MCC Championship David and Goliath

The chess community in Victoria have been very fortunate to see some great events. There was the 50th edition of the Ballarat weekend tournament over the long March weekend. This great event had an extra special field headed by GM Nigel Short, and with most of the elite of Australian chess competing. Nigel gave lectures and simuls in both Ballarat and at the MCC

In the wake of these activities, and just prior to the Easter Doeberl Cup, we had a round of the Melbourne Chess Club Championship. The tournament had so far been dominated by the 2 IM's, James Morris and Guy West, with the unlikely performance of young Vishal Bhat. These 3 players stood on 5/6 and something had to give. In the David and Goliath clash, young Vishal produced another amazing giant killing feat by winning against Guy West. Vishal thus stays at the top of the table with James Morris, who also won against Eamonn O'Molloy. Both of them are on 6/7. I find myself in outright third after a win against FM Jack Puccini leaving me half a point back on 5.5/7. I think that Vishal will have to play against me in the next round, while James has played most of the players around him.

Guy remains on 5/6 and is joined by Tom Narenthran, but James has played both of these so he will have to drop to the next score group where a very select group are sitting. IM's Ari Dale and Mirko Rujevic, FM Jack Puccini, ex-Champion Malcolm Pyke, Thai Ly, Eamonn O'Molloy and James Watson, while we await the result of Hain-Dizdarevic to see if either of these players can join the group.

The upset of the round, was undoubtedly the win by Kevin Brown against another ex-Champion, Bob Krstic (taking aside Vishal's win over Guy). There are also to be 4 rating prize groups, but these rating groups have yet to be identified and this was to be based on 60 players playing. But with only 45 players, it may be there will only be 3 rating groups, I'm not sure what the MCC committee have decided about the prizes. I'd be guessing that some division of U-2000, U-1800 and U-1600 would be appropriate.

My game was somewhat of a revelation, a reminder that I used to be considered an attacking player. A lot of the games I show here in this blog involve endings, and these tend to be the positions that I enjoy the most. But against Jack Puccini, I was able to use some preparation that I'd done for the Australian Championship in January. I knew the positions out of the opening roughly, and to be honest, the game played itself, though it was quite a nice finish. I've submitted it for the brilliancy prize, which is a first for me!

This position came from a Sicilian Scheveningen, and I don't think I'd have hoped for a more promising position for white in an open Sicilian after 18 moves. White's bishops are dominant, the f-file is an active line of attack for white, while black's forces are split by the d-pawns. Black's king looks very shaky here. Jack played g6 to blunt my light squared bishop, but that allowed me to triple on the f-file without any resistance.

A fabulous white position with great piece coordination. It is difficult to believe that this position isn't good for white. The tripling on the f-file induced Jack to defend with 20..f6, but that created more weaknesses on e6 and g6, and I shifted my pieces around with 21.Qh3 Kg7 22.Rh4 [Doubling on the h-file] 22..Rh8 [Defending h8] 23.Qe3

White's last queen move attacks black's dark squared bishop, and the h6 square. There isn't a good defence, though perhaps 23..Ne5 might offer the most resistance. Jack chose the natural 23..Rae8 developing his rook while protecting his bishop.

After a bit of thought I was able to finish the game with a sacrifice. 24.Bxg6.

I guess there were different ways to win, but it is always nice to find a sacrificial attack. Here, black can take with pawn or king, but both lead to mate. Jack played 24..hxg6 where there followed 25.Rxh8 Kxh8 26.Qh6+ Kg8 27.Qxg6+ Kf8

After I played 28.Be3 Jack resigned as there is no defence to the threat of Bh6.

So this is the game I have submitted for the brilliancy prize of the MCC Championship 2016, and it sets me up with a top of the table clash in the next round. There is no play this week due to Easter, and I wish the very best to all MCC players at the Doeberl Cup in Canberra, including my opponent in this game, Jack Puccini.

MCC Championship Round 2

The best thing about the start of round 2 of the 2016 Melbourne Chess Club Championship last night, was the participation of IM Guy West. As well as being a former Australian Champion, Guy has won the Melbourne Chess Club Championship on multiple occasions. I'm not going to try to work out how many, but 11 or 12 is about the number of times he has won the title. So it was fitting to have him playing in this historic Championship in the 150th year of the club.

