Chess on the Borderline

While on the topic of ratings;

2011-08-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

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.

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 disapointng loss to Jim Daniluk (2035) where I sacrificed a pawn for an attack but then chickened out. That's what was disapointing.

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

Chess & Stress

2011-02-11T21:37:00.000-08:00

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.

Battle at the Border Complete

2010-09-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

The 4th annual tournament is now complete. GM Pascal Charbonneau was the winner with a superb performance. With a perfect score and full point lead going into the final round all he needed was a quick draw to secure the victory. It was a great event and every year Jamin makes improvements. The site was perfect and with only one game per table you didn't feel crowded during the games. Credit should also go to Tony for running the DGT boards on boards 1-3, Jill for doing a great job as TD, and Robert for taking video and pictures.

Here is a re post of the final standings from the official website.

I've highlighted five players who I thought had great tournaments:

Brad Willis: faced tough opposition and had played well
Ali Razzaq: also a great result at 3.5/6
Jason Xiao: Highly underrated. Drew & won against 1900 opponents
Jason Danner: 2 wins and a draw against 1900 opponents
Nigel Reynoldson: Another underrated junior who played well

and five who are probaly not satisfied:

Hikaru Nakamura: Anything but 1st is disappointing for him I'm sure.
Eric Hansen: A couple of draws on day 2.
Richard Wang: This talented junior was the victim of two upsets.
Len Steele: Unfortunately had to face both of the underrated Sask juniors and could only manage draws.
Roger Blum: Last year had a great tournament so in order to balance the universe had to perform badly this year.

My final two games were a victory over Chris Achtemichuk (1730) and a loss to Alex Yam (2222). I finished with 3/6 which is respectable. I regret only my first and last games where didn't put up much resistance to a couple of masters. I played badly in the opening and was lost by the 12th move in both games. I had the lead in my division until the last rounds when young Jason Xiao passed me by winning his last 3 games (perfect swiss gambit).

Battle at the Border Underway

2010-09-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

The first four rounds are complete. Two more to go tomorrow. A very exciting tournament so far. GM's Nakamura and Charbanneau are the stars of the tournament and met in round four in a very strange game. You can go to the great tournament website here and see the games. Surprisingly Pascal won!

I had a loss and a win yesterday and another loss and then a win today. Yo-yo effect in full force so far, but tomorrow my first game is against someone close to my level. Yesterday I didn't play great but with the large rating differences it probably didn't change my results. I overlooked a move against Rob Gardner (2309) then beat an unrated kid (Fraser McLeod).

My game against Rob reached this position in the opening.
Here I played 9.h5?? overlooking the simple 9...Nxe4!
I cannot retake the N on e4 due to mate after Qxa2

I'm pleased with my games today as I played a strong game in a loss against a Brad Willis (2130) and then ground out an endgame to a win against underrated junior Nigel Reynoldson (1309).

When I have more time I will post my games and some more info and pics.

Answers to the Chess Challenge

2010-08-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

I hoped to get more guesses, but anyway, here are the answers.

Late last year I emailed some old opponents to try to recover some of my lost games. The first game was one of three I recieved from Peter MacKean. Peter is a doctor who moved to PEI in the 80's and instantly became the highest rated player in the province by 300 points. I was able to take a half point this game and it might have been the firt time I did that against someone over 2000. The year was 1988.

Chaisson-MacKean.pgn

Game 2 was a recent game. I happened to be in Edmonton on Thursday and played a round of their "Summer Open". I was paired against Robert Richards and was able to pull in the full point.

Richards-Chaisson.pgn

The third game was also sent by Peter Mackean. It was a win he had against GM Paul Keres in a simul! His comments are included.

Keres-MacKean 1975.pgn

Game 1 ½–½ White__B__ Black __E__ decade_80_
Game 2 0-1 White__C__ Black __B__ decade_10_
Game 3 0-1 White_GM_ Black __E__ decade_70_

I guess Jamin gets the prize for being the closest, even though he labelled a famous GM a "C" player.

A Chess Challenge For You

2010-06-24T19:39:00.001-07:00

Here are three games spanning several decades. Your challenge, if you chose to accept it, is to match the players class to the games. To make it easier I will tell you that there are only 4 different players in the 3 games and one of the 4 players is a famous GM, one is an Expert, one is a B class player and one is a C class player. It shouldn’t be too difficult. If you want you can also guess which decade the games were played in.

After I get a few guesses I will fill in the info.

Game 1.pgn

Game 2.pgn

Game 3_0.pgn

So fill in the blanks with GM, E, B, C (and 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, or 10’s) and place your guesses in the comments.

Game 1     ½–½    White_____ Black _____             decade_____
Game 2      0-1     White_____ Black _____             decade_____
Game 3      0-1     White_____ Black _____             decade_____

Hint # 1 Only two of the games are regular rated games.
Hint # 2 I am in more than one of the games.
Hint # 3 All the games were played in Canada

to be continued....

Recent and Upcoming Chess Happenings

2010-05-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

World Championship

The world championship recently wrapped up in Sofia, Bulgaria. Anand managed to retain his title with an exciting victory over Topolov with the black pieces in the last game. The final score was 6.5 – 5.5 and we were spared from having to see the title decided in rapid games. I was able to check in on some of the live games while they were in progress, and they were almost always exciting hard fought battles. Both competitors deserve credit for the fighting spirit displayed.

It is good that there is now one undisputed world champion. Hopefully FIDE will not mess around with the world championship cycle and create havoc, like they have in the past. It was disappointing that I did not see any news coverage in the mainstream media about this event at all.

FIDE Election

I don’t know what to make of the current FIDE president election. It appears to be between the incumbent Ilyumzhinov and former world chess champion Karpov. Both are Russian and whichever one manages to get the Russian nomination will probably win. It is turning into a sleazy campaign and does not lead me to think that FIDE will eliminate the corruption within it’s system anytime soon.

US Championship

Three rounds are complete and the two favourites have to be Nakamura and Kamsky who share the lead with 2.5/3 after drawing with each other. The new format this year for this tournament is unusual as it combines a Swiss for the first 7 rounds after which the top 4 will continue in a round robin format. Top player could play each other more than once. I hope the format works out but I wonder how fair it will seem if tie breaks have to be used after round 7 to determine who continues in the round robin format. I expect and hope that Nakamura wins the title.

Lloydminster Chess

Of course the big event in Lloydminster will be when the above named GM Nakamura plays in our annual Battle at the Border Chess tournament Sept 4-6. It will be the biggest chess event to ever hit the Midwest. I have already started my training regime in preparation for this tournament, which includes playing the occasional online blitz game at chesscube and reminding myself that I really should finish that chess book that I started months ago. I did play some live chess against Al Tinio last week and although I had winning positions in at least two of the games I ended up being skunked 4.5-0.5 in 15 min games. I expected him to be even rustier then me but he’s been playing online.

Calgary Chess

The Calgary International is this weekend and should be exciting. Famous Philippine GM Eugene Torre, a close friend of Bobby Fisher, is playing. They have a reserve section that I could play in but I don’t have enough desire at the moment.

Not much to say

2010-04-27T21:36:00.000-07:00

I see I haven't posted anything this month so I figured I would make this one short post.

I haven't played any chess lately and I haven't progressed any farther in my reading of Silman's Reassess Your Chess. Unfortunately we received bad news from relatives in the Philippines and so more important family issues have been my focus for the time being.

Today, though, I did get a chance to quickly go over the 3 games played in the world championship between Anand and Topolov. Very interesting so far. I am rooting for Anand but I must admit that I think Topolov will prevail. It was nice to see Anand recover from his poor first game loss with a strong second game win and a solid third game draw.

UPDATE
I see that Anand has won the fourth game with white. I was watching live from White's 20th move. After 22.Ng4 I tried to analyse the sac on h6 but of course I could not see if it was winning but I was pretty sure there must be at least a draw. Diagram shows position after 22...Rad8. Anand followed up with 23.Nxh6 and finished the game in style.

The over/under 1800 tournament is this weekend in Edmonton. I have no interest in playing, especially since I have dropped below 1800. I would be the highest rated player in the group and therefore have to psych myself up every game to play someone lower rated which I would find very difficult. I predict the winners will not even be teenagers in both sections!

Random "Deep Thoughts"

2010-03-31T17:20:00.000-07:00

GM Kevin Spraggett, Canada's greatest player ever, is currently playing in an open tournament in San Sebastian, Spain. So far he has 3.5/4 points. Although he is now a controversial character in Canadian chess, back when I first started playing tournament chess, he was one of my chess heroes. It was exciting to read En Passant every two months and seeing his exploits as he tore through the North American tournament schedule and also through several cycles of the candidate tournaments. I noticed his second round opponent this week was WIM Silje Bjerke of Norway whom I played right here in Lloydminster at the BATB. Here is their game. My game against Silje can be found in a previous blog entry.

Bjerke-Spraggett.pgn

The Alberta championship and reserve is this weekend. It's a shame Eric Hansen and IM Proper are not playing this year. With their absence, I predict Pechenkin will win the championship. Although I would like to play in the reserve, I am just so tierd of travel and hotels. Since Jan it seems like every weekend I am travelling all over the praries. Three hockey tournaments, two swimming competitions, three schoolastic chess tournaments, Dr appointments, and work travel have taken me back and forth between Edmonton, Saskatoon, St. Paul, St Walburg, and Fort McMurray. A weekend at home sounds great now.

My next tournament might be a sectional in Edmonton or maybe the Saskatchewan Open if it is going to happen in April or maybe not for a while.

ps I'm on page 142 of Reassess Your Chess. Slow going but I'm almost half way through.

