Game of the Day 7

What makes a game great or important? There are a number of considerations to take into account, but the occasion, the players, the fight and the brilliance of play are all contributing factors. There will also be second hand opinion, by those who witnessed, or have seen and analysed the game. One of my favourite tournaments is Hastings 1895 and I must have looked at most of the games at least once.But a game I never really considered much was the first round game Lasker-Marco. It really isn't a brilliant game, certainly not the best by either player, and not even the best of the round, but it was an historically significant game. It was the first tournament game that Lasker played as World Champion, and as Hastings 1895 was his first International tournament after winning the title, it can be surmised that it wasn't the glorious start he would have hoped for, finishing third behind Pillsbury and Chigorin.

But Lasker isn't the only World Champion who didn't start their tenure with a bang. Euwe could only finish second, behind Reuben Fine at Zandvoort after beating Alekhine, and Botvinnik fared even worse finishing sixth at the super strong 1951 USSR Championship won by Keres. Admittedly, Botvinnik didn't play much after 1948 so would have been rusty, but this must have been a disappointment. In recent times, both Kramnik and Anand could only finish third in their first classical tournaments after winning the title. Then there were Steinitz, Smyslov and Fischer who never played tournaments as World Champions. As far as I can tell, all the other undisputed Classical World Champions started with a tournament win.

In the tournament book of Hastings 1895, the games were annotated by players, though they didn't comment on their own games. The 1st round game of Lasker-Marco was commented by the great German player, Tarrasch who tends towards the critical in his analysis style! Tarrasch was known for his dogmatic opinions on the game, but he was still a brilliant player and a magnificent calculator at the board. His fantastic win against Walbrodt from Hastings 1895 is a great example of his brilliance.

The game has an interesting middle game with black taking hanging pawns from a Queen's Gambit Declined opening. Unfortunately, the game finishes when it is just beginning to get interesting, as Marco made a huge, and somewhat elementary blunder.

Black here played the shocker 22..Bf6?? allowing 23.Bg4 skewering queen and rook without the possibility of blocking with the f-pawn. The game falls apart quickly after that. Tarrasch's notes to this position are quite interesting and show a lack of regard for dynamics in the position which were not so well understood at the time (strange really, as the idea of gambiting for an attack was still quite prevalent at the time). Tarrasch considers 22..Qb6 as forced, but 22..f6!? keeps the position fluid. It looks as if White wins a pawn by 23.Nxg6 hxg6 24.Qxa5.

However, the position is highly unbalanced with White's forces dispersed. Black has 24..g5 (a move Tarrasch thought about in an earlier position) 25.Bg3 dxe3 26.Rxd8+ Rxd8 27.Re1 Qd5 28.f3 with an absolutely unclear position.

In fact, this crazy dynamic game would have suited Marco who played a game from the same opening position a couple of years earlier against von Scheve at Dresden 1892 where he took an IQP and managed to create all sorts of complications for himself and his opponent, who finally ran out of steam and blundered the game away. Here's that game, and then the Lasker game with notes by Tarrasch (and the f6 line added). Enjoy!

Loading embedded chess game...

Loading embedded chess game...

Natural.....but Wrong!

There are moves that we play that seem the most natural in the world, but tactically they aren't justified. It is very annoying when this happens. Things like:

- captures
- recaptures
- checks
- retreating an attacked piece
- castling

Unless the move is absolutely forced, then moves shouldn't be played automatically. We all miss things, but it is most annoying when we miss something that we should see.

I feel for the player in this example:

This game, from an Austrian League game last week saw white commit 2 mistakes over the one move.

First, he played a move which looks natural without checking the situation on the board. 
Second, he didn't look at all the checks and captures in the position.

White played the seemingly natural 15.0-0.

Now if white had been thinking about checks and captures, he would have noticed 15..Bxc4 and should have considered that move.

White resigned in this position. Here, it is obvious that black's queen is coming to d4 to check and fork white's bishop which will be on c4.