Playing on board 3, Guy had a bit of a scary game against Anthony Hain who sacrificed a piece for an attack. Guy defended accurately and won to go to 2/2. The player from the top seeds who didn't make it to 2/2 was second seed IM Ari Dale who was held to a draw by another talented junior, Bobby Yu. The 2 other IM's, James Morris and Mirko Rujevic joined Guy West on 2/2, along with 5 other players. Of course, with this being a 9 round tournament, a lot can happen and a slip up early on can be made up for later.

The second round saw some great play, with a wild King's Gambit of Fratzeskos-Ly probably being my choice of game of the night. James Watson proved yet again that his 1777 (1663 ACF) rating is grossly inaccurate with a draw against Marcus Raine. There were upset wins for Jodie Middleton, Joshua Culbert and Alex Jones while Adam Lovegrove's draw with Axel Ahmer was a great result.

My game was a long hard slog, but the end of it was very pleasing for me. In fact, I'm even tempted to enter it for the brilliancy prize, as it is probably the best ending I've played. By the way, congratulations to Justin Penrose for winning the MCC brilliancy prize of the year for 2015 which was announced before the start of the second round. I'd never had to play my opponent, Anandaram Jothibabu before, but he played a tough game in a sporting manner. The position of interest for me was in this endgame:

Playing white, I had won a pawn but the position has opposite bishops and there is no easy way to progress. So I went for the breakthrough 46.d4. Taking advantage of the offside position of black's king and knight, I thought to create a passed pawn. At this point I didn't have a victory in sight, but was playing more intuitively. I felt the risk was worth it, and that the worst that could happen was the game could end a draw. 46..cxd4 forced, more or less 47.Kd3 Ng2

Now comes the second breakthrough 48.c5. As well as creating a passed pawn, this move lets my king through on the light squares. 48..dxc5 I was a little concerned about 48..Ne3, but apparently white is doing well after 49.Bf3 when white's d-pawn will become a major force. 48..d6

Anandaram now came up with the amazing 49..c4! This is an absolutely stunning defence which takes c4 away from my king, and gives black enormous counterplay based on his own passed pawns. The position becomes very random! 49.bxc4 Nf4 If Anandaram would have pushed his b-pawn straight away, I honestly don't know how the game would have finished. Both sides have 2 passed pawns and neither king can do much to help. 50. Kd2 Ne6?

Unfortunately, this move loses, and even in the couple of minutes I had left on my clock I was able to calculate, though I'll admit not to the very end! 51.Bxe6 fxe6 52.d7 Bc7 53.Nc5

Black will now lose his bishop for the white d-pawn. The question is whether he can get his pawns rolling towards the other end to cause counterplay. 53..e5 That will be 3 black passed pawns that white will have to deal with 54.Ne6 Ba5 55.d8=Q Bxd8 56.Nxd8

At this point, after a short think, I could finally see clearly a way to win which is rather fortunate seeing black might be a tempo or 2 away from winning himself here. 56..e4 57.Nc6 Kxg5 58.Nxd4 Kf4 59.Ke2 The plan was to block the e-pawn with the king, put the knight on b3 to block black's b-pawn, while supporting white's pawn which will sit on c5. Black can do nothing to stop this. 59..e3 60.Nb3 Ke4 61.c5

Black is clearly lost now, he must abandon his e-pawn to prevent white's pawn from promoting and then can merely sit and wait for white's forces to take his other pawn and then aid to promote the final white c-pawn.

Brilliant? Maybe not, but it was creative, intuitive, and technically sound, and a joy to play as my opponent found some remarkable defensive ideas. Here's the endgame in a viewer with some notes. I haven't fully analysed it yet, as I haven't had time and would value any feedback of ideas for either side.

MCC Championship 2016

After the Melbourne Chess Club hosted the Australian Championships in January, it was expected that the MCC Championship, in its 150th year, would see a strong and big field. The MCC committee were hoping to attract as many past champions as possible, and had generated some appearance fees for those players.So it was with great anticipation that the tournament room was set up. Should we expect 50 players? Or 60 players? Maybe there might even be more?