To be continued... got to go eat

Active/Rapid Games

2010-03-21T17:34:00.003-07:00

The only remotely serious games I've played in over 6 months has been a handful of active games. Jamin in preparation for his Dragon Themed Tournament this weekend asked if I wanted to play a couple of games last week. I gladly obliged. Although I lost all the games, when I looked over them this week I don't think I played horrible. Here there are for your enjoyment or scorn. Jamin had requested I not post them before the tournament to keep his preparation hidden from Keith so I did. I did run into Keith at the Saskatoon regional’s and he asked me which line we played (the Re8 or Nc4). I replied evasively that I played the a6 line without mentioning Jamin's moves.

Game 1 - White

2010-03-12A.pgn

Game 2 - Black

2010-03-12B_0.pgn

Game 3 - White

2010-03-12C_0.pgn

I will also post the 2 Active games I played in Edmonton last month just for completness since I belive they will be rated.

2010-02-13A.pgn

2010-02-13B_0.pgn

Reassessing My Chess (PART 4)

2010-02-28T19:11:00.000-08:00

Well I finally finished the next section in “Reassessing Your Chess”. It took me quite a while since I never seemed to have any extended free time, plus it was a long chapter. I had to make do with an hour here and there while waiting for my kids during their various activities or the odd lunch hour. Anyway here is my continuing “cliff notes” of RYC. Two good websites I found with pgn versions of the books examples are: http://dswitzer.net/chess/RYC/ryc.htm and http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1005920 .

PART 4: Minor Pieces in the Middlegame

Introduction:

This section concerns the differences between minor pieces. Basically, how to recognize the situation, create an imbalance, nurture your favourable imbalance, weaken your opponents pieces, and finally capitalize on your advantage.

Chapter 1: The Bishop

Bishops can be divided into three categories:

1. Good- central pawns not on it’s color
2. Bad – central pawns block it
3. Active – can be either bad or good but it serves an active function

First Rule Concerning Bishops: If you have a bad bishop you must correct it in one of three ways.
1. Trade it for a better enemy piece.
2. Make it good by moving your central pawns of it’s color.
3. Make it actice by getting it outside your pawn chain.

Second Rule Concerning Bishops: Bishops are strongest in open positions.

Third Rule Concerning Bishops: They tend to beat out Knights in Endgames with passed pawns on both sides of the board.

Using The Bishop: These paragraghs contain numerous examples with lengthy explanations of the thought process involved in creating and following through with the correct plan to win with bishops. Some of the highlighted rules of thumb that stood out to me:
• Don’t play for traps hoping your opponent does something stupid
• After deciding your move ask yourself how it improves your position
• A pawn chain should be attacked at the base. It is not necessary to win it but to make it move or trade it
• Never pass (ie make a waiting move) and hope that a move comes to you next time. Every move should strengthen you position somehow.
• All calculation is done with a goal already in mind
• In an open position one must react quickly. Time is of the essence due to the open lines.
• In a closed position attacks are initiated with pawn breaks. Slow manoeuvring is alright.

Chapter 2: Understanding Knights

First Rule of Knights: They need advanced support posts to be effective.
• Knights on the 1st or 2nd rank are purely defensive
• Knight on the 3rd rank is defensive and ready to move to a more active post.
• A knight on the 4th rank is as good as a bishop and well positioned for attack and defense.
• A Knight on the 5th rank is often superior to a bishop.
• A Knight on the 6th rank is often a winning advantage.

Second Rule of Knights: They are useful pieces in closed positions.

Third Rule of Knights: They are the best blockaders of passed pawns.

Fourth Rule of Knights: They are usually superior to Bishops in endings with pawns on only one side of the board.

More “Rules of Thumb”
• In closed positions pawn breaks on the wing take on great importance.
• Don’t be afraid of “ghosts” ie. Your opponents threats that don’t go anywhere.
• When attacking the king don’t just check. First cover the escape squares and then build a mating net.

Chapter 3: Dogs vs. Cats / Bishops vs. Knights

This chapter contains various examples where one type of minor piece wins out over the other type of minor piece.

The Anti-Knight Technique: Take away all the advanced support points of your opponents Knights and they will be ineffective and your Bishops have a good chance of winning. Before entering into a B vs. N position ask yourself the following:
1. Is the position open or closed?
2. Will there be support points for his Knights?
• If so can his Knights get to them?
• Does it matter if they do?
• Can your Bishop reach an even better position?

More “Rules of Thumb”
• YOU MUST MAKE USE OF YOUR FAVORABLE IMBALANCES.
• Never leave yourself with no favourable imbalance or chances to create them.
• If center files are open it is rarely a good idea to decentralize one forces.

Chapter 4: The Power of Two Bishops

The usual way to combat two Bishops is to do one of three things:
1. Create a blocked position
2. Create advanced support points for your Knights
3. Trade off one of your opponents B’s and obtain a more manageable B vs. N position.

Some More Rules of thumb (some repeated)
• If your against two powerful Bishops trade your B or N for your opponents B and leave a more manageable B vs. N situation.
• A Q + N is a better combination than a Q + B
• The way to battle Knights is to take away all their advanced support points

Chapter 5: The Two Knights Victorious!

Some examples of positions (usually closed) where two Knights prove superior.

Problems:

4 test problems to solve that demonstrate the ideas taught in the previous teachings of the section.

Active Chess in Edmonton

2010-02-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

I was in Edmonton this weekend and figured I would play a couple of Saturday afternoon active games. I did not know that the Edmonton Chess Club was now CFC rating their Saturday games. If I had known, I might not have bothered. The CFC active ratings are so unrepresentative of strength that they are a joke and I have been avoiding CFC active tournaments on principle. As an example from the CFC Top Alberta Active List; 19 Eric Hansen 1924?, 36 Thomas Kaminski 1756?, 43 Terry Chaisson 1715. Since I was already there, I went ahead and played.

Both my games were loaded with terrible blunders on my part. Missing one or two move replys, and even thinking I won a piece and not noticing an opponent's Night was protectiong his Bishop. I did win the first game and draw the second but they were games that I shoud have won easily. I doubt that I will ever post them, not because there is nothing to learn from them, but because I am embarassed by my mistakes.

I have been very busy with family commitments and work related issues lately so I have not played much and I am still stuck in the middle of Part IV of "Reassess Your Chess".

Wijk aan Zee - Results

2010-02-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

A great tournament just wrapped up in Netherlands. As per my previous blog concerning the age of the participants, it looks like the youth group had the best average result, followed by the most experienced. Grouped by decade of birth the results are:

GM Fabiano Caruana ITA 2675 51 1992      5.5
GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2810 1 1990        8.5
GM Sergey Karjakin RUS 2720 21 1990       7.0
AVERAGE 90'S                                           7.0

GM Hikaru Nakamura USA 2708 28 1987     7.5
GM Jan Smeets NED 2657 73 1985               4.5
GM Leinier Dominguez CUB 2712 25 1983    6.5
AVERAGE 80'S                                            6.2

GM Peter Leko HUN 2739 12 1979               6.5
GM Vladimir Kramnik RUS 2788 4 1975        8.0
GM Sergey Tiviakov NED 2662 62 1973       4.5
GM Loek van Wely NED 2641 104 1972      5.0
GM Alexei Shirov SPA 2723 20 1972            8.0
AVERAGE 70'S                                           6.4

GM Vassily Ivanchuk UKR 2749 8 1969        7.0
GM Viswanathan Anand IND 2790 3 1969    7.5
GM Nigel Short ENG 2696 38 1965              5.0
AVERAGE 60'S                                           6.5

This bodes well for the future at the top level of chess. In the B and C sections the youngest players also excelled.

• Calsen was strong throughout the tournament.
• Shirov had un unbelievable start but then slowed down and was passed.
• Kramnik was also strong throughout.
• Anand was the only undefeated player but with 11 draws it looked like he was holding back in preparation for his championship match vs Topolov.
• Nakamura played the most exciting/risky chess but stumbled in the middle of the tournament with a couple of losses.

Reassessing my Chess (Part 3)

2010-01-18T21:49:00.000-08:00

PART 3: Calculations and Combinations

Introduction:

Promises to introduce Kotov’s method of calculation and a system that allows you to understand when combinations may or may not exist.

Chapter 1: Calculation

How many moves ahead does a GM see? Reti says one move but examples from Alekhine display many, many more. The trick is “you only bother calculating once the correct plan is clear and once you settle upon a plan that helps your plan come to fruition.” Normally you need to at least calculate at least a couple of moves ahead to make sure everything is in order and sometimes you have to look much deeper. Silman uses a couple of his own games as examples and then shows the famous Reti-Alekhine 1929 game. I followed the game in one of my databases with Kasporov’s along with Silman’s analysis. One thing Silman mention that I hadn’t considered before was that in a game with one player attacking queenside and the other kingside, a trade of queens usually helps the player attacking queenside. This seems obvious but the Reti-Alekhine game is an exception.

Silman suggests two things to improve calculation:
     1. Go through a GM game collection looking at possible candidate moves and writing down all your analysis in a notebook.
     2. Read Kotov’s book “Think Like a Grandmaster.”

Chapter 2: Rules of Combination

For a combination to exist one of these factors must be present:
     1. Open or weakened King
     2. Undefended pieces
     3. Inadequately defended pieces

So don’t look for a combination all the time but rather only when you see one of these factors in a given position. A position from Alekhine-Junge 1942 is used to demonstrate. GM Averbach has stated that the vast majority of combinations are based in one way or another on the theme of double attack. A Aronin-Kantarovich miniature is used as an example and demonstrates the rule that you shouldn’t open the position if your are behind in development.

Two problems finish the chapter from Kolvick-Silman 1989 and Amateur-Muller corr 1928-29.

Over all it gave me some new ways to think about positions, which is always good, but nothing too concrete yet. I feel there needs to flesh added to the bones of ideas presented so far.

Wijk aan Zee Super-GM Starts on Saturday

2010-01-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

Looking at the list of players I noticed something interesting.

