City of Melbourne Open Round 3

The 2015 City of Melbourne Open at the MCC has started in a strange way. After the first 3 rounds only one player has moved to a perfect score. This shows just how competitive the field is, and how open the tournament really is. The favourites for the tournament were IM Rujevic, and FM Puccini, but Mirko was held to a draw in the first round by Rad Chmiel, while I beat Jack last night. Third seed, Nedimovic, has disappointed and lost his last 2 games to sit on just half a point, courtesy of David Cannon and Damien van den Hoff. However, I'd be guessing that no one feels out of the running yet, especially with only one player on 3/3.

And that player is me. I ran my luck a little in the first 2 rounds, but played pretty well last night. There were only 3 of us sitting on 2/2. Besides Jack and myself, Malcolm Pyke had won his first 2 games, but lost last night to Hoai Nam Nguyen. I'm no expert, but it looked as if Malcolm had a difficult position out of the opening. Malcolm is spreading himself a bit by competing in the Victorian Championship as well as the City of Melbourne Open and I wish him well in that. Nguyen is joined on 2.5 by Rujevic, Simon Schmidt, Efrain Tionko, Justin Penrose and David Cannon. I'm struggling to anticipate my next opponent as there are players who have already floated, and there are colour preferences to consider. I'll just accept that I'll be playing one of these players, and I'll probably be white.

There were more upsets in this round with wins for Natalie Bartnik against Tom Kalisch and Bobby Yu against Gary Bekker, though Damien van den Hoff's victory was probably the upset of the round. There will now be no more late entries and the field is set at 45, a very reasonable number for this traditional second tournament of the year. Let's just hope the tournament stays as competitive as it has started, and that upsets continue to happen!

My game saw FM Jack Puccini follow a method of development considered good for white against the Antoshin variation of the Philidor. Yes, I know that I said I was going to stop playing the Philidor for a bit, but a combination of a busy lifestyle and laziness have meant that I had nothing else to play. Saying that, I have put some work into the Philidor, and wasn't surprised by Jack's choice.

I don't consider myself an opening's expert, but I'd been looking at exactly this position a few before the game. When Jack played 12.b3 here, I'm almost ashamed to admit that I knew it to be a novelty in the position. However, novelties only apply to databases, and I'd seen this position before. In fact the position only became new to me after a few more moves:

I'm not sure I'd have played 15..Nc6!? if I hadn't analysed the move before. It looks as if white can take on d6, but black gets good play and full compenstion starting with 16.Bxd6 Rad8. Jack plunged into a 34 minute think leaving me ahead on the clock for the first time in the tournament! The position remained tense until the following position.

The position is in the balance with both sides looking to gain a winning initiative in their respective attacks on opposite sides of the board. Moves for white worth considering might be 20.g5, or 20.Rhe1. However, Jack retreated with 20.Bc1? handing me the initiative, which I didn't relinquish. 20..Nb5 21.g5 but this is too slow.

21..c4! This counterattack was probably my best move in the tournament so far. Jack dropped his bishop back to f1, as taking on f6 is hopeless as black just recaptures on f6 with a winning position. The remainder of the game just saw my black pieces moving towards white's king until Jack resigned with mate imminent.

It was a well played game, but still not one for the brilliancy prize. At least I don't think so!

Philidor's Defence

I have to admit, I've had a pretty good run with the Philidor Opening since I started playing it late last year. I prepared the opening for the Australian Masters in December, scoring a loss to FM Bill Jordan, but a win against FM Greg Canfell. At Glen Eira Chess Club I've scored a draw against FM Domagoj Dragicevic while at the MCC club Championship I managed a win against FM Jack Puccini.So 2.5/4 against titled players as black in the past 6 months. I guess most players would be happy with that, and as I've always struggled with black, I have been very pleased.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and it is probably time for me to move on from the Philidor before people start preparing against me. I'll still play it every once in a while, but there are too many openings out there to be always playing the same thing.

It's a funny opening, the Philidor. It has this reputation of being solid but after my game with Jack Puccini I heard people saying they were surprised that such sharp positions could arise so early from the Philidor. The solid line has traditionally been the Hanham variation which is now more often than not being entered by the Pirc move order: 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.d4 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7.

White's obvious choice is 5.Bc4, though there are some other options. One of these is a Shirov speciality, 5.g4!? The game Shirov-Azmaiparashvili from the European Teams Championship 2003 was a volatile game that ended in a draw.

After 5.g4, the variation 5..Nxg4 6.Rg1 is undoubtedly the most popular line and white scores an impressive 59% in my database with 347 games. In the latest Informator, number 123, there is an amazing game played by Swedish GM Pontus Carlsson. The game shows a typical piece sacrifice by white to open the position and activate his pieces while black's king sits in the centre.

