I am currently sat in my beanbag, writing this while waiting for the live coverage of round 4 of the Olympiad to begin. Tonight I have my English head on, as the classic battle between England and France is being played. Both these teams are outside chances for medals in this Olympiad with France ranked 8th and England ranked 11th at the start of the tournament. Both teams have won all their games, and both have had to overcome some pretty tough opposition. In the previous round, France played Bulgaria who were ranked 10th before the tournament and who fielded the dangerous duo of Topalov and Cheparinov on the top 2 boards. However, Topalov was beaten by French board 1 Maxime Vachier-Legrave and the rest of the games were drawn. England also had an impressive victory in the 3rd round against Cuba (ranked 15th) with 2700+ players Dominguez and Bruzon on the top 2 boards. England's board 1 Adams won against Dominguez, while England also won on board 3 where they have the hugely experienced Nigel Short. With the other games drawn, this was a decisive 3-1 victory. The match has just started, and if either side can pull out a victory, then they will put themselves in great position at the head of the field.
Most of the top teams are near the top, but the big exception is Holland. I'm not sure what is going on here. The Dutch team seem to be missing Anish Giri, but still have 4 players rated above 2600 with the hugely experienced van Wely and Ivan Sokolov on top boards. However, none of their team is currently performing and from a starting rank of 9th they have currently won only 1 of their 3 matches including losing to Venezuela who are ranked a lowly 58th.
However, besides Holland, the top nations are there or thereabouts and this is shown in the 4th round pairings. USA(5)-India(13), Russia(1)-China(6), Azerbaijan(7)-Germany(14), and of course France(8)-England(11). The rest of the top teams are just behind these.
Australia narrowly lost out to Mongolia yesterday and find themselves down the field playing Pakistan, where hopefully they will bounce back up the field. In the 2.5-1.5 loss there was a good win for Max Illingworth on board 4 against a higher rated opponent. Max grabbed some material early on, and held on. There were some nervous moments through the middle of the game, but I get the feeling that Max felt comfortable, and he finished the game off in style.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
The Evans Gambit
I've never played the Evans Gambit with the white pieces. I really don't know why, as white seems to get excellent piece play for a minimal investment. And the resulting positions allow white an initiative while black has the difficult task of defending for a long time, not something that many players below GM standard really enjoy doing. And I suppose that when I was growing up the Evans was not a frequently played opening, even at club level (the King's Gambit was always more popular).
Then came the 1990's, and Kasparov started playing 1.e4 and among other strange, old forgotten systems he bashed out the Evans. Of course, Kasparov was not the only top player to try it out, but there couldn't have been anyone more high profile. Anyway, the children of Kasparov's revolution are far more comfortable with the Evans than my generation. But then again, it still has to be a certain style of player who gives the Evans a go, especially at the Grandmaster level.
One such player is Australian board 1 at the 40th chess Olympiad, David Smerdon. I'm never particularly surprised by what Smerdon plays anymore, I just expect the unexpected. I remember walking into the State Library of Victoria a few years back to browse through some of the books, and there was David Smerdon, checking out some theory on the Scotch Gambit....or was it the Max Lange?
Yesterday, Smerdon played board 1 for Australia in the Olympiad against a very solid Norwegian team amd with the white pieces went all out for activity, putting his 2498 rated opponent onto the back foot. After prolonged pressure, black finally broke and David was rewarded with the full point. For what it's worth, I think that Smerdon's plan of 13.Rd1 and 14.c4 has not been played before, though the idea has been suggested, eg by Costa in Opening Encyclopedia 2011.
Another solid performance by the men's team, with a 2-2 draw with 2014 hosts Norway (without Magnus Carlsen), while our women came on the wrong end of a very strong Indian team who beat us 3.5-0.5. This means the men have a pretty tough assignment in round 3 against Mongolia, while the women take on Macedonia. Good luck to all our players!
ps. this includes the youth players, who have started their tournament with a 4-0 win and followed it up with another win 2.5-1.5, but I'll get to the Junior event in another post :)
Then came the 1990's, and Kasparov started playing 1.e4 and among other strange, old forgotten systems he bashed out the Evans. Of course, Kasparov was not the only top player to try it out, but there couldn't have been anyone more high profile. Anyway, the children of Kasparov's revolution are far more comfortable with the Evans than my generation. But then again, it still has to be a certain style of player who gives the Evans a go, especially at the Grandmaster level.
One such player is Australian board 1 at the 40th chess Olympiad, David Smerdon. I'm never particularly surprised by what Smerdon plays anymore, I just expect the unexpected. I remember walking into the State Library of Victoria a few years back to browse through some of the books, and there was David Smerdon, checking out some theory on the Scotch Gambit....or was it the Max Lange?