Title Player                      Nat.     Rating rank   born
GM Magnus Carlsen       NOR    2810     1     1990
GM Viswanathan Anand IND     2790     3     1969
GM Vladimir Kramnik    RUS      2788     4    1975
GM Vassily Ivanchuk     UKR      2749     8   1969
GM Peter Leko              HUN     2739    12   1979
GM Alexei Shirov           SPA      2723    20   1972
GM Sergey Karjakin       RUS     2720    21   1990
GM Leinier Dominguez    CUB    2712    25   1983
GM Hikaru Nakamura    USA     2708    28   1987
GM Nigel Short              ENG     2696    38   1965
GM Fabiano Caruana     ITA      2675     51   1992
GM Sergey Tiviakov      NED     2662    62    1973
GM Jan Smeets              NED     2657    73   1985
GM Loek van Wely        NED     2641   104 1972
Average rating: 2719 – Category: 19

If you rearrange the players by age you see there is four decades of players representated and they if they were teams they would be fairly evenly matched.

GM Fabiano Caruana ITA 2675 51 1992
GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2810 1 1990
GM Sergey Karjakin RUS 2720 21 1990

GM Hikaru Nakamura USA 2708 28 1987
GM Jan Smeets NED 2657 73 1985
GM Leinier Dominguez CUB 2712 25 1983

GM Peter Leko HUN 2739 12 1979
GM Vladimir Kramnik RUS 2788 4 1975
GM Sergey Tiviakov NED 2662 62 1973
GM Loek van Wely NED 2641 104 1972
GM Alexei Shirov SPA 2723 20 1972

GM Vassily Ivanchuk UKR 2749 8 1969
GM Viswanathan Anand IND 2790 3 1969
GM Nigel Short ENG 2696 38 1965

So which decade contains the winner?
I'm cheering for the youngsters because they play exciting chess, and for the old timers because they are my age.

Reassessing My Chess (Part Two)

2010-01-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

PART TWO: Thinking Techniques and the List of Imbalances

Introduction

Silman’s advice in the first paragraph of this section is sage: “If you want to be successful, you have to base your plans on specific criteria on the board, not on your mood at any given time.” I have to admit that at times, this is particularly failing of mine. In my last tournament I decided I was going to play aggressively before I even showed up. Not surprisingly, I did well in games where my position justified my style but suffered in the games where my position did not lend itself to this strategy.

Chapter 1 - What is A Plan:

Silman borrows Golombeck’s definition. “Planning is the process by which a player utilizes the advantages and minimizes the drawbacks of his position...always based on a diagnosis of the existing characteristics of a position...most difficult when the position is evenly matched and easiest when there is only one plan that satisfies the demands of the position.”

Chapter 2 – Imbalances and the ‘Silman Thinking Technique’

Another quote: “The real goal of a game is too create an imbalance and try to build a situation in which it is favourable for you”. In the book, seven types of imbalances are listed:

1. Superior minor piece
2. Pawn structure
3. Space
4. Material
5. Control of a key file or square (what about diagonal?)
6. Lead in development
7. Initiative

Next the Silman thinking technique is introduced. This is a 5 Stages process.

1. Figure out the positve and negative imbalances for both sides
2. Figure out which side of the board you should play on. (only where you have favourable imbalance).
3. Don’t calculate. Instead dream up your fantasy position.
4. Figure out how to achieve your fantasy position. If it’s not possible, find another dream position.
5. Only now calculate your candidate moves that help you achieve your dream position.

The remainder of the chapter follows one of Silman’s games in which he explains his thinking process as the game progresses and at the end a problem to solve in which you must identify the favourable imbalances and come up with a plan. The solution at the end of the book continues from the problem position (another Silman game) and again explains the thinking process. I found that by going to chess.com I was able to locate the games and then follow them while reading along with the book without requiring a chessboard and pieces.

The second chapter of this Part of the book I found extremely insightful and by itself worth the price of the book - (If I had bought it and not borrowed it). I noticed that I am reading the 3rd edition from 1994 and I see that there is a 4th edition coming out soon. When I return the book maybe I will order my own 4th edition copy.

Coming next....... Part Three : Calculation and Combinations

Reassessing my Chess (PART ONE)

2010-01-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I got together with Jamin for a few quick games and to borrow his copy of "How to Reassess Your Chess" by Jeremy Silman. Jamin highly recommended the book for me and told me it would improve my play. Although I am a skeptic at heart, I plan on reading it thoroughly and I do expect to see some significant improvement. I will track my progress here a section at a time.

INTRODUCTION:
Explanation of the purpose of the book and who it aimed for. The targeted reader description seems to describe me to a tee. It states that if I want to improve, I will have to destroy and then rebuild from scratch my chess foundation. It also states I might get worse before I get better!

PART ONE: BASIC ENDGAMES
Review of the most important endgame theories.
Chapter 1 Understanding the King: Opposition, Outflanking.
Chapter 2 King and Pawn Endgames: Basic K + 1p vs. K positions
Chapter 3 Rook and Pawn Endgames: Lucena & Philidor positions
Overall Part One was rather basic with nothing that I haven't already seen and learned elsewhere.

Coming next: Part Two. This looks more interesting.

ps. If your wondering about the games we played, Jamin skunked me 4-0 even though he had 10 min to my 15 min. None of the games were very close but in the 3rd, after blundering a pawn, I thought I had a piece winning combination but missed a queen check that recaptured the lost piece after trading many pieces. I guess I need to read more.

2010 Chess Predictions

2010-01-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

My annual list of predictions on the global and local chess level

1. There will be a change at the top this year as I believe the world champion will be dethroned. Although I really admire Anand and will be cheering for him I don't think he will hang onto his crown.

2. Carlsen will once again end the year as the highest rated chess player in the world. He will even extend his lead in the rating list and while others will battle for the world championship he will become the unofficial world champion.

3. Kevin Spraggett is on top of the Canadian FIDE rating list by 3 points but I predict he will not be the highest rated Canadian by the end of the year.

4. Speaking of Spraggett, I predict his long awaited article on the problems in the Canadian chess world will finally be published on his webpage (Apr 1st would be a good day). It will be filled with lots of innuendo and some new info to me about what happened to Canadian chess when I was no longer an active chess player (1994-2007). It will lead to lots of discussion and accusations on "chesstalk" but not much else.

5. In 2010 Eric Hansen will pass Proper to become the highest FIDE rated Albertan. It may be some time before he relinquishes this position. He will get his IM title and be working on a GM title.

6. Robert Sasata will hold off MacKinnon to maintain the top spot on The Saskatchewan rating list. I hope he has a chance to play more chess this year but with a young family I know how difficult that can be. Mackinnon will continue his rating climb but will have to wait to overtake the master.

7. The 2010 Battle at the Border chess tournament will be the biggest and best by far and will draw stong players from all over western Canada.

8. Richard Wang will become the youngest Alberta master in some time and surpass Hughey and Rekhson on the rating list. They, of course, will continue the decade long bickering over the single digit difference between them and ignore the fact they have been passed by a preteen.

9. Two of the biggest rating gainers will be Wang in Alberta Jason Xiao in Sask. It's no coincidence that they are both juniors.

10. I will defeat a higher rated opponent this year. I have to put this in because I failed to accomplish this in 2009, but I'm not sure how much chess I will get to play this year.

There it is. Do you agree, disagree? Let me know.

A Grading of my 2009 Predictions

2009-12-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2009 I made several chess predictions based on my own psychic insights into the chess world

1. Anand will retain his World title throughout the year. Amazingly I was correct. The fact that he did not have to defend last year made this prediction rather easy.

2. Magnus Carlsen will be the highest rated player in the world by the end of the year. This prediction was much riskier as young players tend to progress in steps and you never can tell when they are ready to make that next step. Magnus stepped up in his last few tournaments to surpass everyone. His training partner may have had something to do with it.

3. Topolov will beat Kamsky in the Challenger match. Correct again.

4. Ivanchuk will win the Canadian Open (I don't even know if he's playing). He did not play and therefore did not win. I'm sure if he did play he would have so I don't consider this prediction incorrect.

5. Kevin Spraggett will end the year once again as Canada's highest rated player. I hope he plays in the Canadian Open. Anton Kovalyov is now 7 points ahead of Spaggett but since he does not want to be considered Canadian, then I am right once again.

6. The CFC will lose money again this year, but only a small amount compared to the USCF. I am unsure how the CFC did finacially this year and haven't been interested enough to bother to look at any statements so I mark this as "not sure".

7. Robert Sasata will finally lose a rated game. Looks like he hasn't lost in two years. Robert played only 3 rated games this year but lost to Nicholas Moloney in one.

8. Eric Hansen will be an IM by the end of the year and will be Alberta champion again, if he enters. Eric did win the Alberta championship but failed to pick up his final IM norm at the Edmonton International. Eric is definitly an IM calibre now so I will call this mostly correct.

9. Keith MacKinnon will win the Saskatchewan Open. Another correct prediction as Keith won over a good field. Keith is another young player that seems to have made another step up in his last two tournaments.

10. I will finally beat someone higher rated than me. Wrong. I should have won a game against Jamin at the Sask Open in Jan, but alas, I kind of chickened out into a draw. In the second half of the year I believe my quality of play dropped off quite a bit and I didn't really have many winning chances.

8.5/10. Not bad. I will make predictions for 2010 and post them next week.

Edmonton International and WBX tournament

2009-12-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

The Edmonton International starts tonight and finishes Monday. My prediction is that GM Josh Friedel will be the winner. Top Albertan will be a toss up between IM Proper and Eric Hansen but I will go with Hansen. I'll go out on a limb and pick young Keith MacKinnon to be the top Saskatchewan player.

In conjunction with the international, the annual WBX (weekend before Christmas) team tournament will also occur. I may as well pick a winner here to. As there is no Sask teams this year (as far as I know) I will pick the Wang brothers team (if they are able to find a third). If they don't get a team then my second choice is Vlad's Rekhson's team.