Moral of the story is to check natural looking moves. Even better is to get the thought about natural looking moves out of your head, and take positions on their merit. I think capturing and recapturing is the biggest area where most club players could improve.

City of Melbourne Open Round 2

Yesterday was the second round of the City of Melbourne Open at the Melbourne Chess Club. The tournament grew to 44 players, there being only 40 players in the first round. All these late entries were given half point byes for the first round, which was a bit generous, but a sensible policy encouraging more participation. There is still time to join this tournament up to round 3 which is next Monday, though whether entries will be accepted after the draw is published on Thursday, I'm not sure. Also, I don't know whether these new entries will receive half points for the rounds they missed.

Round 2 produced more upset results, the most notable being on board 2 where David Cannon beat number 2 seed Ljubisa Nedimovic. To be honest, David is pretty strong and like most juniors can play well above his rating, but also sometimes, can play a bit weaker. David is joined on 2/2 by top seed Jack Puccini, Carl Gorka (me!) and Malcolm Pyke. So the tournament is already spreading thin at the top end. There is a large group of players half a point back, including Jack Shanks who upset Mehmedalija Dizdarevic. Jack joins his brother Bryan, and 9 other players on 1.5.

Sarah Anton was one of those players on 1.5 and she benefited from her opponent's mobile phone ringing. This was ridiculous, as it happened after only about 5 minutes of the game and arbiter Kerry Stead's warning to switch off mobile phones was still running round my head. I am now so concerned about phone forfeits that I don't even bring my phone into the venue, or if I have to from now, I will leave it with the arbiter.

The other upset winner was Natalie Bartnik who overcame a 500 point rating difference to beat Gary Bekker. Gary has been somewhat of an upset causer himself, so he will now know things from the other side.

My experience from round 2 was one of endurance. My game was the longest of the night, and the longest I remember playing at 114 moves. The big problem was my time management. I spent quite a time over some fairly standard moves. This meant that I was left with very little time from about move 35 when the game started getting interesting. I played some fast, and not particularly critical moves until my 46th move when I dropped to 1 minute on the clock. I stayed at under 2 minutes for the next 50 moves, and it is not an experience I'd really like to repeat. Playing on the increment is stressful, and there is no time to stretch, get a drink, go to the toilet, etc.

I managed to win the game, though there were a few hairy moments.Here's how you turn a winning advantage into an even position!

As white I instantly played 51.Qa3, the second best move according to Stockfish which gives white a +3 advantage. Richard played 51..Qxb5 when I was able to bash out the moves 52.c6+ Kg8 53.c7 Re8.

Now, white has a number of winning moves. I chose a move that isn't best, but still wins, 54.c8=Q [54.Ra8 and 54.Nd6 are much better] 54..Rxc8 55.Ne7+ Kg7 56.Nxc8.

So here Richard played 56..Qc4 forking my bishop and knight, and to my embarrassment in the 40 seconds left to me I had a complete brain fade. It was as if I'd succeeded in combinational terms, and it was time to relax, regroup and go about winning. But with only 40 seconds left, I didn't have time to relax.

In this position the obvious move is 57.Bf5 moving one attacked piece to protect the other. The less obvious, but stronger move is 57.Qc5! defending everything. With seconds left on my clock and brain death still an affliction, I gave up my knight by 57.Qb2?? going from +5 to = in one fell swoop.

The moral of the story has to be to mind one's time, and to play with a purpose from the start, and for every move. There is no time for relaxation, and every move is important. I doubt I'll be finishing near the top of this event if my time management remains so poor.

MCC Championship

I'm not sure what to say about this. I'm almost embarrassed by my good showing so far, when there have been times over the past months when I really haven't felt like playing. Yet I find myself in second place in the MCC Championship, a point behind IM James Morris who has eased his way ahead of the field. James has been the quality player in the club champs, and will deservedly win it. He has had to play all the top players, has not really looked like dropping a point, and should be on 8/8.

