Tactic and Endgame

I posted this position yesterday:

It is white to play and win and there are a number of moves available that will do the job. I was looking at the discovered check 1.Be6+ which wins black's queen.

The boy who was playing this game played the beautiful move 1.Ba6! pinning black's bishop and forcing black to play 1..Qc3 after which he was happy to win the queen with 2.Rxc3, but even happier when I told him this was checkmate!

However, may favourite move in this position is the quiet discovered check 1.Bd3+! forcing black to interpose with his bishop, 1..Bc6. Now that black's light squared bishop is pinned, white has mate by 2.Ba6, a very nice diagonal crossfire in front of black's king.

In a recent game I played online I reached the following position:

As I'm a fan of elementary endgames, I was very happy to reach this position with black. I knew the position was a draw, but black can still play on risk free, which is what I was doing. I had a big surprise however, when my opponent resigned this position! So, imagine you are white and it is your move. What plan would you use to try to hold this position? I'll tell you my thoughts in a couple of days!

Chess to Follow

This week 3 major events start. In St Louis, USA Carlsen, Aronian, Nakamura and Kamsky play a double round robin tournament. This will be Carlsen's last event before the World Championship match so it is being closely followed by the chess world. The first games start today with a mini match between USA and RoW, Carlsen-Kamsky and Nakamura-Aronian. I will be catching up with the news the day after it happens, as the time zones are not good for live coverage in Australia. The games of the Sinquefield Cup start about 5am Melbourne time, so I might get to see the finish of the games.

 Meanwhile in Turkey, the World Junior Championship starts later this week. This will be weaker than it possibly should be due to the original venue being too close to war torn Syria's border. The late change of venue by Turkish organisers (last week) didn't allow for players who had decided not to play to change their minds, so there are some notable absentees. Saying that, it is still a pretty good field with Wesley So of the Philippines the top seed. Unfortunately for me, there are no Australian or English competitors to follow. However, the tournament games start on Friday and run through till Thursday 26th in a 13 round swiss format.

The third event starting this week should be the most prestigious. The Women's World Championship starts on Tuesday. The match between Anna Ushenina and Yifan Hou is being held in China and has attracted little media attention in its build up. The fact that China's Yifan Hou is an overwhelming favourite to take the match. and because the men's elite tournament is happening simultaneously in the USA, I guess this event will rate lowly in order of importance. To be honest, I'm a bit mystified as to what is actually happening with the women's World Championship. There was a knock out World Championship held last year, and a Grand Prix series. Reigning World Champion, Yifan Hou, won the Grand Prix qualifying her for the World Championship match. Yet Anna Ushenina won the World Championship tournament making her the World Champion. It therefore seems a bit odd that we need a World Championship tournament one year, and a World Championship match in the next year. Or am I missing something? I can't seem to find a website for this event, so I'll be following it on TWIC for now.

I quite enjoyed playing tipster for the recently finished World Cup so I'm warming to the task and will set out my choices for these events. By the way, I am currently on 20% correct, so please don't listen to anything I say!

St Louis: Aronian to win
World Junior: So for the boys, and Goryachkina for the Girls
Women's World Championship: Yifan Hou to regain her title

Countdown

There used to be a TV show in the UK called Countdown with cult personalities, Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman. This program spawned a series in Australia which is called Letters and Numbers. Yet the English version itself was based on a French program called Des Chiffres et des Lettres. This was the interesting fact of the week that I learned from my friend Frank, who is a letters and numbers fan, solving Sudoku in his spare time. I've just created my own countdown which should be visible at the top right of this blog. It will have random events that are being counted down to in my life, the first of which is, of course, my holiday to America with Caroline. After that I'm not sure, but I guess the next major thing for me will be World Chess Championship in November (I'm at the age where I'm trying to forget my birthdays, and I purposely chose to get married the week after my birthday so I wouldn't forget it!).

A holiday is an action packed event, or at least it is the way Caroline and I do it. However, I still will be taking some holiday reading with me. I was browsing through a bookshop today and saw a book called 'The Rook' which I couldn't resist and I also bought Stefan Zweig's 'Chess'. However, this holiday will be a 'chess free zone' so I'm taking Nicola Barker's 'The Yips' which made the 2012 Booker long list. Probably my favourite novel which I've read over the past 12 months was 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' which also made the 2012 long list, but wasn't shortlisted. Anyway, like Harold Fry, Barker's novel looks quirky in a typical English sense and I look forward to reading it.