Yesterday, Smerdon played board 1 for Australia in the Olympiad against a very solid Norwegian team amd with the white pieces went all out for activity, putting his 2498 rated opponent onto the back foot. After prolonged pressure, black finally broke and David was rewarded with the full point. For what it's worth, I think that Smerdon's plan of 13.Rd1 and 14.c4 has not been played before, though the idea has been suggested, eg by Costa in Opening Encyclopedia 2011.
Another solid performance by the men's team, with a 2-2 draw with 2014 hosts Norway (without Magnus Carlsen), while our women came on the wrong end of a very strong Indian team who beat us 3.5-0.5. This means the men have a pretty tough assignment in round 3 against Mongolia, while the women take on Macedonia. Good luck to all our players!
ps. this includes the youth players, who have started their tournament with a 4-0 win and followed it up with another win 2.5-1.5, but I'll get to the Junior event in another post :)
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The 40th Chess Olympiad Starts
Yesterday, the first round of the 40th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul took place. There were the usual glitches in transmission, which meant that I didn't get to see any of the games live before I had to sleep. The live site is full of clerical errors, but taking that aside, it seems pretty good coverage. There's a good photo gallery, video coverage from chessTV (who covered the Anand-Gelfand World Championship match), and a great live games display (though the pgn download seems a bit dodgy at the moment....actually, I take that back, the pgn has just downloaded!). To be honest, I'm pretty happy with the coverage so far. It isn't perfect, but it's definitely better than before!
Anyway, the Australian teams started well. The men's team got off to a winning start with a 3-1 victory over Namibia while the Women beat Malta 4-0. For me the most pleasing thing about these matches were the team compositions as both teams rested their top player. This meant that the men's team had young IM Moulton Ly on board 1, while the women had young WIM Emma Guo on top board. It is a huge responsibility being board 1 for your country (not that I would know about that, but I'm guessing) so I applaud the team captain's, Manual Weeks and Ian Rogers for throwing these youngsters in at the deep end. Apparently, Moulton was in trouble in his game but came through which will do wonders for his confidence.
My country of birth, England were a little unlucky with their first round opponents. Andorra are a team with 1 strong player and a bunch of not so strong player. GM de la Riva on top board may just find himself with a few easy games later in the tournament as the rest of the Andorra team try to help him score some points. Likewise, in round 2 the top pairing sees a potentially awkward pairing for Ukraine who face Qatar with 2 2500+ GM's on the top 2 boards. While this shouldn't really put any problems for the mighty Ukraine team, it is still tough to beat GM's to order. And if all games went to seeding we wouldn't have had the upsets which make the Olympiad so great...such as Russia's Tomashevsky (2730) being held to a draw by William Puntier (2312) of the Dominican Republic. Of course, this wasn't the only upset, but it is always good to see the favourites humbled.
Anyway, congratulations to the Australian teams and good luck today. The men have a tough fight against Norway (who are without Magnus Carlsen, but still pretty solid), while the women have a huge battle against one of the tournament favourites India. And good luck tot he under 16 teams who start their campaigns today. Here are the Australian games from round 1.
Anyway, the Australian teams started well. The men's team got off to a winning start with a 3-1 victory over Namibia while the Women beat Malta 4-0. For me the most pleasing thing about these matches were the team compositions as both teams rested their top player. This meant that the men's team had young IM Moulton Ly on board 1, while the women had young WIM Emma Guo on top board. It is a huge responsibility being board 1 for your country (not that I would know about that, but I'm guessing) so I applaud the team captain's, Manual Weeks and Ian Rogers for throwing these youngsters in at the deep end. Apparently, Moulton was in trouble in his game but came through which will do wonders for his confidence.
My country of birth, England were a little unlucky with their first round opponents. Andorra are a team with 1 strong player and a bunch of not so strong player. GM de la Riva on top board may just find himself with a few easy games later in the tournament as the rest of the Andorra team try to help him score some points. Likewise, in round 2 the top pairing sees a potentially awkward pairing for Ukraine who face Qatar with 2 2500+ GM's on the top 2 boards. While this shouldn't really put any problems for the mighty Ukraine team, it is still tough to beat GM's to order. And if all games went to seeding we wouldn't have had the upsets which make the Olympiad so great...such as Russia's Tomashevsky (2730) being held to a draw by William Puntier (2312) of the Dominican Republic. Of course, this wasn't the only upset, but it is always good to see the favourites humbled.