I may be able to take in some of the games on Sunday as I will to be in Edmonton for my daughter's swimming competition.

Southern Alberta Open Results

2009-11-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

Just finished the tournament this afternoon. (I tried to post this yesterday but the hotels internet conection wasn’t working) Here are my results:

Round 1 - Black vs. Kim Nguyen (2082).

I played the Scandinavian w/ 2...Nf6. I think I could have equalized early with c5 but I made my Nc6 move immediately and then saw that c5 was probably best. I played the opening badly and then followed up by playing the rest of the game poorly. Kim was playing well throughout the weekend and ended up winning the tournament by beating Dale Haessel in the last round.

2009-11-r1.pgn

Round 2 - White vs. Mike Scholz (1431)

I was looking for blood and played the King's gambit and tried to make the game as complicated as possible. He offered me a draw several times and when I made it clear I wasn't going to take a draw, he resigned. Apparently he had somewhere else he had to go, but we hadn't even played 20 moves yet. I think when he resigned he might have been better, since I hadn't been able to create an effective attack for my pawn yet, but I was still looking for something to sac.

2009-11-r2.pgn

Round 3 - Black vs. Aaron Sequillion (1994)

I played the Scandinavian with Qd6. I chose this variation after talking over some openings with Roy Yearwood in-between rounds. I decided to castle long and try to storm his king. Once again I didn't play the opening very well and eventually lost a pawn and was most likely lost, but Aaron let me create some counterplay against his King but he managed to escape and wrap up the win. Aaron is much stronger now than when I played him last time two years ago (even if he has lost 100 points after gaining 300)

2009-11-r3.pgn

After the first day I was not very happy with my play. My opening play was bad and I just didn't feel sharp at all. I wasn't calculating very well and seemed to miss many of my opponents moves. I was choosing openings that I wanted to try out, but I didn't know them well enough to play them effectively or well enough to follow through with a middle game plan. I decided that on the final day I would scrap my plan to try out more new openings (like the 2.c3 Sicilian that Roy also suggested) and stick with the openings I played years ago and so that even if I didn't remember the moves I would at least have familiarity with the positions and be able to come up with a plan.

Round 4 - White vs. Hemant Persaud (1744)

Hemant is actually a fairly strong player who seems to me to have some bad habits that cause him to be underrated. He plays very fast and lets himself be distracted throughout the game. In this tournament I believe he was winning in 4 of his games but let 3 of them slip away. I played a closed Sicilian and once again I chose to castle long and storm the kingside in an all out win or lose attack. He managed to breakthrough first. I miscalculated my defence and then had to give up the exchange and trade my remaining major pieces and although I tried to create counterplay, I didn't have enough material left to be successful. Hemant also has another habit that was quite annoying during the game. He was constantly adjusting the pieces and half the time he did it, it was my turn. A couple of times I was deep in thought and he would come back from walking around and sit down and say "adjust" while wiggling three or four pieces. I was going to say something to him in the middle of the game, but I decided it wasn't intentional and instead started counting them. I estimated that he did it 20 times! I meant to bring it up after the game but I had to run out between rounds to eat and then forgot about it until now. If your reading this Hament you need to stop this habit.

2009-11-r4.pgn

Round 5 - White vs. Chris White (1768)

He played the French Defence and exchanged on e4. I sacked my Knight on f7 for two pawns and then I traded my Rook and Bishop for his Queen. This lead to his King being in the center and I was able to use my remaining Bishop, Rook, and Queen effectively to wrap up the win. This was my most enjoyable game, mainly because I was chasing his King around.

2009-11-r5.pgn

Overall not the result I wanted, but probably what I deserved considering I did no preparation. It's curious that three of my opponents brought up the fact that I play very aggressively. They say your style of chess should match your personality, but mine seems to be the opposite, since I am generally pragmatically cautious. Maybe I need to look at adjusting my perspective during tournament games or maybe I just wasn't taking this tournament very seriously.

Update. I've posted my games now. The last game was fun and so I ended on a good note. I went back to the Calgary chess club again on Tuesday night and participated in their speed chess tounament. Even though I'm not a great speed chess player, I managed to share the under 1700 prize with 2 others (Tony and ??). I was shut out by Martin Robichaud and an unknown Graham ??, who showed up late and then won 7/8.

Southern Alberta Open

2009-11-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I have booked my flights and hotel and I have registrared for the Soutern Alberta Open this weekend. I am combining this tourney with a business trip I have planned, otherwise I would not be playing. The preregistrared list is still less than 20 and there are not that may strong players yet, but still, I will probably end up in the bottom half and be paired up to one of the top boards in round one.

I do feel alittle guilty about playing in the tournament because I now found out my son has a hockey tournament on Saturday. I could skip the chess tournament and drive to Calgary for business but that would be twelve hours of driving.

World Youth Tournament

2009-11-12T21:29:00.000-08:00

The world Junior Turnament has started in Turkey. I've added David Zhang's website to my blog list as he plans to update it regularily from Turkey. I was thinking of having a poll as to which Canadian will do best, but I figure there would only be about four votes anyway, so I'll just give my prediction. I think Richard Wang will have the best result in the under 12 division, followed by Eric Hansen in the under 18 division.

Why I Might actually play in a Tournament

2009-11-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted much lately because there has been nothing new going on in my life regarding chess but that might change. It looks like I might be able to play in the Southern Alberta Open this month. I guess I need to dust off the old chess board and study an opening or two. To any future opponent wondering which openings I am studying, let me just say it's the Hammerslong as black and white - I swear.

The only reason I am contemplating playing is because I can combine it with a business trip. If not I would not consider it.

In other current chess events (concerning people who might actually read this blog):

Keith MacKinnon won the Edm International Qualifier last weekend and will be playing GM's and IM's in Dec. It will be tough but should be a good learning experience for him.

Eric Hansen and Kevin Me are going to the World Youth Championship. Good Luck!

Aaron Sequillion. It's hard to understand Aaron's results. When I played him a couple of years ago he was under 1800 and I was able to beat him. After that he went on a tear and climbed over 2100 and looked like he was on his was to becoming a master but since then he's plummeted to back under 2000.???? I hear the best way to improve your rating is to play alot and I guess the easiest way to lose points is to play too much.

Rick Pederson has been going the other way. He was under 1854 and in less than a year has climbed to an all time high at 2126. I played him at the Sask Open when he was 1908. I could have won that game if I saw a simple tactic but missed it and went on to lose in the final round so he came second instead of me.

Robert Sasata. Hasn't played much lately. I thought he might play in the Canadian Open this year but he didn't. The Edm International still has one spot open. I'm sure he could give them some tough opposition.

Looks like Jamin Gluckie hasn't played much lately either and has even let his CFC membership expire.

Why I'm not playing in the Alberta Open

2009-10-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

It seems like all my posts now are excuses as to why I'm not playing in a tournament. The Alberta Open is the most prestigious swiss event every year. This year it is being held at the Edmonton Chess club and surprisingly it appears that there will be less than 40 participants. The last time I played in it was two years ago at the West Edmonton Mall Hotel. I brought the family with me and I enjoyed it very much. I was hoping to play again this year, but after bringing the family to the Canadian Open earlier this year I couldn’t justify the expense of another chess excursion. With a $40 entry fee, $100 for gas $250 for hotels, plus food the total cost would have been about $500 and with Christmas approaching I figured there would be a better use for that money. On the positive side at least I do have a desire to play unlike when I passed on the Med Hat Open.

From of the pre-registered players list, I will pick IM Ihor Nester 2375 to win. I have never seen him before but he has the highest FIDE rateing and the only IM in the event, so he should be the favourite. If Eric Hansen was playing I would have picked him but it appears he is skipping the tourney. My other prediction would be that the junior players will perform better than their ratings. That of course is not a big stretch since they always seem to be underrated.

Another junior player who is over performing is wonderkid Magnus Carlsen who just demolished the opposition at the Nanjing Spring Chess tournament. I had predicted that he would be the highest rated player before the end of the year but he appeared to be quiet for most of the summer. Then it was revealed that he had been training with none other than Kasparov! If Carlsen’s first tournament after the training is any indication then Kasparov is worth every penny of the millions he is being paid. After this event Carlsen will join the elite club of players who have broke the 2800 rating barrier and should be #2 behind Topalov.

Why I'm not playing in Medicine Hat this Weekend

2009-09-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

All year I had plans of playing in the Medicine Hat Open. Last year when I went to this tournament I had a great time. The event is well run and very friendly, plus I have a close friend who lives in Med Hat who I rarely get to see. The tournament this year looks like their best and strongest ever. Having two GM's will always bring the strong players out of the woodwork. So why didn't I go?

Although I had intentions to play this weekend for some time, after playing in the Canadian Open my desire for chess has waned and it hasn't come back yet. August is also my busiest time at work with our annual budget preparations, and I haven't had any time for chess. Needless to say with no time and little desire I haven't played much and I certainly haven't studied anything. I don't think I'm in very good form at this moment and the few online speed games I have played seemed to indicate as much as I dropped 150 points in not many games.

Another thing that always has to be considered before going to a weekend tournament is family harmony. One time I made the mistake of going to a tournament when my wife thought I had better things to do that weekend. That is a mistake I don’t want to repeat. My wonderful wife is very understanding of my hobby, but sometimes she can't understand the attraction that chess players have to spending valuable time and money, crowding into small rooms for hours at a time, and putting themselves under enormous mental strain all for the chance to win a few measly rating points and maybe, if you’re lucky, sharing in a three way tie for a prize that will not cover your gas back home.

Right now, I'm not sure when I will play in a tournament again. The Alberta Open is always a good tourney but it’s on the thanksgiving weekend and I don’t think I want to leave my family at home then and I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a hotel.

