early to tell what will happen but with only 7 rounds, the tournament will quickly sort itself out.

Malcolm Pyke

Mirko Rujevic

One player has asked for a bye for tomorrow's third round game in the Malitis Memorial. Jack Puccini is currently in China playing for Australia in the World Youth Olympiad, a team tournament for under 16's. Jack is currently playing board 3 for Australia 2 and has scored a magnificent 5/6, his only loss being to 2449 rated Russian FM Kiril Alekseenko. The MCC are also represented in the Australia 1 team with Ari Dale also having a stellar performance scoring 5.5/7 on board 4 although things were even better before the double round yesterday as it was the second game on the day he lost. All the young Australians are working hard to achieve the best results for their teams, and currently, the 1st team are 8th place (=7th) and the 2nd team are in 39th (=30th). There are still 2 rounds to go and both teams will be looking to improve upon their current standings.

In my last post, I complained about the lack of pgn games on the official website. Well, within about 1 hour of writing that post a pgn of rounds 1-6 was posted on the website. I was immediately ready to forgive the organisers, until I opened it and found it contained only the games from the live boards. To be honest, these games should have been posted to the site immediately, and it should have taken some time for other games to be manually loaded into a database. But I am now not going to hold my breath for the remaining games of the event to be published.

A Quick Post

Well, I've been sick as a dog the past few days which means I missed much of the chess action in China at the World Youth Olympiad, as well as the start of Biel and Dortmund. I'm still feeling pretty rough so this post will be quick. The Australian teams seem to be doing ok at the Youth Olympiad. The 1st team is in the fight for the medals, and the 2nd team is competing in the middle of the tournament. This was pretty much as expected, and it is good that our kids, helped by their trainers should live up to expectations.

Today will be a make or break day with a double round which will see some teams catapult up the rankings, and some slide a fair way down. At the moment, round 7 is in action, and later today we'll have round 8. There are to be 10 rounds in all, with the tournament finishing on Monday.

There are some issues with the event. First, the official website is pretty bad. A lot of material has not been updated, and a couple of the links lead to blank pages. Now it wouldn't be such a bother if these pages weren't too important, but we're talking about "standings" and "pgn". In fact, the lack of published games has been really disappointing. The best place to find the results and scores is the chess-results server.

The other issue is the number of Chinese teams competing, about 40! While there is nothing in the rules against this happening, it makes the event a kind of Chinese tournament with a few other countries invited, rather than the international event it is meant to be. At the top of the tournament, these Chinese teams don't come into the equation too much, but in the middle, and at the bottom of the tournament, it is more than likely that they will be encountered. This is what the Australian 2nd team has found. Australia 2 are a mid strength team and rather than playing a group of international teams, they have played 5 different Chinese teams in the first 6 rounds.

Currently, Australia 1 in 8th place (joint 6th) and Australia 2 in 40th (joint 32nd). Good luck in the remaining 4 rounds!

A Winning Start at the Youth Olympiad

Congratulations to both Australian teams at the World Youth Under 16 Olympiad. The Australia A-team is pretty strong with 2 IM's, Bobby Cheng and Ari Dale in the team. They came through a tough first round game against an unknown (and probably under rated Chinese team) to win 3-1 with no losses. Australia is also fielding a second team, which is also quite strong, led by rapidly improving, and in form Michael Chan. Michael has benefited from being a member of the ultra strong Noble Park Chess Club in Melbourne where he regularly gets competition against 2200+ strength opposition. The b-team also won 3-1 and now both teams will be up among the top boards for round 2, with the b-team playing the top seeds, Russia, while the a-team have an ashes clash against England's b-team. The tournament is 10 rounds and decided by match points so the next couple of rounds should see a big sorting out before the top teams come into contact and the fight for the medals begins for real.

I haven't seen any games yet by the Aussies, but the b-team will be on the live boards later today against Russia. While a daunting task for the young Aussies, they should consider the match a test of their current strength and see just how close they are to the highly rated Russian team. Being a fringe country to a large extent, Australian ratings tend to be a little under value, and with juniors it is impossible to gauge their strength until they reach a level. Now the Australian b-team are on average 400+ FIDE rating points behind their Russia rivals, but I know that the young Australian players can all play considerably above their published ratings. On the other hand, the Australian A-team must avoid complacency against England-B as the same sort of issues are at play, though it is the Aussies who are considerably higher rated than their English opponents.

Good luck to all the Aussie players today, and hopefully we'll start to get some games published soon.

The Inspirational Jacques Mieses

I haven't played much chess this year (well, not so much serious chess) and the club I've been helping to set up is due to start a round robin event this week which should see fields of players fairly evenly matched. I have to admit, I'm feeling a bit out of form. I've played a bit online though it isn't the same. Nevertheless, it's still better than not playing at all.

Playing fast games online is a good way to force yourself to work hard tactically, and can hone your openings. I'm usually not a big advocate of fast games. I personally believe that the best way to improve at playing long play chess is by playing long play chess, and working as hard as possible at the board. But there are, of course, other methods including studying games and positions, solving tactical puzzles and, (ok, I admit it) playing fast chess. But I qualify these methods by saying that there has to be an objective involved with each training method.