My holiday reading (image from Goodreads)

I have another apology to make in advance. It may be that I go on a bit about cheese this week. I know that's a bit random, but there is good reason. America is not noted for it's excellence in cheese production (to be honest, American cheese is pretty disgusting) so Caroline and I are cooking and eating as much cheese as we can stomach this week. Don't take my word for America's bad cheese which I had trouble eating last time I was there, try looking through the 9 pages of comments on Stephen Fry's forum following his travels around the USA where he said their cheese was possibly the worst in the world! Some of the posts are quite amusing.

• "Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese!" (wallace and gromit)

What I didn't realise was that Stephen Fry also thought American bread was bad. I was only talking about bread earlier today and how wonderful it is...actually, I can't believe I just wrote that, my street cred as a hardened chess player will quickly deteriorate. Bread is considered one of the world's oldest foods and has a history at least 30,000 years old. As a food staple it the choice which Caroline and I often pick for accompanying our meals. We also like soup, so a bread and soup combo is a regular meal in this household. Another staple that we a lot of is porridge which also has a rich history. Oat based porridge is at least 5,000 year's old and, while commonly associated with Scotland, is a worldwide food using various ingredients as a base and for flavour. For instance, the Mexican, chocolate based champurrado sounds pretty good. I often have porridege, and at one of my favourite cafes, Dundas Place Cafe, they serve an amazing oat based porridge with butterscotch banana to flavour. The coffee there is also good, so it's a regular haunt for Caroline and myself. And finally, I must be old fashioned as my favoured method of sweetening porridge is with honey, which is itself an ancient foodstuff, with a history of at least 8,000 years in human consumption. Another interesting fact that I learned this week, is that honey is the only foodstuff that doesn't go off (thanks to Caroline for this gem). Apparently 2,000 year old jars of honey have been found and are still edible and taste good.

Porridge and honey (foodepedia)

And finally on this Sunday evening some quotes:

- Samuel Johnson described porridge as 'eaten by people in Scotland, fit only for horses in England'.

- George W Bush jr is always quotable, and as it is just after the Jewish New Year....'I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.'

- And while I've been talking a lot about food in this post, how about Prince Philip's quote to Susan Edwards and her guide dog 'They have eating dogs for the anorexic now.'

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.

One Week Left

I have one more week of work before my break. There are just 9 days before flying off to America on holiday with my wonderful wife, Caroline. On the ease down from work, my Saturday was rudely interrupted by having to vote for a bunch of people I didn't want to elect. I've always felt it funny that I have to vote for somebody. I mean, I can understand a secular country demanding its populace to cast a vote on who they think should be elected, but if there is really no one who appeals, then there should be a "None of the Above" option. My main ballot had 6 choices and I had to nominate candidates with numbers 1-6. Now While I could certainly have cast 2-3 preferences, there were at least 3 who I didn't want to even put as a last preference. I asked a helper if I could leave some names blank as I didn't want to show any preference at all for certain candidates, but apparently that would have made my ballot paper invalid. Besides this, I was given an enormous list of parties and told I had a choice. Either vote in section A for just one party, or list all 97 parties in section B in order of preference. Doh! As if I can be bothered to even show a preference between 2 parties, let alone 97!

This sign sums up my feelings of today's Australian election (from zazzle)

So anyway, I did the right thing and cast my vote, going Green, if you must know! I heard on the news a little while ago that Abbott is our new PM. Now I was never a fan of US President George W. Bush jr, but I think it would have been amusing if he'd been in power at the same time as Tony Abbott, just to see which one could appear bigger idiot. (Go check out this funny story about a chess match between US Presidential Candidates, Kerry and Bush from 2004!) However, whichever party is in power, life still goes on for the average person, and I've got one more week of work, 9 more days, or about 18 coffees before lift off. In that time I would like to say I've got loads to do, but that would be a lie. I've got to run my chess classes, and that's about it except for the normal daily duties of eating and sleeping. My lessons for the week are already prepared, so I don't even have to worry about that. Life is good!

In fact, I've even started thinking about some future projects. One of these will be creating a new weekend tournament in the Victorian calendar, and helping to really generate interest in our new local Glen Eira Chess Club. On Friday, some ideas were thrown around about the possibility of running a weekender sometime next year. As we are a new and small club, trying for any more would seem a bit optimistic, but our future seems guaranteed for at least a year as we have successfully applied and received a grant from the council to help us with hiring facilities. As this is the major cost of any club, it is a big help to us. I'm not going to reveal any more than that here now, but I will say that if the tournament goes ahead, then we are thinking of using a slightly different system to what would normally count as a weekend format. As soon as something definite can be said, I'll post more!