My prediction for the Medicine Hat Open is a two way tie between Hansen and one of the GM’s

Chess 960

2009-08-27T21:53:00.000-07:00

I have just played my first chess960 games on chesscube. I must say it was fun. I won a bunch in a row but then lost several to finish up the session. The random placement of the pieces was disconcerting at first but knowing my opponent was in the same prediciment made me feel somewhat better. It was somewhat like being driven blindfold to an unknown location and then trying to find your way home or at least finding your way to something that looks familiar. All the positions reached during the game were completely new and the mates were unique and somewhat amusing.

I haven't played much chess lately due to a very hectic work schedule. My company always does it's budget in August and it means long days and working weekends for much of the month. Another reason might have been chess burn-out. After playing in the Canadian Open I didn't have much interest for several weeks. I think the chess bug is coming back though, as I am now I thinking about events I might want to enter. The Medicine Hat Open looks very interesting and also The Alberta Open and WBX event are appealing.

My kids have recently shown interest in chess again, especially my daughter. On Monday we had to make a trip into Edmonton for an appointment and I put them in a half-day of the week long chess camp that is going on this week. I hope they continue to show interst.

Canadian Open - Look Back

2009-07-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

Well the Canadian Open has now been rated and, as I expected, I lost a bunch of points. I had estimated I would lose over 50 but it ended up being only 41. I guess I hadn’t accounted for participation points. You can click on this link to see the cross table. Several people had outstanding tournaments including co-winner IM Proper, Jonaton Tayer, etc. Several others (including myself) were disappointed with their results.

One of the complaints about the tournament that has come up lately was the complete lack of GM and IM Norm possibilities available at the tournament. This opportunity is a major attraction to higher rated players when they are considering whether to enter a tournament. Two decisions by the organizers affected the possibilities of norms being achieved: First the tournament was 9 rounds and not 10 rounds; and secondly they decided not to use accelerated pairings in the first two rounds. There are advantages and disadvantages to both of these decisions.

Years ago the Open used to be ten or eleven rounds with two rounds on some days but it has been reduced to 9 rounds lately. The current organizers decided to stick to the 9 round format. With only one round per day it produces a more relaxed schedule and allows for more side activities such as simuls, lectures, blitz and bughouse tournaments.

Accelerated pairings ensure that the high rated players play against other high rated players more often and thus are more likely to have at least 7 opponents who are FIDE rated as is required for norms. They can though cause even more volatility in pairings for middle ranked players in the middle rounds. By not using accelerated pairing it gave more average players, like me, an opportunity to play against one of the star GM’s and IM’s. This might have been an incentive for some average players to sign up but I’m not sure if that small benefit made up for the loss of Norm seekers who were discouraged from participating.

My recommendation would be to go back to having a 10 round tournament and have two rounds on the second day of the tournament. This should allow norm and still give ‘patzers’ their moment of glory. On day two the rating differences are usually still great enough that the top GM shouldn’t have two much of a struggle knocking off their challengers. If future organizers insist on sticking to the 9 round format then I believe accelerated pairings must be used. Otherwise their will be a lot of strong players who might wonder if it is worth their while to play.

I’ve had some time now to reflect back on my play during the tournament and I see that I did play rather well for a good portion of most of the games. The only game where I feel I was completely outclassed was round 1 against IM Quan, and that is to be expected. In the other two games I lost against higher rated opponents I achieved a reasonable position but then missed tactical shots that destroyed my position. In my 6 games against lower rated opponents I always achieved superior positions but then in all but two of the games lost focus and let my advantage slip away. There were times when I became bored and seemed too lazy to bother calculating and assumed that if I just played logical moves that I would turn my advantage into a win. Right now I’m at a loss as to how I can fix this defect in my game.

I had three goals coming to Edmonton. One was to play many different openings and in fact I did play a different opening in every game. This may seem like a foolish goal to have, as one should probably focus on one or two core openings, but I don’t think this strategy hurt me during the tournament as I did not have any really bad opening positions. If I was doing better in the tournament I might not have followed this strategy as much but when I was having poor results I felt I had nothing to lose. My other two goals were to score at least 50% and to perform above 1900. I felt they were modest goals that were achievable but of course I did not come close to achieving either.

Canadian Open - Day 9

2009-07-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

The final round saw exciting battles on the top 7 boards to decide who would be the Canadian Open Champion.

1 GM Alexei Shirov (6.5) - GM Eugene Perelshteyn (6.5) (0.5 - 0.5)

2 IM Irina Krush (6.5) - GM Michael Adams (6.5) (0.5 - 0.5)

3 IM Edward Porper (6.5) - GM Surya Ganguly (6.5) (1 - 0)

4 FM Theo Hommeles (6.5) - GM Mark Bluvshtein (6.5) (0 - 1)

5 FM Jonathan Tayar (6.5) - GM Xue Zhao (6) (0.5 - 0.5)

6 FM John C Yoos (6) - FM Eric Hansen (6) (1 - 0)

7 Victor Plotkin (6)- GM Hua Ni (5.5) (0 - 1)

So in the end it is Canadian GM Bluvshtein and new Edmontonian IM Proper who are 2009 Canadian Open Champions!!!

I played former CFC Prez, and new Treasurer, Maurice Smith and my game included two bad mistakes by me. I played the Sicilian and blitzed out the first dozen moves rather quickly even though we varied from the main theory quite early. I could have won a pawn at this point but played the wrong move so we remained quite even. Then I gradually took control and had a dominating position when I made one of my worst blunders. I wasn’t even thinking about what he might be threatening and moved my king to f1 and allowed him to capture on f2 with a check and fork my bishop. It should have cost me the game but he couldn’t find a way to win. He gave up his bishop to try to get a mate with the two rooks but when that wasn’t possible he conceded a draw. If I was him I would have played on because he definitely could have won a pawn or two and then pressed for a win.

In the tournament as a whole, my performance was horrible (Rp=1718) and I should drop about 50 points based on my results. Two of my opponents were provisionally rated so the actual numbers might be slightly different. I will probably make an entry later in more detail later on my mistakes.

Overall the quality of the tournament was excellent and the organizers should be very proud. Everything went off without a hitch, or at least that’s how it seemed to an average player like me. The rounds started on time; the facility was excellent, and all the players behaved with sportsmanship. It has been over 20 years since I last participated in a Canadian Open and even though I didn’t perform well, I enjoyed myself, and might consider doing it again.

Canadian Open - Day 8

2009-07-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

The four leaders with 6/7 points met on the top two boards today and the result was a draw on both boards.

1 GM Mark Bluvshtein - GM Alexei Shirov 0.5 - 0.5

2 GM Michael Adams - IM Edward Porper 0.5 - 0.5

That gave the ten players tied a half point back a chance to grab a share of the lead and each and every one of the games were decisive.

3 GM Hua Ni - FM Theo Hommeles 0 - 1
4 GM Surya Ganguly - IM Zhe Quan 1 - 0
5 IM Artiom Samsonkin - FM Jonathan Tayar 0 - 1
6 GM Eugene Perelshteyn - GM Anton Kovalyov 1 - 0
7 IM Dmitry Zilberstein - IM Irina Krush. 0 - 1

That leaves 9 players tied for the lead going into the last round! Should be interesting. Here are the pairings for tomorrow:

1 GM Alexei Shirov (6.5) - GM Eugene Perelshteyn (6.5)
2 IM Irina Krush (6.5) - GM Michael Adams (6.5)
3 IM Edward Porper (6.5) - GM Surya Ganguly (6.5)
4 FM Theo Hommeles (6.5) - GM Mark Bluvshtein (6.5)
5 FM Jonathan Tayar (6.5) - GM Xue Zhao (6)
6 FM John C Yoos (6) - FM Eric Hansen (6)
7 Victor Plotkin (6)- GM Hua Ni (5.5)

After my loss yesterday I dropped to board 67 and was paired against Kristof Amudson (1601). I wanted a win really badly so I played the Kings gambit. Neither of us played the opening very well but I emerged with an advantage and eventually won a pawn. I desperately tried to hang on to my extra pawn so that I could win in the endgame and in doing so put both my rooks in passive position and then put my king on a precarious square with mating threats all around. I could not find a way out and had to give up the exchange and soon after he won a couple of pawns and forced a trade of the remaining pieces. End result I lost. I'm going to lose quite a few points this week.

Canadian Open - Day 7

2009-07-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

Another quick game today but unlike yesterday this one was not in my favour. My opponent was Brad Willis (2072). I prepared all day to play the Sicilian but he opened with 1.d4. I didn't play the opening very well and had to give my self doubled isolated 'e' pawns but my position still looked very drawable. We reached a critical point but I didn't give it the time it deserved, plus I completely miscalculated a fairly simple position. I probably could have saved the game if I gave up my N for two passed pawns but instead I saved my N but gave him 3 passed pawns that were unstoppable. Right now I have no idea what I was thinking for those several moves and I'm very disappointed in my play. My performance during the whole tournament has been less than I hoped.

The top board tonight saw maybe the most important game so far. The French Defense of the sole leader, GM Ganguly, was demolished by Shirov.

GM Adams defeated GM Zhao to join Shirov at the lead.

Board 2 saw a draw between GM Ni and Kovalyov.

Canada's GM Bluvshtein defeated FM Panjwani and Alberta's IM Proper defeated GM Mikhalevski to also join the leaders at 6/7.

Canadian Open - Day 6

2009-07-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

The day was supposed to start with a trip to the Klondike Days Parade with the family but I slept in, and then with the traffic and parking problems plus not knowing my way around the city we never made it. I was not too disappointed as I hate standing around watching parades anyway, but I think I will have some making up to do. It was nice to finally have a good night of sleep.