James sits on 7.5 and I'm on 6.5 all by myself in second. I've never scored more than 6.5 in the club championship so a draw or better will guarantee me a best ever score. Saying that, I've still got some strong players who I could potentially meet, including IM Mirko Rujevic, who currently sits in 3rd place, half a point behind me. Mirko is on 6/8 and can be joined by either Hoai Nam Nguyen or Thai Ly who have a game outstanding (it may already have been played).

Currently on 5.5, and still within striking distance of second place is Anthony Hain who is proving to be the best of sub 2000 players so far. His play may land him a last round pairing with James Morris on top board. Anthony is followed by a big group of players on 5 points, which is already a pretty respectable score. These are, FM Jack Puccini, Malcolm Pyke, Bill Kerr, Eamonn O' Molloy, Mehmedalija Dizdarevic, David Lacey, Tom Kalisch, Paul Kovacevic and 2 juniors who are having good tournaments, William Maligin and Tristan Krstevski. William Maligin should really be singled out as having one of the most spectacular tournaments. Last year, he played little due to illness, and has only come back to chess recently at the Australian Junior Championship in January. He has backed that up with an amazing performance here, well above his 1691 FIDE rating.

Some other names to point out in the Championship. Sarah Anton and Zhi Lin Guo have both reached 4.5, and may have to play each other in the last round, while Tanya Kolak and Jody Middleton's score of 3.5 is very good. Simon Dale has had a tough draw since finding himself in the top room early on in the tournament. I think he has revelled in his chance to play a strong field, and finds himself on 3 points.

My good run continued in round 8 with a win against Jack Puccini, but again, my opponent missed chances to leave himself in a very good position. I had come out of the opening quite well, but then sacrificed a pawn to keep Jack's king in the centre and didn't follow this up actively enough. The critical position was this:

As black I had let the position slip badly, and still felt I had good compensation even though my queenside is completely undeveloped. My queen is attacked and instead of a regroup by Qe7, I chose 16..Qc6? This was based on completely false calculation in a fairly complicated position. This is something I will have to work on. 17.Ned6 a6? I felt that I would win 2 pieces for a rook. I was wrong. 18.Nxe8 axb5

I had looked at 19.Qd8 in my calculations and thought that after 19..Kf7 black had counterplay. However, this was wrong and white has the excellent 20.f4! Bxf4 21.Nxg7

Now black doesn't win the second piece as after 21..Kxg7, white has the fork 22.Qd4+ regaining the bishop!

However, even worse, after playing 17..a6? I saw an even easier way for Jack to maintain his material advantage: 18.Nxe8 axb5 19.Qe3!

To be honest, I don't know why I didn't see this possibility in my calculations. It is a question that has been in my thoughts this past week, and means that I have to work hard at my calculating ability and especially on the possibilities that are available to my opponent.

But a lesson can be learnt by all here, and that is that we can only play our best each game and if it better than our opponent we will win, and if they play better we will lose. Although I have blundered into this position, Jack did not take full advantage of this and immediately blundered back again, leaving the game precariously balanced. In the remainder of the game, I came out stronger and won. I have certainly not played accurately throughout this tournament but have somehow managed to avoid defeat which is very pleasing.

One round is left, with much to play for including rating points, personal bests, rating prizes and major prizes. There is also a brilliancy prize which the MCC gives out for all the Monday night FIDE rated tournaments. I very much enjoyed the way this game was finished, but as a game it was far from brilliant.

A Year Off Chess

In December 2012 I was delisted from FIDE by my federation, the English Chess Federation (ECF), and could not play in FIDE rated events. I chose at that time to take a break from competitive chess, but after a while I missed the buzz of the tournament hall, and decided to bite the bullet, rejoin the ECF, get my FIDE rating reestablished and start to play again. I started playing tournament chess again at the start of February after a break of just over a year. Time to reflect on this!

