Sunday Chess Thoughts

Now I love chess, but there are some pretty cranky things that happen around the chess world, and some odd personalities! One person who has no problem speaking his mind is ex World Championship challenger Viktor Korchnoi. Korchnoi led a sometimes hard, but sometimes colourful life. He had been one of the very best in the World from the early 1960's when he first won the Soviet Championship and competed in Candidates tournaments, through till the late 1980's, and even now at 80 years of age, can play to a standard that most of us would only dream of playing to. Pretty much my first recollections of the big wide world of chess were reports about the 1981 World Championship match and the grief between Karpov and Korchnoi. Korchnoi, with his battling style has always held a fascination for me, as he no doubt has for many players. Now in an interview on the Russian chess site chesspro, Korchnoi talks about Magnus Carlsen's use of hypnosis to achieve his results. There is also a report in English on whychess (an excellent site for live coverage of games, by the way) if you don't like Google translate!

Does Magnus Carlsen wear these glasses at chess tournaments? (kaboodle)

I just heard that the 2020 Olympic Games will be held in Tokyo. From a purely personal, selfish point of view I'm very happy as it means that the events will be shown in my daytime. It's also great that Japan should get to host such an amazing event after the horrific disaster of the Tsunami in 2011. Venue is, of course, an all important issue in allocating events. So I was fairly disturbed when I read that the World Junior Chess Championships, which are to held in Turkey starting next week, were to be played in Hatay which is 20 km from the Syrian border. The Turkish organisers seemed to think that the town was safe enough, even though there have been at least 2 car bombings in the area in the past year killing over 50 people! I'm pretty sure that if I had kids, I would not be sending them to a chess competition on the edge of a war zone! The organisers have relented and moved the event to a safer part of Turkey, albeit too late for many competitors who had decided not to play. There is an excellent report on chessvibes. I'm going back through my mind to think of any dangerous places I've played but I've been very lucky. I think the most dangerous was a weekender in Hartlepool which didn't feel too friendly on a Saturday night but was ok during the day when the locals had to shelter from the sun!

Here's a position from one of my classes this last week. I'm constantly amazed by moves that some of the kids find. Obviously there are lots of blunders and positional mistakes, but every now and then a gem crops up.

It's white to play, there are plenty of good looking moves, but which would you choose? My initial choice was good enough to win, but nowhere near s good as my student's move! The funny thing is that even he didn't realise just how good his move was! I'll tell you what he played tomorrow.

Chess on a Thursday

Time to catch up on what I've been looking at recently. I'm still lapping up anything to do with the upcoming Candidates tournament and it looks like Chessbase is running some regular columns profiling the players in the build up to the start of the event next week. By the way, is Chessbase's new look better than the old one? That's not a rhetorical question, I am personally not sure which one I prefer and wonder how others feel.

The first moment of Candidate excitement came when the pairings for the tournament were announced. The first I saw of it was on twitter from the Chessvibes website. The more I think about this tournament, the more trouble I'm having picking a winner and much will do with the form of the players. Of course, it would be easy to just say Carlsen is in a class of his own, but I'm not so sure. So rather than claiming that I'm hoping one player or another wins, I'll just say, may the best man win and I hope the tournament lives up to the billing of the highest rated tournament in history. Somehow last time's candidates finalists, Gelfand and Grischuk are complete outsiders which seems pretty unfair to me. Dennis Monokroussos agrees and points to an interview with Alexander Grischuk.

In the meantime I've been watching some games from the Women's World Teams Championship. There are some high profile names missing from the event, but it's still pretty strong with Russia and China the favourites to take gold. In fact, it is difficult to split these 2 teams who have won all their games so far except the match between the two which ended in a draw. I was watching a fascinating game a couple of nights back which unfortunately ended with a horrible blunder. The round 2 game Dzaganidze-Ju Wenjun started out life as a Staunton Gambit in the Dutch, a line that was played a long time ago by Jacques Mieses (he even managed to win a game against Rubinstein with black). White was doing good until the following position was reached:

Dzaganidze, rated 2554 played the unbelievably shocking 39.Kxe5 losing an exchange to the simple to spot 39..Bf6+. White played on for a few moves before resigning. There is hope for us all!