Today I was paired with Philip Santelices (1629). I played 1.d4 and was pretty happy with the way the opening went. He traded his 'c' pawn for my 'd' pawn and then I was able to apply pressure down the 'd' file. After 14...b4 we reached the following position and I saw that if I traded of on b4 and then took the Night on f6 I could ignore the pin and play 17.Nd5! He played 17...BxQd2 and made the game easy for me but if he took the N with 17...exd5 I would have a very strong position and his pawns would be horrible.

Other games this evening include:

Alberta's IM Proper on board 1 vs. GM Shirov.

Sask's Keith MacKinnon on board 7 vs. GM Zhoa.

China's Ni vs. Canada's GM Bluvshtein.

My game ended early tonight so I don't know any results. Here is Cheif Arbitrator Vlad and Alberta's True "Road Warrior" Roy Yearwood. Notice Vlad is wearing his own jacket today.

Canadian Open - Day 5

2009-07-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

It was a good day for young Canadian masters. First Fm Eric Hansen won the blitz championship beating out a couple of Grandmasters and IM's. This is not a complete surprise as I hear his online blitz rating is over 2700. I guess he is hoping for the triple play by winning the bughouse, blitz and regular tournament.

In the regular tournament two young Saskatchewan players scalped IM's today. Keith MacKinnon (2241) beat IM Mulyar (2440) and Kevin Me (2124) beat IM Piasetski (2404).

At the top boards there were more GM clashes and other exiting games.

One of the most exciting games was the 137 move marathon between FM Michael Langer and GM Xue Zhao. At one point Zhao borrowed the arbitrators jacket because she was shivering with the air conditioner on.

My game was disappointing. I was playing against Ken Frier. His rating is 1450 but it is only provisional and he did draw with a master in his second round. I played a lifeless opening and reached an equal middle game. At one point I had to choose between trading my bishop for his night into a dead drawn position or take some risks to try to create winning chances. I chose the later and he missed the proper refutation so I reached a winning position with a pawn up and a B vs. his N with pawns on both sides, but I couldn't find the winning plan. In the position below I played 51...Bg5 to protect the f pawn when I should have went after the knight with 51...Ka4. End result was a draw.

Canadian Open - Day 4

2009-07-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Once again the day started out with a shopping excursion through the City Center Mall. The kids had to find a specific Playstation and Wii game but despite endless searching we were unable to find them. They were able to find something else to spend Daddy's money on. I stopped by the tournament room to check out the Bughouse event but was surprised by the low turnout. Some people were scared away but the $20 entry fee. I had no intention to play as I find this chess variant rather confusing. I believe Eric Hansen and Dale Hasseal won the event. Here is a pic of them warming up before the event.

Round 4

The first battle of GM's took place with Shirov vs Zhao (draw)

I thought Eric Hansen had a good position against GM Mikhalevski but he ended up losing.

I was paired up against a WIM, Alisa Melekhina (2315) in this round. I think I played my best game of the tournament up until I stopped calculating tactics near the end. I tried to book up on her but surprisingly I could find few games. She played 1...b6 so my prep was useless and so I tried to play basic opening moves, control the center, develop pieces, etc. I think I had the better position into the middle game. We reached a position with a closed center and she was trying to break through on the Queenside. I thought I could temporarily sac my 'a' pawn and give her doubled 'a' pawns and then later on win back at least one of her pawns. If I could grab the second I thought I would have winning chances. At this point we were getting close to the time control and I was relying more on positional analysis rather than calculating tactics and unfortunately I missed a nice tactical shot she had available. She gave up her 'a' pawn but when I took it she won an exchange and left me in a horrible position. Soon she forced the exchange of queens and won my knight. I enjoyed the game even though I lost.

Game to follow:

4 GM's and one FM remain perfect with 4/4 followed by a bunch of players at 3.5.

Canadian Open - Day 3

2009-07-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

I had a hard time going to sleep last night after my game, wondering how I let it slip away and to make matters worse today I realized that I wasn't in time trouble during the game like I thought. The time control is 40 moves/90min then another 30 min for the game with 30 sec increments. I thought it was game in 90 min with increments. If I realized that last night I would have not rushed my queen exchange and might of won instead of drawn.

Today for me started with swimming with the kids at McEwan Colledge and shopping at Kingsway Mall. After that I was able to take in GM Mark Bluvshtein's lecture on endgames. I really enjoyed it. The annual AGM of the CFC started today also but although I was curious what would happen I didn't take that in.

Some of the top boards

Shirov won over Piasetski but Pechenkin managed to draw Adams!

Hansen beat MacKinnon for the seventh straight time.

Kovalyov beat Haynes.

I played Zhonlin Huang, a young kid who played much better than his rating (1515) or age would indicate. I made a mistake when I tried to force something on move 32. I saw the correct reply right after I made my move, but luckily he did not, and I was able to win a pawn and then converted the bishop vs. knight endgame.

Canadian Open - Day 2

2009-07-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

The morning started with the simul against England's GM, Michael Adams (2699). I asked Jamin what he played just before the simul started and Jamin said Adams plays everything but mostly 1.e4. Sure enough as he went down the line making his first move it was mostly e4 with an occasional d4 of Nf3. I was hoping for e4 but got d4 instead. I thought about playing the same gambit I played yesterday against the IM but instead I decided to play something more reliable. Rybka says I was equal for the first 12 moves and then gradually he started to get an advantage. His advantage stayed within a pawn until I missed a good move on move 25. I thought I saw a good unexpected tactical reply where I would delay recapturing until after I played it and he immediately played the winning move which attacked my queen and won the piece. I played one more move and resigned on move 27. Overall he had 26 wins and 1 draw. Irina Krush played a simul at the same time and won all of her 12? games.

Round 2
My opponent was Howard Du from Nova Scotia. I couldn't prepare anything as I had no idea what he played so we visited some friends in the afternoon. When the round started he played 1...b6 and somehow we ended up in a Queens Indian Defense. I had to spend a lot of time in the opening but ended up winning a pawn and having a good attack down the open h file. Rybka says I had a 1.5 advantage but he had some counter play. With less than 15 min left I saw a way to force a trade of queens and I thought I could grind down a victory but it was a big mistake and suddenly I was losing. He won back his pawn and now his passed pawn was stronger than mine. We both had rooks but my bishop was bad vs. his good knight. I struggled for some time wondering if I could draw. He couldn't get too adventurous with his knight or my passed pawn would threaten to queen but I felt he was winning and he must have felt the same way as he refused my draw offer. He was trying to find a winning method when he allowed me to repeat the same position twice. I played another move hoping he would let me repeat again and sure enough he did. I claimed the draw but he was adamant that it was not repeated 3 times so we had to get the head arbitrator. Vlad came and replayed the game and stated it was a draw, but I still think Howard wasn't convinced. When I put it into Rybka it confirmed the 3 repetitions and it gave the position as equal 0.00 but it still looked dangerous to me. I have never had that experience before where I needed to have an arbitrator confirm a draw. It was a bit uncomfortable but I knew I was right.

Position after 54.g3

2009 Canadian Open 2.pgn

Canadian Open - Day 1

2009-07-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the Delta Hotel for the Canadian Open just in time to take in GM Shriov's Lecture. It was interesting but not very helpful in terms of learning something new.

Round 1
I was desperately hoping I would be paired with a GM for the first round and it looked like I had a good chance but when the last minute entries were added and the pairings were made I had dropped to board 15. Still, I got to play my highest rated opponent ever, IM Zhe Quan (2465).

The game was broadcast on the internet on the monroi site. Weeks ago I decided that I was going to play a gambit line in the 1st round if I had a high rated opponent. I figured I was going to lose anyway so I might as well have fun. I had several things planned as white but not so much as black. I had black and when he played d4 I went into the Budapest Gambit and played a line where I give up a pawn but he has double isolated c pawns. I wasn't able to get any play for my pawn and had to trade off pieces to prevent being mated. Eventually he pushed his passed pawn and won the game. Not a surprise but fun anyway.

2009 Canadian Open 1.pgn

Since I didn't get to play a GM today I signed up for the GM Adams simul tomorrow morning. Wish me luck I'll need it.

2009 Battle on the Border

2009-06-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

My first impressions of the weekend. I will add more later including my games and some pictures I took.

The third annual Battle at the Border Tournament was held over this weekend. As usual I waited until the last minute before preparing, but when I tried to look at some of my previous games on Thursday, I discovered that my database had been corrupted and I lost all the games I played in the last 18 months. So my new plan was to try out in long games a couple of gambit lines I been playing online in speed games.

Round 1. My first game was against a very young and precocious kid from Saskatoon, Jason Xiou (1147). He played very well and I think I underestimated him a little. I played too aggressively at one point and was certainly worse until he made a blunder. He then blundered several more times and I won soon after.

Round 2. I took a bye so that I could host a birthday party for my wife. We had a great time. I boiled some lobster, my father-in-law made some traditional Philippino food and we drank and played majong til midnight.

Round 3. I was paired with another underrated junior again (Josh Timm) but when I got to the site in the morning I noticed there was an error in the pairings. When it was corrected my pairing was changed to R Shanker (1804) He passed on my gambit line and I reached a nice position and a pawn ahead but then I made some errors and ended up with tripled isolated pawns. I choose to play for activity in a double rook ending and managed to draw.

Round 4. Art Milne (1873). We reached a position that I think was favourable to me but very closed. I was looking to sacrifice to open up his king but never found the right time. We traded off several pieces and then he offered a draw. I was way behind on time so I accepted but I believe it was a draw anyway.

Andrew Boik won with a perfect 4/4. Roger Blum had a great tournament and came second with 3 points.

Preparation for Tournaments

2009-06-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well I’ve booked my hotel in Edmonton for the Canadian Open next month, and I’m registered in the Battle at the Border in Lloydminster this month. Now the only thing left to do is a little bit of preparation. I had hoped that I would have started before now but as usual I just can’t seem to find the time.

The one thing that I know I need to study is openings, but I’ve been struggling with which method is the best for me. I have used opening books exclusively for many years but found they can be very dry.

