Australian Masters Round 2 and 3

A brief post today as it's a full day's work followed by a rush hour drive to play my game. To be honest, that is what tomorrow will be too.

The GM section has a clear leader. IM Max Illingworth has won his first 3 games and sits in an excellent position to gain a GM norm. IM Kanan Izzat is in second place, and also has a great chance to score the norm as he is already on 2.5/3. The third player with a big chance of the GM norm is IM James Morris who is on 2/3 but has played all 3 of the Grand Masters in his first 3 games. GM Neiksans also sits on 2/3 after a quick draw with fellow GM Papin today. In the all Melbourne High School battle, IM Ari Dale got off the mark winning against FM Luke Li. Ari joins Luke on 1/3 after Luke picked up his second GM result yesterday drawing with Johansen.

In the IM section, second seed IM Igor Bjelobrk is leading with a perfect 3/3. Igor finds himself a point clear of the field after the shock loss of top seed IM Richard Jones to bottom seed Alphaeus Ang from New Zealand. We are now in a pleasant position where no one is on zero points in either tournament. FM Chris Wallis joins Jones on 2/3 while IM Rujevic sits just behind on 1.5.

The play has been combative in both events, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it, even though I'm only on 1/3. I had a very interesting ending against Igor Bjelobrk tonight which I'll try to show over the next couple of days.

FM Eddy Levi brought his own board to play on.

FM Luke Li starts with 2 draws against GM opposition.

Australasian Masters Round 1

The Australasian Masters started yesterday evening with 2 10 player round robin fields. The top section is a GM norm event, with the second section, an IM norm event. The play started about 6.30 pm at the Melbourne Chess Club, after their regular Saturday Allegro had finished. In fact, the allegro benefited from the Masters, as many of the players joined in, which then attracted others to come and play. The field of 42 players had GM Arturs Neiksans playing, along with IM's James Morris, Kanan Izzat and Justin Tan. The Grand Master won the event with a perfect 7/7

GM Neiksans (right) in post allegro chat with IM Justin Tan

.The 2 round robin events had very different sets of results. In the IM event, which I'm playing in, things went basically according to plan, with top 2 seeds, IM's Jones and Bjelobrk winning. FM Chris Wallis started well with a win against his long time friend FM Eugene Schon, and I was the other winner of the day. The vetereans duel between IM Rujevic and FM Levi ended in a draw, but not after Mirko Rujevic alerted the room to a blunder he made with a very audible sigh. Players rushed to see the board, but Mirko had blown a win into a draw rather than losing the game.

The GM section saw completely the opposite with favourites not getting their own way. Top seed GM Neiksans could only draw with FM Luke Li, while second seed GM Papin lost to IM James Morris. James was looking very relaxed before the event, and pretty happy afterwards. If body language is anything to go by, then IM Max Illingworth is in businesslike mode. He ground out a win against GM Johansen. IM Bobby Cheng made a successful comeback to beat IM Ari Dale, while IM Kanan Izzat, who won the IM section last year, was the other winner against IM Anton Smirnov.

Obviously there is a long way to go in both events, but there is every hope that a GM norm (6.5/9) is possible while an IM norm (7/9) is not out of the question either.

Not that I've really seen it, but the game of the day was the Morris-Papin affair. Papin's king never left the centre and white crashed through with a sacrificial attack.

Ratings

Ratings are just numbers, right? They are a constantly shifting mass of levels, which suggest roughly where any given player stands vis-a-vis the rest of the chess world. The stronger a player is, the higher their rating, and a set of good results will push the rating up, while bad results will drag it down. There are different rating systems, but the one that is mostly used is the ELO system which many countries use for their national ratings, and the International federation, FIDE, use.

Some important rating milestones:

2200 Candidate Master Level
2300 FIDE Master Level
2400 International Master Level
2500 Grand Master Level
2650 Top 100 Level
2800 Super Elite Level.

The current World Champion has seen his rating plummet this year, and in the latter half of the year he isn't the only top player to have dropped. Magnus Carlsen has a "live rating" of 2829.4, and it wasn't that long ago he was above 2850 with the highest published rating in FIDE history.