I've also checked out some other interesting chess sites this week. Trowbridge Chess Club in the West of England were voted the English small club of the year lat year. Their blog is an excellent combination of local chess news and regional reporting which is what all clubs should be striving for. I also went to the USCF for the first time, and was mildly impressed. The blog section has some interesting articles and I'm kind of surprised that it doesn't show up higher on google searches for chess blogs. Jennifer Shahade is the editor of online blog, but there are numerous contributors. Actually, I think this is a really good idea. It gives a website more diversity and differing opinions. In fact, if anyone wants to regularly write for this blog, then feel free to contact me on carl.coffehousechess@gmail.com. I'm happy for anyone who wants to regularly write about chess or coffee or preferably both!

Olympiad heating up

It's just my luck that on such a dramatic day at the Olympiad as yesterday, I should feel ill and not be able to follow any of the action. Saying that, with the time difference here in Australia, I'd have been in bed before all the main action really would have happened. While it's frustrating to have to go to bed half way through a game that you've become engrossed in, I suppose if I was still living in England, then I'd be working while the games were happening.

Australia at the Olympiad:

The Australian men's team have done us proud. Their starting position was 61, but they are currently in 47th place having had a string of good results. In round 8 they beat Ireland with nice wins from Solomon and Illingworth, while they drew with the team from Tajikistan in round 9, though this could have been an even better result had David Smerdon not lost on time in a good position. David's Facebook post says it all:

"Losing on time on move forty when your 2600+ opponent is about to resign...

Wine. Lots of wine." - D. Smerdon

The men should be pretty happy with the way things have gone though. Max Illingworth has been a star on board 4, while the rest of the team (except Alex Wohl who has been having a forgettable tournament and sounds as if he is feeling guilty about it to the team) have been playing respectably well. 

In my opinion, the women have had a tough time of it. They have had some tough pairings for their position, and have done well to stay around the 50th position in which they started. Tonight is another example where the women have a really tough draw against Argentina who are the second highest seeded team in that score group, while Australia are also in the top half of that score group according to seeding. Likewise they got a very tough draw against number 10 seeds Romania earlier in the tournament. Saying that, the women are doing ok, and have all had their moments.

The under 16's will be a little disappointed, though they shouldn't be. Our top team finished in 8th place from a starting rank of 5th. However, in the last round Australia lost to India by 2.5-1.5, while if they would have won 3-1 they would have gained the bronze medals, which shows how close the event was. Australia fielded 3 teams, the other 2 finishing 25th and 30th. It will have been great experience for these kids, and especially working with a Grandmaster coach like David Arutinian.

This amazing video from Chessvibes captures the drama at the end of the big match USA-Russia.

Of course, the main news of the Olympiad was Russia's loss to the American team. With the Russian's seemingly coasting they came up against a team that can be unpredictable. Obviously the USA are strong but they can sometimes disappoint and they can sometimes amaze. Yesterday they amazed, and all the talk on the social networks is of Nakamura's underpromotion. I've felt so ill today that I haven't actually checked it out yet! So USA pull level with Russia, and they are both joined by China and Armenia. The match up of USA-China is an intriguing one where I expect little compromise. These teams play to win, and if they lose it's usually because they push too hard! Meanwhile Russia drop down to play Argentina while Armenia face a resurgent Netherlands. Since Anish Giri arrived the Dutch have turned their Olympiad around and are on the verge on a great result. Giri-Aronian on board 1 is a mouth watering encounter!

In the women's tournament, China hold a 1 point lead from Russia, with a chasing pack a further point down. Having played many of their closest rivals already China face 22 seeds Kazakhstan, while the Russians have a much harder task against Armenia.