Lately, I also have looked at several opening DVD’s. While waiting at the Edmonton chess club, while my kids have played in scholastic tournaments, I had a chance to preview several of the Roman’s Lab videos. I was less than impressed with GM Dzindzichashvili’s style and lack of enthusiasm displayed in the DVD’s. I have also had a chance to watch a couple of the Foxy DVD’s at the Calgary Chess club. These I found much more to my liking. The enjoyment of the presenter in the lines was unmistakeable and made me eager to try out the lines recommended. I “copied” down some of the info, but when I looked at some of the same lines with Rybka, let’s just say that I was disappointed with the quality of the analysis. Even so I did get something out of them and have played those lines in many online blitz games since.

The most time efficient method for me might be to go through the opening book in a chess program, concentrating on lines that might be encountered, then to play through some database games in those same lines. I don’t know how much time I will have to do that before I play.

Another poll is open dealing with the BATB tournament.

Who Will Be Alberta's First Grandmaster

2009-05-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe Alberta has ever produced a grandmaster. Walter Holowach may have been the strongest Alberta player relative to his contemporaries, having played in Olympiads, but that was before international titles were handed out so freely. He was a very accomplished individual in many area's including music and chess. A brief summary of his long life taken from the "Canadian Chess" website is below.

Walter Holowach (1909-2008)

Doctorate in violin/viola, Vienna Conservatory
Played first violin, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Long-time violinist Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; Concert Master 1957-8
Taught music, conducted; founded Empire Opera Company
Code breaker during World War Two
Manager, family business Expert Dyers and Cleaners Ltd.
Represented Canada at Olympiad 1939
Alberta Champion 5 years in a row without losing a game 1946-50
Sources: obituary; Contented Knights 1949-50

I have a couple of books from his chess library at home. Actually my kids won them as door prizes at a scholastic chess tournament after he had donated his collection to the Edmonton Chess Club. One of the books is kind of outdated but the other is a puzzle book so it will never go out of date.

So the question is: who will be the first Alberta Grandmaster. My first poll on this website deals with this topic and I've listed who I think has the best chance to acomplish this feat. My vote was for Eric as I think he has the best combination of skill, desire and drive, plus he has youth on his side and should continue to improve.

Please vote. If you have an opinion or you think I've missed sombody you can leave a comment here (negative comments will probably be deleted).

ps. Eric Hansen won as I expected followed by Richard Wang.

How Can Chess be Fixed

2009-05-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Recently I was laid up for more than a week with flu symptoms. I don’t believe it was “swine flu” but then again I never went to get tested . I just stayed home from work and watched daytime TV while playing some very poor online speed chess. It’s amazing how quickly you can drop 150 points when you can’t think clearly.

I also had a chance to ruminate on another recent article at Chessbase regarding the problems facing classical chess and the changes that some people feel are needed to revitalize it. Here is a link to the article
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5372

In summary the problem are as follows:
1. Drawing Tendency: Chess is a drawish game when played by very good players.
2. Lack of Sponsorship: Chess does not attract the same level of sponsorship as many other professional sports do.
3. Computers and Cheating: Self explanatory
4. Opening Theory Too Advanced: Theory has perhaps advanced too much leaving less room for creativity than say 50 years ago. Many opening variations have been analyzed to death.
I would add a fifth problem. 5. White has an inherent advantage due to the first move.

Some of the proposed solutions are as follows:
Bigger Board and More Pieces: This was Capablanca's proposal, a fresh start. This is the most radical solution. The problem is, it is difficult to agree on the new rules..
Random Start Position: This was Fischer's proposal, which enjoyed a modest success. The problem is, not all starting positions offer the same chances to both players. Some gives white a huge advantage, some are too drawish.
Random First Moves: This is Dvoretsky's proposal, which has the same problems with Fischer's.
Sofia Rule: This is a modest change that forbids draws by agreement. It enjoyed some success, but it addresses only the problem of grandmaster draws.

My thoughts on these issues are as follows

1. I am not bothered as much as some others with the drawing percentage of chess. It has to be accepted that draws are a likely outcome of high level grandmaster chess. (which makes Fisher’s run through the candidates series to the world championship in 1972 even more remarkable). I also don’t have a huge problem with players agreeing to a draw. If a player thinks his best chance for a good result in a tournament is helped by a draw in a given game and he plays accordingly by choosing a safe but drawish opening line and his opponent feels the same way why should anybody force them to play in a way that may hurt their chances. My only concern would be if the game was prearranged or if both players were paid an appearance fee and then played a 8 move draw in front of spectators. In that case the Sofia rule seems like a modest rule change that helps reduce this problem.

2. The only way sponsorship in this country will improve dramatically is if another “Fisher” emerges from North America. Without that, I can only see chess attracting a much smaller funding base compared to other more traditionally “Canadian” activities. Maybe if chess was offered at all elementary schools it would have a chance to grow from the base up but that has been talked about for years and still I can’t see it happening any time soon.

3. Computer cheating never used to be a problem until just a few years ago when the chess programs became stronger than grandmasters and small enough to hide. Tournament directors will soon need to control entry and exit from the tournament hall. In the distant future, when I believe most humans have computer interfaces implanted in their brains I’m not sure how a TD would ensure they have been turned off.

4. Chess should be a game that promotes and rewards ingenuity and creativity but today’s ever-expanding depth and breadth of opening theory makes this harder and harder to produce at the board. At the grandmaster level, games sometimes go through thirty moves of theory before any new moves are played. In fact, at this point the whole middle game, where the most creative chess should be played, may have already passed. At the very top level nowadays all the novelties seem to have been produced by computers, or at least vetted by computers before being played in a tournament. Even at the club level, this abundance of opening theory means that average players must spend hours studying openings to be competitive. This discourages many casual chess players who don’t have the time for this study. In my opinion chess should not just be a memorization test followed by an endgame, but instead should be a creative struggle from start to finish.

May players including Fisher have come up with chess variants that try to solve one or more of these problems. My solution would be the following. The game would start with only the pawns on the board.

White’s first move would then be to place his king anywhere on the back rank. Black would follow placing his king anywhere he wanted. Then the Queens would be placed followed by the Bishops (one on light squares and one on dark squares), then the Rooks and finally the Nights. Black would then have the advantage of knowing the placement of his opponents pieces prior to placing his own pieces which would help offset the white first move advantage. I think my solution is very similar to “Transcendental chess” but some modification would be necessary to allow for a castling move. The advantage of my variant over others is that a traditional player could still set up his pieces in the classical arrangement and maybe his opponent would do likewise. Other players could become experts at their own designed set-ups.

I must say that I myself have never played any chess variant game (other than the one time 20 years ago when I tried Siamese chess, or is it called bughouse, but I found it too confusing). Maybe I will try out Fisher chess online and see how it goes.

I believe that someday there is going to have to be radical changes to chess laws but it has to come from the very top players and have FIDE support or it will never be accepted by the average chess player and general public.

CALGARY INTERNATIONAL
The Calgary international is taking place this long weekend and my prediction is that Kovalyov will win and Hansen will get at least an IM norm.

More Meteorite Stuff

2009-04-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog last year I had only planned to make entries about chess, mainly my own games but also other chess topics that might be of interest to local chess players. Over the course of time I only made a couple of exceptions. The first time was last November when I saw the sky light up when the meteor streaked across the sky above Lloydminster, and the second time was last Friday when I went on a meteorite search for pieces of that same meteor, and I guess this will be the third time.

Today I joined my second search party with the University of Calgary group. It was much busier today, mainly because it was a weekend. Last time I searched was on a Friday and there were only 5 of us trampling through the fields. Today Buzzard Coulee was teeming with activity. The U of C group itself had 15 searchers and other organized search groups, who had apparently made an agreement with a different land owner, were searching nearby. I also saw a couple of other searchers who looked like they were walking along the roadways or tracks. I’m not positive of the legalities, but it’s my understanding that: if it’s a public road, you can keep anything you find; if it’s a private road or property, it belongs to the land owner; if it’s train tracks I believe it belongs to the railroad company. I don’t think I would have searched with any other group than the U of C because a university institution has a level of status and a reputation for doing scientific research. They are not in it to make money.

Today I was only available to search in the morning because I had to be back in Lloyd in the afternoon for my son’s birthday party. The field chosen for us this morning was farther along the trajectory and as such was expected to produce fewer, but larger pieces. We split into two groups and proceeded to inspect every inch of the stubble field. Our determined efforts went completely unrewarded as both groups were unable to locate even one meteorite. I was a little disappointed as I headed back to town but I have another couple of days this month that I might be able to search so maybe next time will be better.

Later in the day my wife was telling me she was talking to a friend who asked her about our meteorite hunt. Initially she was confused about how this person knew we had gone searching, until they told her we were in today’s paper. Sure enough when we looked on the front page of the local paper there was a story about the meteorite search and my name and parts of my comments from last weeks blog were included. Here is a link to the web version of the paper. http://www.meridianbooster.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1538939

While there was a comment after my previous blog from the reporter saying he was looking for my thoughts, comments and pictures, I hadn’t seen them right away because I was in Calgary this week for meetings. After seeing his comment, I hadn’t replied yet, mainly because the Wednesday deadline he had mentioned had already passed and partly because I was reluctant to be in the paper. I mistakenly assumed that before my name and thoughts were used somebody would contact me. It’s a lesson for me that what I put on the web is no longer in my control.

I am now feeling a higher level of responsibility when I write something and am even more reluctant to express opinions that might be misconstrued. But hey, I am not a journalist and shouldn’t be held to that level of accountability. I just write what I see from my own perspective and I don’t necessarily verify every fact. In the past I have deleted posts after having second thoughts and my wife and kids have requested that I not write anything about them without their consent.

So take what I write for what it is, a blog, and I hope I haven’t offended anybody I have mentioned in any of my previous posts.