White has control of the g-file and has doubled on the d-file. With black's king in the centre, and lack of development, white is fully justified with the move 11.Bxb5! In this particular game, black was mated 10 moves later!

Funnily enough, when I downloaded TWIC this week, the first games I looked at were those under the ECO code (C41) for the Philidor. And whose name should I see playing a game, but none other than Pontus Carlsson. So my thought was, I wonder if he played that crazy 5.g4 move again? I wasn't disappointed. Have a look at this position:

Carlsson as white followed up his Bxb5 sacrifice in the last game, with another sacrifice here. 16.Nbd5!, another justified sacrifice against an uncastled king and an under developed position.

These games show that the Philidor is anything but a solid option. Of course there are solid lines, but in the hands of certain players, the Philidor can transform into an exciting opening and middlegame. And Pontus Carlsson is just one such exciting player, who has had an interesting life. His story is a great read.

Against the Odds

The World of chess has been talking of not much other than the venue of this year's World Championship match between Anand and Carlsen. FIDE announced yesterday that the match would go ahead in Chennai, India as had previously been said by President Illyumzhinov. Carlsen, his team and the Norwegian Chess Federation had all urged FIDE to open a bidding process so that all those interested in hosting the event may show their proposals with the best being chosen. However, FIDE awarded Chennai the match with no more said. Well, I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of this decision by FIDE; I'm not their biggest fan anyway. But I do have an interesting question about the match being held in Chennai. Will the venue be of more benefit to Anand as it's his home town, or will it be an added pressure for him playing in front of his home crowd for the first time (not counting his match in Delhi vs Shirov)? I guess the answer will depend on how the match starts and how open the players are to press releases and indeed how volatile the Indian press will be. Though if Indian media coverage of cricket is anything to go by, I think we are in for some great and not wholly impartial reporting :D

Home advantage is considered a major factor in many sports, with soccer coming immediately to mind. However, in chess this has not been established. There is no doubt that some players feel more at home in certain venues and this may affect their play. Some players don't play well when there is little natural lighting, and temperature can affect play (I am particularly bad in hot conditions). Company may also be a factor, with some players missing partners when away from home for a long spell, or even the fact that one may play better when travelling to a tournament with a good friend. I guess there are a whole multitude of factors that may adversely affect someone's play, and the moral of this is to know oneself and try to pick the optimum conditions knowing your likes and dislikes.

While I have enjoyed visiting chess clubs around the city of Melbourne (in fact I enjoy going to chess clubs all around the world as my wife Caroline can tell you when she was dragged to the Marshall Chess Club in Manhattan on a holiday there some years ago!) it is nice to have a fairly local venue that one can just nip round to once a week to play. In that regard, the Glen Eira Chess Club was created to fill a gap in this part of the city since the sad demise of Elwood Chess Club a few years ago. In our second week we were expecting the novelty value to have worn off a bit and for the turn out to drop off. However, while almost all who came the week before were back again, there were a few new faces to the club to check it out. This is what is great about a local club. If a core group can be established (and by that I mean maybe as little as a dozen players) then the club can begin building and having casual visitors is one way of keeping the club fresh and exciting. While it is good to have a local place to play, it is also important to get some variety of opponents so travelling to other clubs, and some tournaments would achieve this aim.

The visitors to the club, and the regulars had quite a fun evening as we ran a handicap tournament. Now these things used to be a regular part of chess clubs when I was growing up, but this form of chess has mostly disappeared, though time odds are often given. In our event an unbelievably complicated system was used where the lower rated player could choose time odds or material odds, and there were some great fun games, swindles and of course many blunders. However, no one minded as it was a fun event, and this is the thing that all clubs should be emphasising. We are playing a game, we are trying to spend a little of our time each week enjoying ourselves in a social atmosphere partaking in our favourite pastime. Of course we will try our hardest to do our best, but at the end of the day, for most of us, it is really a bit of fun.

As such, have a look at this magnificent odds hack by the great Philidor. I've been showing it to some of my younger classes to demonstrate, among other themes, the importance of building and maintaining a pawn centre. Philidor's opponent here is no push over. Atwood was considered a strong amateur (he was a mathematician) and in his book 'Chess History and Remembrances', Henry Bird said:

"Of the players who encountered Philidor, Sir Abraham Janssens, who died in 1775, seems to have been the best, Mr. George Atwood, a mathematician, one of Pitt's secretaries came next, he was of a class which we should call third or two grades of odds below Philidor, a high standard of excellence to which but few amateurs attain. One of most interesting features of Atwood as a chess player is that he recorded and preserved some of his games, an unusual practice at that time. These records have survived, among them the last games that Philidor played which were against Atwood at Parsloe's Club in London on 20 June 1795."

It seems unbelievable that anyone would be so good to be able to beat a relatively close competitor from such a material disadvantage. However, those were different times, and Philidor was an amazing player. By the way, Bird's book is now in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.