Coffee House Chess

I've just read another article praising Coffee House Chess by a respected chess author. On the Chess.com site, GM Daniel Naroditsky has written an article on the art of setting traps. His point is that correct play can and should, be laced with traps. As such, a good tactical sense is important for any chess player.

So here's a couple of tactical puzzles:

Black to play and win

White to play and win

White to play and mate in 3

All these positions come from TWIC this week, showing that the art of the Coffee House is by no means dead. Answers tomorrow :)

Good and Bad in Chess

I must be getting into the modern era of connected worlds, as I set up a Google alert for the term 'coffee house chess'. I've picked up some interesting emails over time but the latest is one worth sharing. Apparently, in Ohio, USA there is a Coffee House Chess League, and some great individuals doing some amazing work at grass roots level. Check out the article, it's uplifting. Of course, the success of chess in any area is largely down to the strengths of the local volunteer force. It takes dedicated individuals to run clubs, leagues, associations, and even tournaments. I've found out over the years that if you want something done, the best thing is to get up and try to do it yourself. Get a few interested, ask for a little help which will generally be given, and before you know it, a club, or league or tournament will be organised.

I guess because of this voluntary nature to much of chess officialdom (and because we're human!) most players like to see a good giant slaying game, where the higher rated player gets taken down a peg, or ten. In a few days time, the World Cup will be starting in Tromso Norway. The format is a 128 player knockout of mini matches over 2 games, with rapid/blitz tie breaks if needed. It is an exciting format, though just how well it works out a champion is up for debate which was used in the early 1990's in the famous Tilburg tournaments, causing some disdain at the time if I remember rightly. Funnily enough, that first Tilburg event in 1992 was won by the recent Dortmund Champion, Michael Adams, defeating last year's World Championship candidate Boris Gelfand in the final match. Gelfand has won a big knockout event as well, the World Cup in 2009. The number 1 seed for this event in current world number 2 Levon Aronian who has also won a previous version of this event, in 2005. Australian fans will be hoping for a miracle as Igor Bjelobrk faces number 4 seed Alexander Grischuk. And English fans will be hoping that the Gawain Jones won't be too tired after playing lots of summer chess, including the British Championships which finishes the day before the World Cup starts! Adams is also playing and will have had nearly a fortnight's break since his Dortmund win. I'm not going to be sticking my neck out with predictions, but the match of the first round that particularly interests me is Shirov-Yifan Hou. Shirov is a remarkable player, but can play fairly averagely at times, while the ex Women's World Champion is capable of almost anything on her day.

Meanwhile at the British Championship David Howell overcame Simon Williams to maintain his half point lead in the tournament from Mark Hebden. Hebden is also half point clear of the chasing pack which includes Gawain Jones, but the two top seeds are not drawn together in this round. Howell plays another Grand Master, Gormally, while Jones plays Ameet Ghasi. In between these 2, Hebden has to play 'Mr Rock Solid' Bogdan Lalic. There are only 3 rounds left and 1.5 points between first a fifteenth. It will be a nail biting finish!

Looking at what I've written so far, there's a lot that's good in the chess world. But let's make no mistake that there's some bad as well. I'm not a big fan of FIDE, but I was encouraged to see they are trying to develop an online playing server that has built in strict anti cheating detection software. After the cheating cases in Bulgaria, Dortmund and Russia, anti cheating measures are high up in the priorities of organisers int he chess world. But will the new FIDE site really be able to provide a better online service than the established commercial sites such as ICC, Playchess and Chess.com? Well we won't know for a while, as the site is currently running as a beta test version, no doubt working out whether FIDE will be able to deliver on their promises. So I registered, and joined the site, and have 30 days free membership to check it out. I downloaded the client software and apparently, all will be up and running from October and then full memberships will be offered. So I played a game, the interface was ok but generally speaking it seems no better than playchess, ICC or chess.com. We will have to wait for the full product to see what features it will have that are new (if any) and the full playability of the site, including the number of regular members.