From just a chess point of view, I've seen the same endgame reached in my classes 3 times in the past week. It is a pawnless endgame where one side has king and queen, and the other side has king a rook. I tend to find that certain pawnless endings can be great for kids to look at, and this is one. Giving them a position to aim for, and then explaining to them that it is "zugzwang" is a good way to introduce a difficult concept. Take the following position.

With black to move, it is a win for white, as every move that black can legally make will allow white to either checkmate quickly, or force a fork of black's king and rook. Try to work it out, it's good fun and a good exercise! Of course, if it's white to move, then white's queen can give black the move by triangulation: 1.Qe4+ Kh8 2.Qa8+ Kh7 [2..Rg8 loses to 3.Qh1#] 3.Qe8 and we're in the above position!  Of course, from a practical point of view, it is not easy to get to this position in a real game. But funnily enough, having something to aim for will help a player to find better moves over the board, and although forcing the above position to happen is not easy, neither is defending the position with the rook! Anyone who starts to master this endgame, will then be able to add pawns to the rook's side, and discover blockades, and when there are no blockades. These are very useful endgames to know, and will help improve a player's general understanding of the game and their overall playing strength.

Goodreads

I spend so much of my time working through technical chess books, sifting through the vast quantity of data, analysing ideas, and storing both technical and anecdotal material for work and personal use. I've reviewed chess books for magazines, and recommended certain books for players of certain strengths. It is no surprise that in my spare time, I like to lose myself in a novel. I can hardly bring myself to read non fiction (I still look at some historical articles, and I have a year's subscription to National Geographic Magazine thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law) but much prefer entering the fantasy world created by the imagination of a creative mind. I must admit I read a fair amount of novels, probably 4-6 a month depending on how much spare time I have, and how big the novels are.

I enjoy almost all genre of fiction, though I don't really go for horror. I read a lot of fantasy novels at one time, but became a little bored of them, especially the series of books that seem to have no end. Earlier this year, though, I felt I needed to explore different types of books, and I wasn't sure where to start. So I joined the online book community, Goodreads. It took me a little while to get to grips with how to use the site in the best way for me. I wanted to find ideas of things to read, but I don't really enjoying reading reviews of books before I read a book, as I feel it clouds my judgement of what I felt about the novel. So when I read a book, I usually have few expectations of hat the book will offer, other than the blurb that is written on the back of the book.

Pointing pinky, but there's still black coffee in that cup of mine. Look at my eyes!

The thing that really expanded my horizons was joining a group on Goodreads. There are literally thousands of groups and I joined a fairly general book club group, Coffee and Books It is a lively little club, with monthly reads that can generate some interesting discussion. There are over 1000 members so there are lots of ideas coming in of what to read, and challenges issued so as to get members to try things perhaps out of their comfort zone. In fact, much of my reading over the past 3 months has been because of this group, and I have read books that I have loved, and some that I really didn't like at all. But I haven't regretted reading any of the books as they are novels that I would never have thought of before joining Coffee and Books, and I understand that I am broadening my reading tastes.

Coffee and Books, what could be better?

Basically, my experience on Goodreads has been totally positive, and I've reviewed a number of books irrespective of whether I've liked them or not. But like all good things, it can be misused by some people. One of my favourite authors is Joanne Harris, who I follow on Twitter (her twitter feed is always entertaining!) and earlier today she posted about an article from an author about bullying on Goodreads. This article tackles a disturbing trend among some people to trash authors. It's a fairly disturbing thing if some idiots on the internet can create trouble for aspiring authors, and are doing so on purpose merely for the fun of it. Cyber bullying is to be deplored in all forms, and that it could affect the livelihood of individuals is disgusting. The article by Nathan Bransford came in for sharp comments (please read the comments which may not be as insightful as the article, but are more entertaining), and has even caused Joanne Harris to post on her blog.

So will this stop me using Goodreads? Certainly not! But I will be careful about what I consider on the site, and I will probably not become involved in mud throwing threads about novels. I'll keep on with honestly writing what I think about the books I read, and I'll continue in the Coffee and Books group which I've found friendly, inclusive and helpful. This is what a community should be about.