Jacques Mieses (from Wikipedia)

Anyway, I played a game on Chess.com using a favourite old opening variation of mine....not that it's good, but it is interesting. I was white in the 5-2 game which started 1.e4 d5 [and I already wished I'd opened with 1.d4] 2.exd5 Qxd5 [I'd almost forgotten that this could be played, expecting 2..Nf6. I've never really put much work into the Scandinavian which I suppose is due to it being considered a pile of rubbish when I was growing up. Now, besides being considered respectable, or possibly dangerous there are also large opening roadmaps to guide players.] 3.Nc3 [I think I read somewhere that 3.Nf3 is more accurate, but whatever!] 3..Qa5 4.Nf3 [I think I should look at some mainlines with 4.d4, but as Bigdatabase 2013 has over 30,000 games from this position, it makes things a bit daunting]  4..Nf6 5.Be2 [Very conservative play, but there's a reason for this. I'm waiting for black to move the light squared bishop] 5..Bg4 [...and there it is]

6.b4 [Ths move was a favourite of maverick German born player Jacques Mieses. Mieses was a pretty formidable player who liked some strange openings. In 1895 he drew a match with David Janowsky and  then played at the super strong Hastings tournament of that year. He played in some of the strongest tournaments of the next 10 years such as Paris 1900 and Cambridge Springs 1904 and won a strong tournament in Vienna 1907 ahead of Tartakower, Maroczy, Duras, Vidmar and Schlecter. In a time when positional chess was gradually taking over from the old swashbuckling school of the 1800's, Mieses still played Centre Games and Danish Gambit's, Vienna Gambit's and Scotch Gambits, King's Gambit's and as black he championed the Scandinavian. So it is always interesting to see what a player chooses against their favourite opening.] 6..Qh5 [I remember when I first saw this type of idea, in the 1990's, the choice for black always seemed to be between 6..Qb6 and 6..Qxb4. After taking on b4, white gets a great initiative on the queenside. 6..Qxb4 7.Rb1 Qd6 (or 7..Qa5) 8.Rxb7 and black's usual plan of queen side castling and attacks on opposite sides is immediately thwarted; 6..Qb6 is the safest and black should be ok with moves like ..c6, ..Nbd7, ..e6 and ..Bd6.] 7.0-0 Nbd7 [Persisting with hopes of queen side castling? I'm not sure. As black, I'd have been tempted to play 7..e6, put my bishop on d6 and castle king side, getting on with things. After 7..e6 white has to consider the safety of his b-pawn]

8.d4 [It's odd that I should really have been worried about my position here. I mean, black has played 3 queen moves, has a central king and lacks any meaningful development. However, white isn't really looking too hot either. I desperately wanted to put the question to black's light squared bishop with 8.h3, but was worried about a sacrifice on h3 to open my king up. It surely is not enough, but anything can happen in a 5 minute game] 8..e6 9.h3 [I couldn't resist. I didn't really believe in the bishop sac on h3 last move, and my opponent didn't try it instead playing...] 9..Bxf3 but after 10.Bxf3 winning time by hitting black's unfortunate queen again, I grasped the initiative and eventually went on to win this game.

It is always good to find an imaginative player and look at their games. It helps if the player is strong. Mieses was one of FIDE's original Grandmasters in 1950. He moved to England in the 1930's and his name has recently come back to prominence with his variation of the Scotch Opening back in vogue (1e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 6.e5). This comes from his use of this opening at Hastings 1895, where Mieses didn't perform too well, but he still drew with Lasker and Chigorin in this variation which is no mean feat.

Some Chess to Follow

I think it's been a while since I mentioned that I'm going on holiday to the USA in September. There's only 8 weeks or 57 days left before I go, and I can hardly wait! The only problem is that while something exciting is looming in your life, time drags by slowly. So over the next couple of weeks I'm delighted to have some chess tournaments to follow which bring a personal touch to my observation.

The World Youth Under 16 Olympiad is being held in China, and I'll be following the exploits of the Australian Junior teams competing there. I've played almost all the young players there (with varying success!) and wish them the very best of luck. The teams have the expert GM guidance of Australian number 1 ranked player Zong Yuan Zhao, and legendary Australian GM Ian Rogers. Last year, the tournament was exciting and Australia had chances for a medal going into the last round. This year the tournament looks a little stronger at the top level, but the Aussie team matches up pretty well. It will be particularly intersting to see how IM Bobby Cheng compares to the other board 1's. Bobby is a prodigious talent who won the World under-12 championship a few years back. The question is whether his peers from more chess developed countries such as Russia or India have pulled ahead of him, or whether he can still hold his own. Of course it will be interesting to see how the whole Australian team match up on their respective boards. Especially exciting is Anton Smirnov, the number 1 rated player in the World born in 2001 who is playing on board 2 for the under 16 team despite his young age!

As I was born in England, I eagerly follow the British Championships, traditionally held at the end of July and beginning of August each year. This year is the 100th British Championship and 10 Grand Masters are among the players making the trip to the west country seaside resort of Torquay. Another English immigrant to Australia is playing. IM Gary Lane who originally hails from the West of England is in the field and I wish him good luck! Of course, part of the enjoyment of watching this event is that I know and have played against a number of the competitors, and will be hoping they do well. I guess GM Gawain Jones is the man to beat in the Championship after coming joint first in the Scottish Champs last week, but it is a pretty tough field. There are a whole series of events at the British, including age group championships, seniors championship (not long for me to be in this!), limited ratings events, one week tournaments, weekend and rapid and blitz events. There is usually a simul over the middle weekend, and a cricket match that I seem to remember IM Andrew Martin always had a lot to do with organising.

The World Youth Championship starts tomorrow, and as it finishes next week, the British Championships start. This gives me 3 weeks of uninterrupted chess excitement, and after the British is finished there will be just 38 days to go before I fly off to the USA!