Anyway, congratulations to the Australian teams and good luck today. The men have a tough fight against Norway (who are without Magnus Carlsen, but still pretty solid), while the women have a huge battle against one of the tournament favourites India. And good luck tot he under 16 teams who start their campaigns today. Here are the Australian games from round 1.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Olympiad 2012 Good luck to Australian Teams!
The opening ceremony of the 2012 Chess Olympiad is hours away, with games due to start tomorrow. It promises to be a close fought event with a number of teams who could battle for the medals. I will, of course, be supporting the Aussies (Smerdon, Ly, Wohl, Solomon, Illingworth; women. Caoilli, Guo, Yu, Nguyen, Dekic) though keeping an eye on the English team. Australia has also sent teams to the Youth Olympiad, and I will be following that closely as well, especially as I know many of the kids playing.
For a personal glimpse of the Olympiad, it will be well worth following the blogs of David Smerdon and Alex Wohl though it may just be just as good to follow the twitter account of the top rated player in the event, Armenia's Levon Aronian!
For a personal glimpse of the Olympiad, it will be well worth following the blogs of David Smerdon and Alex Wohl though it may just be just as good to follow the twitter account of the top rated player in the event, Armenia's Levon Aronian!
World number 2 with Australian board 1 (Courtesy of Levon Aronian's Twitter account)
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Following the Olympiad
In this age of the internet it is easy to follow events in a variety of ways. The London Olympics was covered excellently on social media sites like twitter and facebook with pictures and video uploaded, results posted regularly and promptly, and even reactions from the athletes themselves posted soon after their competitions (or sometimes before!).
The 40th chess Olympiad, to be held in Istanbul is scheduled to start on 27th August with the first round the following day. The tournament is an 11 round swiss with the last round on the 9th September. There is an open section and a women's Olympiad (as well as numerous side events), and while each of us has our favourites, I will be hoping for good performances from the Australians and English. There is also a youth Olympiad taking place at the same time in Istanbul though earlier in the day, so the young players can watch the superstars playing!
So how to follow the action online? Well, there are a host of great news sites that will cover the event. As I'm interested in the English team, my first stop will be Mark Crowther's The Week In Chess. I also expect excellent personal coverage with photos and video from Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog. And full round up's and commentary can usually be found on the chessbase news site. There are plenty more, but these are the 3 that I regularly use to keep abreast of news.
Probably the best thing about the internet is following the games live (or with a slight time delay). But where can the games be viewed? The Official site should have a live games page though I don't see one set up yet. But probably the best place to watch the games is on the playing sites ICC or Playchess. These are both premium sites which require paid registration, but a 1 week free trial for new members is available. I'm a member of ICC and will watch some games broadcast there. As well as the games, there is radio commentary from Grandmasters and discussion of the games as they are happening (though this can become a bit annoying and distracting from the games themselves). There are other live sites including TWIC and Chessdom.
A recent discovery for me has been Twitter. To be honest, I never really understood what it was about but I made a big effort to work it out and have found it to be very useful in finding new information. For instance, I follow certain posters who write about subjects that I find interesting, such as History, Photography, and of course, Chess. A lot of the top players use social network sites, and I currently follow Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, Sergey Karjakin and Maguns Carlsen (apparently he was playing basketball in New York earlier today!) though I will start following some of the top English and Aussie players. There are also some great commentators who use Twitter, of which Mig Greengard is among the best (plenty of Kasparov news).
I think it promises to be a great event with a number of strong teams fighting for the top places. But it will be a great experience for all the players. There's likely to be about 160 countries represented with the minnows from Nepal being the latest to be announced!
The 40th chess Olympiad, to be held in Istanbul is scheduled to start on 27th August with the first round the following day. The tournament is an 11 round swiss with the last round on the 9th September. There is an open section and a women's Olympiad (as well as numerous side events), and while each of us has our favourites, I will be hoping for good performances from the Australians and English. There is also a youth Olympiad taking place at the same time in Istanbul though earlier in the day, so the young players can watch the superstars playing!
So how to follow the action online? Well, there are a host of great news sites that will cover the event. As I'm interested in the English team, my first stop will be Mark Crowther's The Week In Chess. I also expect excellent personal coverage with photos and video from Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog. And full round up's and commentary can usually be found on the chessbase news site. There are plenty more, but these are the 3 that I regularly use to keep abreast of news.
Probably the best thing about the internet is following the games live (or with a slight time delay). But where can the games be viewed? The Official site should have a live games page though I don't see one set up yet. But probably the best place to watch the games is on the playing sites ICC or Playchess. These are both premium sites which require paid registration, but a 1 week free trial for new members is available. I'm a member of ICC and will watch some games broadcast there. As well as the games, there is radio commentary from Grandmasters and discussion of the games as they are happening (though this can become a bit annoying and distracting from the games themselves). There are other live sites including TWIC and Chessdom.