Best In The West

Now this is a tournament I would have really liked to have played in, but I had to work for most of the first day so it wasn't an option for me. The turnout was fantastic from both a quality and quantity point of view. A great tribute to the organisers, Hobson's Bay Chess Club.

Tony Davis, player and organiser.

The tournament has been run since the early 1980's, but this must surely be the strongest and biggest of all so far. There were over 80 players competing this year and it caused a few comments about the fact that the tournament was only to be a 5 round swiss. This meant that there was potentially going to be more than one winner without them having to play each other, but in the end the tournament had only one winner, and some great games and upsets. Members of Hobson's Bay Chess Club were happy with the format, and chief organiser Tony Davis said that if more than one player finished on full points, then a play off match would be organised. It seems that no one who played was too bothered with the arrangements.

Top seed in the tournament was a real coup for the small Western suburbs club. GM Hrant Melkumyan from Armenia came to Australia straight from the World Cup in Norway and agreed to play in the event. This attracted some big names from Australian chess, with young guns Bobby Cheng, Max Illingworth and James Morris all coming along for the chance to play the 2600+ GM. In the end, the Armenain proved too good and won the tournament with a perfect 5/5, beating Morris and Illingworth among others.

GM Melkumyan taking his coat off as he arrives to play IM James Morris. Cheng-Illingworth is already underway in the background.

It was great to see the 3 young Aussie players competing in the same weekender, with Max travelling down from NSW. They represent, perhaps, the future of chess in this country, and already occupy top 10 positions  for Australians in the FIDE list (Illingworth 3rd, Cheng 4th, Morris 9th). These 3 stars finished on 4/5, Illingworth and Morris only losing to Melkumyan, while Cheng lost to Illingworth. They were however beaten to second place by FM Chris Wallis who finished on 4.5. Chris was held to a draw in the third round by Sylvester Urban, but won the rest. Knowing Chris, I'm sure he would have rather scored less and had the chance to take on the GM, but he proved too good for the rest of the players he had to play. The group on 4/5 was large, and Illingworth, Cheng and Morris were joined by another IM Ari Dale, FM's Bill Jordan, Dusan Stojic and Greg Canfell (last year's winner with another good showing), and Zachary Loh (the high school kid, had an unbeaten tournament including a draw with NZ FM Luke Li). However, it was a Hobson's Bay Club member, Dean Hogg, was the star of the show joining this elite group on 4/5. Dean's only loss was to Chris Wallis, and his scalps included IM Ari Dale.

Dean Hogg of HBCC with a great tournament performance.

And now on to the upsets. On the first day Marko Grabovac already produced 2 amazing victories and could be said to be the player of the day. In round 1, Marko rated 1560 beat FM Anton Smirnov (2328), and in the second round won against WIM Emma Guo (2018). He couldn't maintain this pace, and had to concede a draw to FM Bill Jordan in round 3! Unfortunately Marko's run only lasted the first day and he lost both games today, albeit to another 2 strong players, FM Stojic, and Noble Park club champion, John Nemeth.

Day one hero, Marko Grabovac writes his move down against FM Dusan Stojic

While Marko was the hero of day one, the upsets continued on the second day, and the biggest upsets were probably caused by Alanna Chew Lee. Alanna, rated 1206 first beat George Hua (1951), and then Anurag Sannidhanam (1663) to help her to reach a score of 3/5. In fact, the tournament featured many of Australia's top women players, Emma Guo (5th), Sally Yu (6th, and currently on vacation from her studies in America where she returns to tomorrow!) Savithri Narenthran (14th), Tanya Krstevski (22nd), Rebecca Strickland (26th) and Alanna (27th) were all playing, as well as some younger girls.

Sally Yu, playing the day before going back to America to study

Women's Olympian Emma Guo playing Youth Olympian Savithri Narentran. Second day hero Alanna Chew Lee fills in her scoresheet on the next board.

 The tournament was run by Hobson's Bay Chess Club, with support from International Arbiter Gary Bekker, and a live display board was operated by Noble Park's Phillip Drew. Seeing Melkumyan's game live was great, and more games can be seen through the tornelo operating system, which was provided by David Cordover of Chess Kids. All in all, this will be a tough tournament to top, but the guys at Hobson's Bay Chess Club are a pretty much down to earth bunch, and they will no doubt organise next year's event with the aim of producing a good event that all the competitors will enjoy, not one that will be bigger and better than previous tournaments. That is why the Best in the West is an enduring and successful event, and I hope it will remain so for many years to come.