In the end the field turned out to be a somewhat normal number, and the strength is not particularly stronger than in years gone by. Top of the field is IM James Morris, last year's winner. We had also thought that GM Darryl Johansen and IM Guy West, both multiple winners of the Championship would be playing. However, Darryl let us know of his inability to participate and Guy said he couldn't make the first round, and wasn't 100% sure whether he was playing. So second seed for the event was IM Ari Dale with IM Mirko Rujevic third. All told, the event is pretty strong for a club event, but there was still some disappointment that these ex champions weren't playing.

The size of the field finally settled in the mid 40's, again a little disappointing. I think that 50+ was expected seeing that last year, the field was in the high 40's. Saying that, there is still time for people to enter, and it may be that some players couldn't enter the first round and didn't get in touch. The club is accepting entries through till round 3, so the figure may very well rise towards 50.

As is often the case in the first round of a swiss, the first round saw a big rating gap with most pairings having a 300+ difference between the players. That didn't stop upset results from happening though. The biggest scalp of the night was claimed by Anthony Harris who beat ex champion Malcolm Pyke. The other wins against the ratings were for James Watson and Robert Frantzeskos, though James proved at the Australian Reserves that he is probably under rated, and Robert is coming back to chess and unrated is misleading.

There has already been a submission for the brilliancy prize from none other than FM Jack Puccini. As nice as Jack's play was, I'm sure his dynamic style will bring even more brilliant efforts from him. Here's his win against Jim Papadinis, the first brilliancy prize submission.

Steinitz

When I was in England, I met up with a chess friend of mine, James Pratt. James, for his sins, is currently editor of the British Chess Magazine and mine of chess information. He showed me around his extensive chess book collection, and we talked briefly about the typical chess subject of who your favourite is. I remember James mentioning Morphy, and possibly Alekhine of the past masters, while I said Steinitz and Rubinstein. As soon as said Steinitz, James got a book for me to take home, "Steinitz move by move" by IM Craig Pritchett.

IM Craig Pritchett's "Steinitz Move By Move, Everyman Chess

I didn't really take much of a look at the book until later when I noticed a couple if things that annoyed me. First there is an index of Steinitz' opponents in the complete games, but there is no mention of any of the part games mentioned in the text. Now this wouldn't normally be too much bother, except that arguably Steinitz most famous game, versus von Bardeleben from Hastings 1895, isn't one of the complete games. To be honest I couldn't believe this, but I found the game as a note to a later Steinitz-Schlechter encounter from 1898. Pritchett says about Steinitz-von Bardeleben:

"The moves...often complete with fulsome annotations, can be sourced in innumerable books and websites and...needn't be repeated here."

I'm sorry, but that is just absolute tosh! If you are going to write a book, essentially as a tool for club level players, about the "extraordinary life and games of one of the greatest players in history" then it seems a bit of a cop out to mention his most famous game, en passant.

I suppose I should really be happy that the game gets a mention at all. The game which probably brought Steinitz to the world's attention was his brilliancy prize winning effort against Mongredien from London 1862. This one I can;t even find in the notes of any other games. This is the first game mentioned by Kasparov in the section on Steinitz from "My Great Predecessors: Part 1". Apparently, none other than Adolf Anderssen called it "the most bold and brilliant game" while Chigorn, in 1890 stated that "Games that were deemed brilliant in recent international tournaments were no match for this one."

So why leave out a such a seminal example from a collection of a player's games? To be honest, a lot of what I've looked in the book I've liked, though "move by move" isn't quite accurate, and should probably be amended to "move by move, when something interesting comes up". It's a shame because what on the whole is a pretty good effort by Pritchett to show Steinitz' chess development through his career, and to educate his readers through challenging questions about the games at various times and good tips and ideas, is spoilt for Steinitz fans because of the omissions.

So here is the moment when a young Austrian player became a name on the world stage. Steinitz as white played 16.Rxh7!? winning brilliantly after Mongredien didn't find the best defence of 18..Qe8! (Kasparov still proves that even the best defence wouldn't have held out for Mongredian, though Steinitz would have had to find some difficult moves!).

Here's the game, and you can judge for yourself whether it deserves to be in a section of games from his early years, or a book about Steinitz' life and games.