John Chess in Edmonton

I was in Edmonton on the weekend for a family activity and stopped by the Chess Club on Saturday afternoon.  I knew there was a sectional tournament going on and I thought I could see some of the action and maybe catch a few fun games. 

It was unfortunate that only 6 players joined the tournament so there was only 1 section and it had quite a range of skill from 1500'ss to 2300's.  Harris Wang was the organizer and his young brother Richard was the favorite and won with 5/5.

I managed to get 4 fun games in.  2 against Wayne ? which I won quite easily and then 2 against George Sponga who had a break between rounds.  I won the first on a tactic after dropping a pawn and in the second I again dropped a pawn but managed to win it back and got a good position until I dropped whole piece.  I managed to push my outside pawn to a threatening position and somehow won the game.

The position was something like this when Black played ...Rh2+ and after Rh4 I managed to trade rooks and win.  Black could still have sacrificed his Rook for the pawn and probably drawn with something like Rf2-f8

Northern Alberta Open

I came extremely close to entering this tournament last weekend. It wasn't until Saturday morning that I finally decided to bypass the event.  Still it is good that I'm getting the urge to play OTB chess again.  I like looking at the result charts of tournaments and seeing the outstanding results.  There were several in this tournament.

• Alex Yam's result was outstanding and shows that he is now one of the elite players in Alberta. 
• Maybe the best result was from veteran player George Sponga who had a performance rating of 2131!  Surprisingly he only gained 90 points from this phenomenal effort to go from 1573 to 1663.
• Ryan Lacy and David Yao are, I believe, both juniors so their performance may not be unexpected.
• Vlad Rekhson's, poor performance is noteable but he has had scattered results lately.
• Arnold McKay had the unfortunate bad luck to face the two overachieving juniors in the first 2 rounds.

Northern Alberta Open Crosstable

# Player Old Perf New High Results Total
1 Yam, Alex 2326 2537 2364 2364 W24 W15 W3 W4 D2 4.5
2 Wang, Richard 2337 2398 2355 2356 W10 D17 W12 W11 D1 4.0
3 Porper, Edward 2495 2376 2490 2556 W19 W9 L1 W5 W7 4.0
4 Haynes, Nicolas 2314 2243 2320 2339 W23 W28 W8 L1 W9 4.0
5 Gardner, Robert 2308 2136 2306 2387 W22 W6 D0 L3 W10 3.5
6 Sponga, George 1573 2131 1663 1785 W7 L5 W19 L9 W20 3.0
7 Ottosen, David 2084 2056 2080 2237 L6 W24 W13 W20 L3 3.0
8 Pechenkin, Vlad 2425 2028 2411 2452 D0 W18 L4 D15 W12 3.0
9 Sequillion, A 2046 1980 2044 2129 W31 L3 W16 W6 L4 3.0
10 Kassam, Jamil 1899 1918 1917 1932 L2 W32 W18 W17 L5 3.0
11 Sasata, Robert 2395 2248 2385 2395 W20 D12 W14 L2 L0 2.5
12 Gluckie, Jamin 2156 2118 2156 2156 W16 D11 L2 W22 L8 2.5
13 Pua, Richard 2037 2068 2047 2050 D0 W29 L7 W14 L0 2.5
14 Yearwood, Roy 2197 2014 2174 2286 D0 W30 L11 L13 W25 2.5
15 Kalisvaart, P 2063 1946 2046 2243 W0 L1 D22 D8 D16 2.5
16 Lacy, Ryan 1656 1930 1699 1699 L12 W25 L9 W28 D15 2.5
17 Daniluk, Jim 2015 1863 2006 2193 W32 D2 D0 L10 L0 2.0
18 Yao, David 1179 1837 1236 1236 W25 L8 L10 L24 W28 2.0
19 MacLeod, Damon 1915 1831 1899 1960 L3 W31 L6 W23 L0 2.0
20 Bentley, Bill 1901 1716 1868 2000 L11 W33 W28 L7 L6 2.0
21 Rekhson, V 2038 1608 1990 2217 L28 L22 L0 W32 W24 2.0
22 Majaducon, W 1776 2041 1809 1809 L5 W21 D15 L12 L0 1.5
23 White, Chris 1793 1832 1792 1847 L4 D0 W30 L19 L0 1.5
24 Razzaq, Ali 1874 1707 1856 2022 L1 L7 D0 W18 L21 1.5
25 McKay, Arnold 1958 1439 1894 1987 L18 L16 W29 D0 L14 1.5
26 Wang, Harris 1871 1753 1872 1892 L0 L0 L0 L0 W32 1.0
27 Zeggelaar, M 1966 1753 1967 2079 L0 L0 W32 L0 L0 1.0
28 Johnson, Ron 1427 1578 1424 1480 W21 L4 L20 L16 L18 1.0
29 Nichols, Dar 1512 1598 1524 14 D0 L13 L25 L0 L0 0.5
30 Wiltzen, Trev 1737 1595 1666 4 D0 L14 L23 L0 L0 0.5
31 Lohner, Jason 1462 1581 1459 1462 L9 L19 L0 L0 L0 0.0
32 Riesen, Stuart 1293 1558 1353 22 L17 L10 L27 L21 L26 0.0
33 Fenske, Donald 0 1501 1501 1 L0 L20 L0 L0 L0 0.0