First, I haven't been totally free of chess over the past year. I played a couple of 60 minute games, played some chess online, have been teaching chess, and generally thinking about it. But perhaps, that isn't the same as playing the full FIDE rated game which lasts around 4 hours. I have had breaks from the game before, but that was when I was much younger, once around my early 20's, when the break didn't really have any effect, and again in my early 30's. Each time I returned with a new lease of life, a new enthusiasm for the game and a rustiness that lasted a relatively short time. Now I'm in my late 40's, my calculation skills are probably not as strong as they had been when I was younger, and I am finding it takes longer to regain form. Funnily enough, my general strategic thinking is not worse than before, and perhaps is even better, but my pure calculation skills have certainly dropped off. This has shown itself in a number of ways. First, I am taking quite a long time to make decisions. Second, I'm struggling to focus for a full 4 hours and, especially towards the second half of games, I've noticed that I'm not processing variations clearly. Third, I'm missing things that I believe I would have seen before. These are usually simple things like checks and basic tactics, and this is causing me to blunder.

Ok, time to take a look at a few examples of my rusty play!

Here's a classic miscalculation. I had arrived at this position as black against Paul Kovacevic, planning to play 21..Ne8 driving white's rook back. I thought I could then play Rd8 and my knight will be able to get to d6 with or without trades of rooks. I thought I had equalised this position. Then I noticed that I might have something "better". I saw an interference tactic cutting off the 2 rooks, and spent an age looking at it, but saw nothing. 21..Bd5? was what I played which I soon regretted when my opponent simply won 2 pieces for the rook with 22.Rxf6. In my mind I had failed to see that the rook could take the knight. Interesting that I should be aware of a line closing feature, but not a line opening feature! Interestingly, 21..Nd5 is a better move as black will get rook and pawn for 2 pieces.

Actually, even worse was to come. In the above diagram I was playing black against Svetozar Stojic, and again I'd played well up to this point. As black I planned ..Re8 with a good game for black based on the pressure against white's weak e-pawn. However, I was so keen to play it I made a beginner's mistake, failing to examine my opponent's move. White played 21.Rd1 and I whipped out 21..Re8? without thinking. If I'd have listened to my own coaching mantra echoing the famous words of Cecil Purdy then I would have been alerted to white's threat: "Examine ALL checks and captures!" White played the check 22.Nxb6+ winning a pawn and he went on to win the game. Of course, I just needed to play 21..Kb7 and then ..Re8 will guarantee black a good game.

Then came last night. I had played energetically, though maybe not fully correctly, sacrificing a pawn for piece play while my opponent's king was stuck in the centre. The game swung backwards and forwards and then I started to spend a lot of time over moves which really shouldn't have taken much time at all. This wasting of time meant that I arrived at a rook ending with just an increment of 30 seconds left to consider my moves. Sometimes, extra time can be gathered by playing a few quick moves but this might come at the cost of accuracy and this can be costly in the endgame where accuracy is paramount.

This is not the only error in the game between myself and Simon Schmidt, nor perhaps even the worst, but it is indicative of my lack of form so I'd like to show it. As white, I had maybe 40 seconds to consider what to do. Simon had just retreated his rook to a8, and I tried to buy some time by playing quickly. I played 57.Kg7? which creates a path for my pawn, but ignores what my opponent plans. Simon played 57..Ra4! and the position is level, and we agreed a draw in a couple of moves which was a fair result overall. I wonder what would have happened if I'd had 5 minutes left? Would I have fallen into pure calculation mode and thought about pushing passed pawns? In the diagram above 57.h6 wins. After 57..Rg8+ 58.Kh5 Rb8 59.h7 white threatens to take on b5, and also just push the g-pawn up the board. To be honest, I'm not sure if I would have seen it and this is another issue with coming back to chess after a lay off. There is uncertainty in my mind about my ability to see things and this is the main reason my play is not at full strength. I'm double and triple checking moves, taking too much time over moves, dithering and my lack of confidence is then exacerbated by simple errors.