Now I'm not a big one for ratings, but I couldn't help but notice that Chinese 16 year old prodigy Wei Yi pushed his live rating up to 2729.5, within 100 points of Carlsen. Wei Yi sits at number 27 in the December FIDE list, and the 2 are to meet at the Corus tournament in January.

Carlsen is still number 1 on the list and is the only player with a live rating above the 2800 barrier. But somehow his dominance seems to have been questioned. In London he has so far been unable to win a game, though at least he hasn't lost any. Will he be able to get his mojo back? Will he be overtaken? Things are getting interesting at the top of the game, where the gap seems to have closed.

It won't be long before Magnus can be challenged by someone else and not have to be content to play himself.

Australian Masters

The Australian Masters has been established in the Australian chess calendar since 1987. It has been a breeding ground for Australian talent offering great chances for strong opposition, and norm opportunities. It has given many Australian players the chance to play against strong international players on home soil. Here's a list of some of the foreign players who have participated:

1991 IM Silvio Danailov (better known as Euro Chess President and Topalov's manager)
1992 GM Tony Miles
2000 IM Adam Hunt and IM Gerard Welling
2006 GM Dejan Antic
2013 GM Miezes
2014 GM Kazhgaleyev

And of course the Australian list is a who's who of Australia's best players. Australian winners in no particular order:

GM Johansen
GM Smerdon
IM Solomon
IM West
IM Sandler
IM Lane
IM Morris
IM Smirnov (father and son have both won!)
IM Cheng
IM Xie
IM Gluzman
FM Depasquale

I have been involved in the Masters since 2005 when I first played and this was still my best performance. This year there are 2 sections, a GM norm event, and an IM norm tournament, and I'll be playing in the latter. Chess Victoria President, Leonid Sandler has been organising this tournament for a number of years now, and under his guidance the tournament has grown significantly. This year the GM tournament sees 2600+ Latvian GM Neiksans making his first appearance, along with Russian GM Vasily Papin and Melbourne based GM, and 3 time previous winner, Darryl Johansen.

The question is which of the young guns, if any, will step up to score a GM norm. Australian young players Illingworth, Smirnov, Morris, Cheng and Dale are all playing along with Kanan Izzat from Azerbaijan and Luke Li from New Zealand. It will be a tough ask for anyone to score the 6.5/9, but I guess that is what we expect of GM standard players!

The IM event has an even tougher 7/9 norm requirement which doesn't leave much room for manouvre. IM's Jones and Bjelobrk have a considerable rating lead over the next group of players, who are young local talents, FM's Chris Wallis, Eugene Schon and Karl Zelesco, one of whom we can hope will step up to take the norm. The field is made up of me (Carl Gorka), IM Mirko Rujevic, FM Eddy Levi (long term sponsor of the Australian Masters. I'm not sure but Eddy may have played in all the events since 1987, I'll have to ask him), and foreign representatives Hoai Nam Nguyen and Alpheus Ang. Like in the GM event, anyone who scores 7/9 will truly have deserved the norm!

My own ambitions for this tournament? I'm just looking to find some form for the Australian Championship which comes up soon after. I'll be happy not to finish last, which only happened to me once before in 2006 when I had the misfortune of playing in a tournament that I was organising.

More reports about this next week, once we get going, and I'll try to find some reminiscences of some players who have competed over the years. Or even better, come down to view the games live at the Melbourne Chess Club over the next week. Games start on Saturday at 6.15 pm.

My Chess Addiction

Yesterday I mentioned that I was an addict to chess. What exactly does that mean? I work as a coach, play or study chess daily but does that make me an addict? I suppose looking at chess articles every day can be seen as many as an addict. Saying that, what is the difference between a healthy interest, a pastime, and an addiction?

I saw this article a few days ago. It was published a long time ago, but I only saw it when someone mentioned it on Twitter on my feed. The author seems to be saying that the game world of players becomes more meaningful than the real world, using games such as chess and role playing games which have an ultimate conclusion, whereas we are facing constant unknowns in real life. The chaos of life is less appealing than the structure of game play.

Hmmm, that means I'm not an addict! A crazy chess nut maybe, but not an addict. Phew! Real life is too important to me, my beautiful wife, travel and experiencing new things and, of course, coffee. To prove this, I'll get back to some non-chess posts soon. But for now...