Chess in 2012

I actually played chess this month.  I was in Calgary for my daughters swimming activity on Feb 3-5 and the University Battle of Alberta active was the same weekend.  I joined and was able to play the first 4 rounds before I had to pull out.  I had three wins and 1 loss to the highest rated Alex Yam but it is hard to judge my performance because my wins were against unrated players.

I will post the games later but so far I have looked at one.

McLeod - Chaisson_1.pgn


Chaisson - Yam.pgn


Zhang - Chaisson_0.pgn


Chaisson - Madhusudan.pgn



I may be in Edmonton this weekend and the Northern Alberta Open is happening so I might get to play some more games.

While on the topic of ratings;

Why did we ever change the bonus points formula?


I remember from years ago the bonus was a doubling of your rating gain in a tournament over a certain threshold depending on the number of rounds. (i.e. if you gained 40 points in a 4 round tournament you would get 40 points + bonus points of 40-24=16 for total gain of 56 points). This made sense to me as an improving junior could gain points quickly.

The new formula makes no sense to me. Now if a severely under-rated junior plays in a tournament in which they are one of the lower rated players, it is very unlikely they will gain any bonus points. Take for an example Jason Cio at the 2009 BC Open. He came in with a rating of 1164, performed at 1791 and his new rating was 1232, a gain of only 68 points. He scored only 2/5 and was therefore ineligible for bonus points, but obviously performed well above his rating. Under the old system he would have gained 68 + (68 – 28) = 108 points. In the next two tournaments he also played at ~ 1750 but gained only another 74 and 92 points to get to 1398 with only a measly 5 bonus points for scoring 3.5/6 in the last tournament.

Tourney           Score  Perf    Pre     Post   Gain Bonus
2009 BC Open 2/5       1791   1164   1232   68      0
4th GPO          2.5/6    1714   1232   1306   74      0
35th Keres       3.5/6     1769   1306   1398   92      5

Under the old bonus system, he would have received a lot more bonus points. If I am calculating right, he would have ended up at 1584 after those three tournaments. A few more tourneys with bonus points and maybe it would not have been necessary to artificially adjust his rating by 370 points the following year after he won the world under 10.

Tourney          Score  Perf     Pre     Post   Gain   Bonus
2009 BC open 2/5       1791   1164   1272   108     40
4th GPO         2.5/6     1714   1272   1408   136    54
35th keres       3.5/6     1769   1408   1584   176    74

So who is benefitting from the new bonus system? It appears to me only the highest rated players. They are almost guaranteed to get Bonus points. They only have to score 60%, which shouldn’t be too hard if you’re the highest rated person in a tournament. Maybe they were designed to get high rated players to play in weekend swisses. Thus we see ratings at the top climbing to over 2700! I have nothing against Bator Sambuev, I think he may be the strongest player in Canada now, but he should not be getting bonus points. They were designed for under-rated players, not the top player in the country.

Canadian Open

Half way point of Canadian Open.  I must admit I wasn't paying attention until I saw the website last night.  I followed the Wang - Hebert game live.  It went into a Q+6p vs Q +7p ending.  I was hoping Richard would be able to hold the draw, and at times I thought he might, but in the end the Hebert's experience won the day.  Other Alberta players I noticed playing are Rick Pedersen, Brad Willis, R. V. Kalaydina and Sardul Purewel in  the open section and Chris White and Adie Todd in the under 2000 section.  There might be others I missed.  I did not notice any Saskatchewan players.