So how long will this go on until I regain my strength? Or will I ever be as strong as I was? Well, I am optimistic. One thing that has improved over the year I spent off chess is my ability to assess where I'm going wrong. Many adults without trainers/coaches find it difficult to identify their weaknesses and to attempt to correct these. I have seen a number of problems in my play, and I would like to try to remedy these. As a non player I was able to be less subjective about play as mostly I was looking at the games of others. Now as a player I need to be objective in the criticism of my play, and allocate the correct training to resolve the problems in my play. So over the next period, I need to...solve lots of tactical exercises, build up my opening strength, improve my endgame technique, analyse deeply lots of games and positions and....hold on, there's only so much time in life! Another year off would come in pretty handy now.

World's Worst Tipster

I'm so happy that I haven't lost my tipping form. As soon as I tipped Aronian to win the Sinquefield Cup and he plays a game with an unbelievable blunder for a player of his calibre. Even Aronian was amazed with how bad his move was.

This was the position last night between Nakamura and Aronian. Aronian as black has to move his queen, but chose the unfortunate 30..Qb5?? which allowed the simple refutation, 31.Qxb5 axb5 32.Nd7 where white will win an exchange as 32..Rfe8 allows the fork 33.Nf6+. The game continued for not much longer and my tip for the event was already off the pace. I suppose the good thing is that the first round of a tournament is probably the best time to lose, as you have the rest of the event to catch up. However, this is only a 6 round tournament, so Aronian will have to take some risks if he is to catch his rivals. Tonight Aronian plays Carlsen which will be an epic battle. The World number 1 already won a nice game against Kamsky in the first round, and will be looking to consolidate his position.

Meanwhile in Melbourne, the MCC started a new 9 round event last night. The MCC Open is a 9 round event played on consecutive Monday nights with a break for the long weekend at the start of November. The first round didn't see much in the way upsets. The only win against the seedings was Finlay Dale's win against Jack Puccini though when 2 young players meet it is difficult to really call things too much of an upset. I'm sure Jack will bounce back. Top seed in the 26 player field is IM Mirko Rujevic while Malcolm Pyke is second seed, just like in the last event. Mirko was almost unstoppable then, and I will tip him for this event too (sorry Mirko if my tipping curse continues). The MCC has also announced a Sunday quad event for October. I really like this idea. Groups of 4 players play a small round robin over a day, playing 3 games at a rate of about 60 minutes + 30 second increment. The games will be ACF rated and I could even be persuaded to play one of these myself. I will of course not be tipping myself as that would be tantamount to sporting suicide.

Finally, the MCC has re instituted the Endgame Group which I established a long time back. The idea was for players to come together to talk about endgames, to practice playing from endgame positions and generally to strengthen that part of their game. Older players might remember when we used to do this during adjournments, but since they no longer happen, studying endgames has fallen behind other parts of the game, such as tactics or openings, in the priorities of a modern player using modern time controls. The endgame group had a small but loyal following when I was running it, but it never really achieved what I aimed for it which was for all members to contribute material to be discussed. Perhaps I was unrealistic in thinking this could be the case, and really a group needs one or just a few to lead it. This is basically what happened. Well, though I ran the group for about 2 years, my work commitments got in the way, and I had to step aside and there was no one to take over my role and the Endgame Group fell away. Now FM Bill Jordan is running the group which started up again a few weeks ago. Bill is an excellent teacher of chess, and his knowledge of endgames is pretty good. There isn't a player in Melbourne who wouldn't gain something from these groups, and especially useful is the practical element as even if players do study endgames, there just isn't much opportunity to put these ideas into practice. MCC Endgame Group is running on Tuesday nights, and again, if I wasn't working, I'd be there. Hopefully, some of the endgames I post on this blog can make it to the endgame group to discuss.