Yesterday, I talked about my favourite move of the day. Again, it wasn't a contemporary move, but a move I saw in a game I looked at yesterday (and seeing I solved about 600 puzzles yesterday, and looked at about 75 games, there were a lot of moves to choose from!).

White to play

This was from the game Kramnik-van Wely Wijk aan Zee 2004. In this position, Kramnik played the amazing 37.Rh8!! The rook can't be taken:

37..Kxh8 38.Qh6+ Kg8 39.Ra8+ will lead to black being mated

All players know the gut wrenching feeling when an unexpected move is hammered out by your opponent, and when your opponent is Kramnik it must feel even worse. 37.Rh8 not only threatens mate, it threatens to take the h4 pawn, while and transfers the rook to the king side where it can be both an attacker and a defender. Another possibility for white is doubling on the 8th rank, by 38.Raa8. Van Wely struggled on for some moves, but Kramnik easily converted his advantage.

My Favourite Move of the Day

Was it FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumshinov's step down from the Presidency role? While this can only be a good thing, and something that I hope will be permanent, no this wasn't my favourite move today?

Perhaps something from the London Classic? Nope, I'm even wishing they'd start their games with Catalan set up's to liven the play.

Every day I look through games of chess, puzzles, articles, sometimes for my own benefit, sometimes for the benefit of my students, and sometimes just because I'm a chess addict! Today I saw a fabulous move that was played by Kramnik back in 2004. He's playing Loek van Wely who has sacrificed a piece for 3 pawns and opened the board somewhat. Kramnik, as white, looks to have a draughty king, but looks can be deceptive. Can you guess the move white played? I'll give the move next time.

White to play with my favourite move of the day!

Endgames for 5 year olds: the answers

In my last post, I wrote about some basic endgames that I showed my 5 year old student, and some of the ones he struggled with. Funnily enough, he did get the idea soon after, as he was able to work out other positions with similar themes. Anyway, here are the answers.

White to play and win

 White should have no problem promoting as his king is front of his pawn and his opponent doesn't have opposition. But things are never easy. The first thought is to push the pawn:

1.b6? Ka8 [1..Kb8? 2.b7 +-] 2.b7 [2.Kc7 is stalemate already] 2..Kb8 and white has to play 3.Kb6 to protect his pawn, which will be stalemate.

So instead: 1.Kc7! Ka8 2.Kb6! [2.b6? is stalemate] 2..Kb8 3.Ka6 Ka8 4.b6 Kb8 5.b7 +-

White to play and win

Very tricky 1.Kb6 is forced, but now after 1..Kc8 what can white do?

As both 2.Kc6 and 2.e6 lead to immediate stalemate, white has to let go his pawn. But how to do it? 2.Kc5! allowing black to take opposition with 2..Kxc7, but a tempo gain with the pawn gets it back! 3.e6! Black's king must now go to the back rank, and white must follow. 3..Kc8 4.Kc6! opposition 4..Kd8 5.Kd6 Ke8 6.e7 and the pawn will promote, not unlike in the last puzzle!

White to play and draw

First, it is always harder to aim to draw rather than to play to win, especially if you're 5 years old. So this is a tricky one. If you'd being paying attention to the first puzzle then the key to this is similar but in reverse. White wants to get his king in front of the pawn and with opposition. White's job is to prevent that.

White's king is outside the square of the pawn, so it must move to the b-file, but which one? 1.Kb1 allows black's king to advance to b5 with no resistance. 1.Kb3 allows black to play 1..Kb5 with immediate opposition, so 1.Kb2! is the only move. 1..Kb6 [Distant opposition. 1..Kb5 2.Kb3! with opposition and in the square of the pawn] 2.Kc2! [Both kings are forced to move across their current ranks or else they allow the other to take the opposition. If you look where black's pawn sits, you will realise why black will fail to win] 2..Kc6 3.Kd2! Kd6 4.Ke2! Ke6 5.Kf2! Kf6 6.Kg2! and black's king cannot go to g6, so 6..Kg5 7.Kg3! with opposition and a theoretical draw

If these endgames are known to you, then you'll not need a board, and if you can follow them in your head, then cool. If you are struggling with them, then I recommend you play them out on a board, as they will teach you invaluable lessons in basic pawn endgames.