I expect Richard Wang to end up as the top Albertan.  He seems to improve in dramatic spurts and he is due for another jump.   He could even get a norm depending on good play and lucky pairings.  A draw vs Irina Krush in round 2 is his highlight so far.

As far as highlights go for Alberta, the big one so far is the round 1 upset Brad Willis (2094) vs GM Bojkov (2544) (1-0).  Brad is a strong player who has only recently began playing chess seriously again after retiring.  Not many can say they beat a GM in a regular game.  Kevin Spragett even analysed the game on his blog here.

I also see Justin Gulati from PEI is playing and had an interesting game vs GM Arencibia in round 2.  I don't know what happened to him in round 3 though - it looks like he has a forfeit.

Canadian Championship

Some quick notes:

After 6 rounds Eric Hansen is leading the Canadion Championship with 5/6!  Keep it up Eric and bring back the trophy.

The candidate matches are also under way but I must admit that without Calsen or Nakamura I don't have much interest.

In my last post, I talked about posting an analysis of a game I played in the Calgary New Year Open - but obviously I haven't done that.  My excuss is that it's not that interesting a game anyway.

Chaisson - Borwski.pgn


I also played in the Northern Alberta Open in Feb and I haven't analysed or posted those games either.  I went into that tourney knowing that I would skip the final game.  My first game was against Keith McKinnon (2351) and I was beaten fairly easily.  Next I defeated Richard Roberts (1388).  Then I had a good draw with Richard Pua (1982) where I was worse but managed to get into a better position and almost win.  My final game was  a disappointing loss to Jim Daniluk (2035) where I sacrificed a pawn for an attack but then chickened out.  That's what was disappointing.

MacKinnon - Chaisson.pgn


Chaisson - Roberts.pgn


Pua - Chaisson.pgn


Chaisson - Daniluk.pgn


I have no idea when I will play another OTB game.

Chess & Stress

Well I haven’t posted for a while for two reasons. One, I haven’t played any serious chess since the Battle at the Border; and two, my life has been extremely busy and stressful over the past half year or more. My biggest stress came from a death within the family and in addition to that there was uncertainty in my employment situation and whether I would need to relocate.

Last year, the company I worked for over 10 years announced that they had decided to put my division up for sale. This was followed by months of stressful waiting until the buyer was eventually announced. Some of the other engineers I worked with transferred and moved to stay with the old employer, some others quit and found a new job before the sale was finalized, and some waited to see who the new owner would be. I waited, and was originally pleased to be able to transfer to the new company only to find out that I didn’t fit in with their plans. Whereas the old company had 15 engineers in the regional office, the new company is now reduced to 4. The long and short of is that I was out of work for a short period of time before finding and starting a brand new job. Unfortunately my new job will require extended travel away from home and thus also place stress on my family.


So what has this to do with chess? While I haven’t been playing serious chess I have played more than a 1000 speed chess games during this period and I have noticed a direct relationship between my stress level, which fluctuated greatly between periods on intense stress and relief, and my performance. While I was experiencing high stress level at work (as highlighted in red below) my performance in speed chess was horrible and my rating would drop, and when I had a period of relief (as highlighted in blue) I would play very well and get my rating back up. When I first noticed this trend and realized how direct the correlation was, I was amazed.

It shows how important a player’s mindset is when playing in a tournament and how distractions will affect performance. At the top level this can definitely change the outcome of a tournament (as Jean Herbert has stated in a chesstalk thread about winning the Canadian Closed last year) but even at lower levels being able to relax during tournament even when not playing is important. Maybe the best thing to do is not play rated chess when your under stress.

Then again, if you’re like me, you don’t have many chances to play rated games. That is why I joined the last round of a tournament when I was in Calgary last week after just the second day in my new job. I will post the game later when I have time but this time I want to do something new.

Before I would just put the game through a chess engine and post it, making note of possible continuations the engine came up with, some I might have considered and some I hadn’t. This time I will analyze the game myself without microchip help and maybe even post it before putting it through the computer squeeze. Hopefully I will learn more this way, even if I do embarrass myself with obvious errors in my analysis.