Blunders at Doeberl

Easter in Australia is the time for the traditional Doeberl Cup tournament held in Canberra. I say traditional because this tournament has now reached its fiftieth edition and there was also a book released over the weekend chronicling the history of the tournament. Doeberl started as a long weekend tournament and in fact the one time I had played it, it was a 7 round tournament over 4 days. Now, under the direction of Charles Bishop and his O2C company, the tournament is a 9 round norm achieving monster. This year the field for the Premier included 8 Grandmasters and 13 International Masters, and you had to have a minimum 1900 FIDE rating to enter. There were 3 other events run alongside this over 4 days and 7 rounds. These were under 2000, under 1600 and under 1200 limited rating events, and all were well attended and hard fought.

I played in the Premier and was seeded 42/79. I had an ok tournament scoring my expected score, and winning against a strong player. However, I also lost to a lower rated player than me (although I doubt he's any weaker) and made a number of weak moves throughout my games. I think it is a pretty good therapy and learning experience to examine these howlers. It's important to admit your weaknesses in an attempt to eradicate them. So here was my tournament.

In the first round I was near the top of the second half of players and subsequently was paired with a huge rated opponent. Gergely Szabo was ranked fourth and finished equal first in the tournament. I was playing ok against him, probably a little worse, until I had a complete brain faze:

In this position as white I had to move my light squared bishop, but where? My first thought was back to e2, but then he has Rbc8 and his rooks are very threatening. So what about g4? Ok, that sounds good....but hold on, look at all checks and captures! What about Bxe4 and after he recaptures I have Rfe1 skewering both his bishops. Cool, I'll do that! 1.Bxe4?? Bxe4 2.Rfe1 f5 3.f3 Rbc8 and I can resign. The worse thing is that I'd looked at this and just thought I'll take his bishop, he takes my bishop and I take his other bishop. Oops!!

In the second round I played Ian Rout and won, though not convincingly and then I had my best game of the tournament against WGM Irine Sukandar. In the fourth round I played FM Chris Wallis who I'd recently lost to in Ballarat. I got another reasonable position until I decided on a bad plan.

This had been a fighting game up to this point. As black I'm worse, a pawn down, but by no means lost. However, I played the tempting 1..Bd4?? which loses to 2.Re8+ Kf7 3.Rf8+ Ke6 4.Re1+ (the move I hadn't counted on) 4..Kd6 5.Rd8+ resigns as I'm losing a piece.

In round 5 my opponent forfeited as he had to withdraw from the tournament due to illness, and in round 6 I scored a draw against IM Andrew Brown, though perhaps I threw away good winning chances. Then in rounds 7 and 8 I played horribly. This was the penultimate day and I lost both games. The first mistake I made was playing into variations that gave my opponent's an initiative. In round 7 I was facing FM Igor Bjelobrk who had sacrificed a pawn to reach the following position:

I am white and I have an extra pawn on d5. If this pawn goes, then I am clearly worse. A typical plan would be Nxf5 and then Rd1, or more subtle is just Rd1 straight away. Then I may be able to unwind with Ba2, b3/b4, Bb2 and Rac1. However, I chose 1.h3?? thinking that after 1..Nbxd5 I would have time for g4. At the last moment I saw that black can take on e3 and I'm completely busted. I carried on with 2.Nxd5 Nxd5 3.Bxd5 Qxd5 4.Nxf5 Qxf5 but didn't last much longer.

In the next round I faced the current Australian Junior Champion Alistair Cameron. I had a tough position before I just gave away a pawn for nothing.

This was a Noteboom gone wrong so I decided to try a tactical way of exchanging pawns. My thoughts were running something like this. If I can give up my a and b pawns for his c and d-pawns, the game must be level, or perhaps he will have a slight advantage. So how to do this? This implementation was where things went wrong! 1..b3?? 2.Nxb3 and it was here that I realised that my planned 2..Rb4 would fail to 3.Qxb4 axb4 4.Rxa8 with mate to follow.

I finished the tournament with a none too easy win against Ari Dale and ended on 4.5/9. This was ok for me, but nothing fantastic. However, it has inspired me and I will be playing more chess and working on my game. It was a great event to be a part of, and rubbing shoulders with such strong players is always an uplifting experience.