Finally, I'd like to say thank you to Michael Yip for mentioning my blog on a Canadian chess forum, and welcome to any new Canadian readers. And we've reached the 40 milestone! That's how many days before I'm out of here and on the holiday roadtrip of a lifetime.

Coffee Worries

Melbourne has the most amazing coffee culture, with loads of cafes, roasters, and critics around the city. The European style feel of Melbourne, and the waves of European immigration throughout the twentieth century, led to Melbourne growing its coffee culture and making it one of the coffee capitals of the world. The city is filled with European trained baristas. In fact, the 2013 World Coffee Barista Championship was held in Melbourne. But shock, horror!!! The title went to an American, and Pete Licata from Kansas is the 2013 World Champion.

A Melburnian at least came second, Matt Perger of St Ali's going one better than his third place in 2011!

Goodfoods great shot of Matt Perger, one of Australia's best barista.

While Australia has usually been represented well in these World Championships, in fact only 1 Aussie has won the event compared to 2 Americans and 4 Danes, since the competition began in 2000. So with that in mind, and with only 43 days left before going to the USA on my roadtrip of a lifetime, my trepidation of leaving good coffee behind is slowly being eroded. I know that in some of the places I'll be going, coffee will not be barista style, but I actually quite like the strong filter coffee that comes in most American deli's and diners. I'm certainly going with an open mind when it comes to coffee, and food for that matter!

But what about Denmark? This small country (which I've never visited, though I've always wanted to) boasts 4 World Champion barista. They all come from the capital, Copenhagen, which must surely be one of the best places to drink coffee and watch the World go by. Currently, Australian GM David Smerdon is fighting for a high finish in the Politiken Cup which is being held in the Danish city of Helsingor. Those culture buffs among you might be interested to know that Helsingor, in its English spelling Elsinore, is the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet. Well, David has been playing pretty well, or at least he has been amassing a decent amount of points in his combative style. Currently, David is on 7/9 and is a pawn down against Robin van Kampen of the Netherlands. Both players sit in a group one point behind the leaders, GM's Parimarjan Negi and Sabino Brunello (who beat Smerdon in the last round). David has been writing a bit about his Danish tour on his blog and he has briefly analysed a fantastic game against chess legend Jan Timman.

Currently David is a pawn down in a double rook ending, which looks to my untrained eye as a difficult hold for him. But I'm hoping he'll draw the game. David is an excellent player, but certainly somewhat of a risk taker, which makes him a favourite here at Coffeehouse Chess.

It's a Good Friday for Chess

Well, it all happened yesterday and no mistake. The London Candidates which has already surpassed my expectations for excitement brought up some new drama. Having gone to bed before the action started, I awoke this morning to a draw for Carlsen, a loss for Aronian and a win for Kramnik. These 3 players are really bringing this event alive and one of them must surely be the winner. Carlsen retains his half point lead, but now it is ex-World Champion Kramnik in second. He has leapfrogged over Aronian who is a further half point back with just 3 rounds to go. As I said in the last post, Carlsen holds his destiny in his own hands, especially as he has white in 2 of his 3 remaining games. If Carlsen can avoid losing, then it is hard to see anyone overtaking him. And a lot will depend on the momentous clash between Aronian and Kramnik later today. It will definitely be a battle of nerves in the final 3 rounds, and alas for my tipping, it looks as if Aronian's nervous energy is shot away. After over pressing against Boris Gelfand a couple of days ago, he self destructed against Peter Svidler by throwing his g and b-pawn's 2 squares down the board on consecutive moves creating serious weaknesses which were easily exploited by Svidler.

But the game that interested me most was the Grischuk-Carlsen clash. This is mainly because Grischuk chose a line of the Grunfeld that I had a look at a while back, the Zaitsev variation. It's a funny system that gets right into black's face, which, to be honest, is what black attempts to do to white when playing the Grunfeld.