A recent discovery for me has been Twitter. To be honest, I never really understood what it was about but I made a big effort to work it out and have found it to be very useful in finding new information. For instance, I follow certain posters who write about subjects that I find interesting, such as History, Photography, and of course, Chess. A lot of the top players use social network sites, and I currently follow Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, Sergey Karjakin and Maguns Carlsen (apparently he was playing basketball in New York earlier today!) though I will start following some of the top English and Aussie players. There are also some great commentators who use Twitter, of which Mig Greengard is among the best (plenty of Kasparov news).
I think it promises to be a great event with a number of strong teams fighting for the top places. But it will be a great experience for all the players. There's likely to be about 160 countries represented with the minnows from Nepal being the latest to be announced!
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Chess Fillm, 8k Radius
At the local cinema in Elsternwick, director Clayton Jacobson (director of "Kenny") has put together some excellent short films called 8K radius dealing with people who live within an 8 kilometre radius of Elsternwick. Luckily for us chess fans, one of the people he filmed was local young talent Charlotte Dilnutt. I have had the pleasure of working with Charlotte at chess, and count myself a close friend to all the family. Anyway, here's the film, which is beautifully shot. Enjoy!
Monday, August 20, 2012
Compartmentalising
About 6 months ago I split my blog in 2. This part remained dedicated to chess whereas material regarding coffee and other things in my life moved to a personal blog here. I have been able to post to both blogs, though this one stays updated more regularly, probably because chess is such a big part of my life. And I'm not the only one who splits their blogs. One of my favourite chess bloggers, Alexandra Kosteniuk has 2 sites, one of which is more personal to her, while the other deals with more general issues.
Well, I've decided to go one better (or should that be worse) and I'm splitting my blogosphere into 3! Besides this blog which will continue to deal with chess generally, and my own personal chess experiences, and my non chess blog, I am starting a blog to deal with chess in my city, Melbourne.
This third blog comes about because of a need for this thing in my area. To be honest, the state association's website is woeful. I went to look for some information about chess club's the other day, and couldn't find any. Chess Victoria is an organisation made up of a group of affiliated clubs and those clubs aren't even listed on their website! This didn't use to be the case, so I'm not sure what is happening. Chess Victoria used to link to their affiliate clubs, or at least acknowledge those clubs existed, although they never went further and mentioned non affiliated places where people could play chess, such as the State Library of Victoria.
Now if I was new to chess and wanted to play, or a chess player who was new to the area, one of the first things I'd do was visit some prominent chess sites, and there should be none more prominent than the state association's site. And from it, I would find out very little. The reason I know this information is that I know people who have done exactly that. They have visited Chess Victoria's website and come away with nothing. These same people then contact the chess shop I work at asking for information about chess in their area, although I guess many more don't bother and the chess community loses a group of possible new members.
Anyway, rant over. Just to say that much of the local chess content that this site has been covering will now cross to the Melbourne Chess News site, where I hope to compile a comprehensive list of links, a database of games, and a set of news stories about chess in Victoria and Melbourne.
Well, I've decided to go one better (or should that be worse) and I'm splitting my blogosphere into 3! Besides this blog which will continue to deal with chess generally, and my own personal chess experiences, and my non chess blog, I am starting a blog to deal with chess in my city, Melbourne.
This third blog comes about because of a need for this thing in my area. To be honest, the state association's website is woeful. I went to look for some information about chess club's the other day, and couldn't find any. Chess Victoria is an organisation made up of a group of affiliated clubs and those clubs aren't even listed on their website! This didn't use to be the case, so I'm not sure what is happening. Chess Victoria used to link to their affiliate clubs, or at least acknowledge those clubs existed, although they never went further and mentioned non affiliated places where people could play chess, such as the State Library of Victoria.
Now if I was new to chess and wanted to play, or a chess player who was new to the area, one of the first things I'd do was visit some prominent chess sites, and there should be none more prominent than the state association's site. And from it, I would find out very little. The reason I know this information is that I know people who have done exactly that. They have visited Chess Victoria's website and come away with nothing. These same people then contact the chess shop I work at asking for information about chess in their area, although I guess many more don't bother and the chess community loses a group of possible new members.
Anyway, rant over. Just to say that much of the local chess content that this site has been covering will now cross to the Melbourne Chess News site, where I hope to compile a comprehensive list of links, a database of games, and a set of news stories about chess in Victoria and Melbourne.
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