The move 5.h4 (or 4.h4 without the moves 4.Nf3 Bg7) is the very aggressive idea of Alexander Zaitsev, and it appeals to the likes of me (coffeehouse hacker) because of the simplistic concept behind the move. Essentially, white is getting ready to directly attack black's king side. Typical themes involve sacrificing the c-pawn, shuffling the king to f1 or g1 for safety, trying to dominate the dark squares on the king side but playing across the entire board. It is a nightmarishly difficult system to play, but fun nevertheless. To add to the appeal, the present favourite of top GM's amongst coffeehouse hackers such as myself, Alexander Morozevich, played this system twice in Beijing towards the end of last year against Anish Giri (the blitz game is especially fun!).




On the domestic front, Doeberl started with a bang. Yesterday, the first round went pretty much according to plan, but the second round was a carnage as the seeds fell one after another: 2680ish Loek van Wely came a cropper to 2400ish Stephen Solomon; Luke Li Zuhao defeated GM Adam Horvath, Justin Tan defeated GM Attila Czebe, and IM Moulton Ly was beaten by FM Domagoj Dragicevic. Not only that, but GM Varga, GM Laxman, IM Palit Somak and IM Brown were held to draws by Tingtie Lei, FM Dusan Stojic, Anton Smirnov and John Nemeth respectively.

There were further upsets on the lower boards as well. Today the Premier sees another 2 rounds after which we should have some idea of the lie of the land. And also the 'Major' (under 2000) and 'Minor" (under 1600) tournaments start giving an even more local flavour to the Easter chess festival.

A Coffee House Player

According to a definition I found in Wikipedia Coffeehouse chess is:

"..a move, player, or style of play characterized by risky, positionally dubious play that sets traps for the opponent. The name comes from the notion that one would expect to see such play in skittles games played in a coffeehouse or similar setting, particularly in games played for stakes and/or blitz chess.."

Now having played a number of players who could be described in these terms, I know that typical Coffeehouse Chess players can be pretty strong, especially tactically. But there have been some pretty strong players over the years who have been called Coffeehouse players in a derogatory sense, with Judit Polgar springing immediately to mind. Judit is an excellent tactical player, who has played for many traps during her games. But that doesn't mean she doesn't understand how to play positionally. I don't think anyone who makes it to the top 10 in the World should be described as weak positionally.

The latest victims of the label Coffeehouse player is the current leader of the London Candidates tournament, World Number 3, Levon Aronian and the man he just beat, Vassily Ivanchuk. When commenting on Ivanchuk's play, Aronian said:

"I tend to do things like this and friends tell me I'm a coffee house player"

Well, that is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and anyone who can trap a top 20 player tactically should be pretty happy with themselves. That is what Aronian did to last year's defeated World Champion Boris Gelfand in round 2.

Gelfand as black had just played 24..Bd8 and Aronian's thinking is interesting. "After Bd8 I was thinking which move should I play to provoke Rc8" said Aronian after the game. Aronian played 25.b4 in the hope of his opponent playing 25..Rc8 which he duly did. Aronian had set a trap which Gelfand walked into. 26.Bh6+! which wins a pawn. Gelfand played 26..Kg8 (26..Kxh6 27.Rxc8 Bxc8 28.Nxf7+ followed by 29.Nxd8 is the point) 27.Rxc8 Bxc8 28.Nc6 winning material as the knight threatens d8, a7 and another fork on e7.

Going into the first rest day, Aronian is clear leader on 2.5/3. He is followed closely by Carlsen and Svidler on 2/3, Kramnik, Radjabov, Grischuk 1.5/3 and Ivanchuk, Gelfand .5/3. There is a long way to go, but I'm hoping the Coffeehouse player can stay ahead of course. Here are his 2 wins in the tournament so far, where he shows how to be a coffeehouse player, and how to beat a coffeehouse player.