Chess in Calgary - Not

2009-04-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

I am in Calgary this week for meetings and planned on stopping by the chess club Tuesday night. Thay are in the middle of a team tournament but I was hoping I would be able to find somebody to play a few games. Plans sometimes get changed though and at 4:00 my co-workers and I decided that tonight would be a good time for "teambuiding". Teambuilding is just another word for going out for a few drinks. Needless to say by the time the teambuilding was complete it is too late and I am no longer in the mood or condition to play chess. I need some sleep.

Meteorites Under Lloydminster

2009-04-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

On Friday I had a chance to go search for meteorites just south of Lloydminster. Last November a large Meteor exploded over Lloydminster and lighted up the evening sky over all of western Canada. The University of Calgary, Department of Geology and Geophysics has been studying the event and has been organizing the search for pieces of the meteor. After a long break over the winter, they have just re-started their search efforts and were looking for volunteers. I eagerly signed up and surprisingly my wife also wanted to give it a try so on my Friday off, my wife and I travelled down to the Marsden area and spent the morning trudging though a farmer’s field looking at the ground for a rock that appears slightly out of place.

The method used is similar to CSI in that a line of searchers, separated by about four feet, walks back and forth looking straight down. When a suspected rock is spotted it is not touched, but tested with a magnet and tagged and bagged by the search leader. The two previous days had produced 15 and 31 meteorites but the field that was picked for search that day was a bit west of the main area and only one meteorite was found. Luckily I was the one who spotted the metallic rock.

The Geologist verified that it was indeed authentic and was also a nice sized meteorite. She estimated it to be over a hundred grams and worth over $3000! Unfortunately, we did not get to keep the rock as all rocks found belong to the land owner and University as per some agreement between them.

I enjoyed the experience as I have always been fascinated by astronomy and space. Now I can say that I found part of the large meteor I and many other saw on Nov 20, 2008. My wife did not have the same enthusiasm so we called it a day at lunch time - just as the team was about to move to a more promising search location.

All of the volunteers so far appear to have travelled large distances just to be part of the search. Two from Calgary, two from south of Saskatoon and two drove all the way from Ontario! For more info, or to volunteer you can go to the website set up by Dr Alan Hidebrand

http://www.ucalgary.ca/prairie_meteorite_search/

More Friendly Games

2009-04-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night Jamin and I got together again for a few more friendly games. I was eager to try out a couple of new openings I had looked up earlier in the week. Unfortunately I guess I hadn't looked at them enough and I lost all five games we played. Probably these losses can be attributed more to the 300 point rating difference than the openings but I find it discouraging when my opponent hasn't yet begun to think and I am struggling to remember the proper move order, or even worse have no idea what the correct move is and have to spend time trying to figure out a plan.

The only way to combat this deficiency in my game is to study openings and it would probably help if I narrowed my opening repertoire down to a couple of standard lines and concentrate on them. When I returned to chess 2 years ago I was basically a blank slate. I had forgotten almost all the opening theory I had learned in the 80's (most of which was probably outdated anyway). I have been reluctant to trim my opening tree up to now and in fact have been going out of my way to expand it. Partly because I felt that some of the openings I had been playing were not best suited for my style and I hoped trying out different openings would help me find some which were a more comfortable fit. The other reason is that I fear I will get bored with chess if I play the same openings over and over.

As the Canadian Open approaches I think I will soon need to choose my top openings and begin to study them more thoroughly if I want to achieve the level of play I think I am capable of.

Then again, there is the whole 1.d4! line that I have been itching to try, and wouldn't it be nice to play every game in the Canadian Open without repeating the same opening twice.

Chess vs Golf

2009-04-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

As I sit here watching the Masters on TV and the Alberta Closed broadcast on the internet, I am struck by the similarities between these two activities. Both are individual pursuits that require hours of intense concentration; both have star players that electrify events they enter; both have ordinary patzers/duffers that play just for enjoyment; and both have been somewhat of an addiction for me at different times in my life. In each activity every player has an indication of his strength. In chess it is a rating and in golf it is a handicap. This allows the player to track his improvement and judge his performance against his expected result in an event.

There are differences of course. One difference is the number of participants, especially in North America. In my small city on any summer day you can find hundreds of golfers whacking the ball around the course but you would be hard pressed to find anyone playing chess. Also chess is inherently a battle between two players, whereas golf, while it can be in a match format, is usually a one player vs. the field competition.

When I ask myself why I enjoy both of these activities, I think it is because they are both difficult and they allow me to challenge myself. They give me a concrete result of my efforts. In chess it's a win/loss/draw or a performance rating in a tournament. In golf it’s a round score or a tournament score. Plus I enjoy the fact that to improve at either activity you need to put in some effort and practice or study, and when I have the time I can enjoy the practice all most as much as I enjoy the competition.

ps. I see my pick to win the Alberta closed (FM Hansen) has just defeated the top seed IM Proper in round four so is back in contention and my pick to win the Masters (Phil Mickelson) has just birdied 6 holes in the front nine in the final round and put himself into contention.

pps. Golf update: Mickelson double boggied number 12 to drop back and couldn't pull close enough again to win. Angel Cabrera won a three way playoff.
Chess update: FM Hansen and IM Proper tird for first and will have a play-off sometime in the future.

Friendly Games

2009-04-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I Jamin and I got together for some quick games at BP's. I really enjoy these types of games, where you get to try out different things with no risk. It makes me long for a local chess club where that could be a weekly occurrence. There used to be a club here in Lloyd but it died off before I returned to playing chess. I did stop by the club twice when it was in operation and once played in simul against Dr Gibney and Kay Deshanse who played alternating moves. The simul was to raise interest in the club and I remember I played a KID and managed to get the lone win when Dr Gibney made an error in a drawn position. Maybe if I would have joined the club at that time I could have helped keep it alive but I had other activities on Thursday nights and didn't have the same addiction to chess that I have now.

I guess if I really need that kind of weekly over the board stimulation I should just pull up my britches and restart the club myself. I have thought about doing just that over the last year but I always come up with excuses not to do it. I think I am just scared of the commitment required because know from previous experience how much work that is. I keep hoping someone else will get the ball rolling and then I will jump in and help out.

As for the games we played last night, they were 15 min games with 3 sec increments. I played badly in the first game and lost quickly, then we had two draws - one of which was a blown win by Jamin, then I lost the last two games - one of which was a blown win by me. I got to play some new openings and enjoyed the evening.

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Chessmen

2009-04-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

I have finally decided that I will registrar for the Canadian Open in Edmonton this July. I have been fortunate enough to play in one other Canadian Open back in the late 80's in Sudbury, Ontario. I was able to go at that time because the PEI chess Association had managed to get a donation of airfare from CanadianAir for the winner of the PEI open. One other PEI player (David Sherren) came with me. Neither of us played as well as we hoped, but we both learned something from the trip and had a good time.

This time I want to play up to my expectations and have set a goal for myself in terms of performance. In preparation, I planned on playing in a few more chess tournaments in the coming months. My first target was to enter the sectional round robin Aaron Sequillion was organizing for A class players in Edmonton this May. It would have worked out perfectly for me but unfortunately when I tried to register he had just filled out the last open spots earlier that day. I told him to keep me in mind if anyone drops out, but I'm not counting on that.

Next, I looked at the Road warrior schedule for Alberta chess tournaments and saw that I might be able to play in the April Red Deer Open. I re-arranged some work and personal appointments to make that possible but, alas, once again my plans were foiled. Last night I was browsing the Alberta Chess Association Webpage and noticed a post that the Red Deer Open has been cancelled.

I feel like there is a curse on my chess plans. It looks like the only pre-Canadian Open preparation I may get is the Battle At The Border tournament in Lloydminster in June.

Chess websites/blogs

2009-03-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

I've added a couple more links to chess websites. One in particular is very good. http://www.jrobichess.com/ Apparently the writer is from Alberta and started playing chess only a couple of years ago when his young son wanted to play after watching "Searching for Bobby Fischer". There are alot of interesting videos, blogs, and reviews on his site. I don't know who he is, or where in Alberta he lives, other than it's far from a city.

The other is http://www.chessvideos.tv/ where there are chess instructional videos. Some are very good, others, not so good.

March of King Games

2009-03-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

Here are my games from the recent March of Kings tournament in Calgary. If you have any comments about the games don't be shy. Thanks to DJ for the pictures. Notice the top two seeds Eric and Nenad appear to have the same fashion stylist.

The tournament was larger than previous years and quite strong. Eric Hansen played along with many other + 2000 players. My first game was against the number two rated player in the tourney Nenad Ristovic (2312). I played a very good game against his French defence up until time pressure started to make me rush some of my moves. I think it was still fairly equal until move 30 then I made some small errors and then I blundered on my 36th move when I missed his simple intermesimo QxB+ move and resigned immediately down a piece.

Just before 6.c3

2009-03-14 r1 Ristovic.pgn

My second game was against Simon Ong (1638). He played the English and I responded with a Kings Indian Defense set-up. I haven’t played the KID for some time but this one developed just like I remember my old games from years ago where I storm the kings side. I was able to open the h file and get a strong bishop posted on f3 and finished it with a nice mate.

I'm just about to play 12.Rb8

2009-03-14 r2 Ong.pgn

Round three was against Roy Yearwood (2100??). The last two times as White against Roy he played 1…Nc6 and I was able to get very good positions but accepted his draw offers. This time he also played 1…Nc6 but unfortunately I played the opening badly and dropped the exchange. At this point I knew I had blown the game and thought about resigning but instead decided to play on since I had nothing else to do that evening. It’s funny when you have nothing to lose anymore, all the pressure of the game drops away and sometime in a more relaxed state you can see things more clearly. I think I played pretty well from this point on creating continuous little tactical threats around the board like a fly bothering a sleeping dog. Roy seemed to be on the defensive even with his superior piece strength and had more trouble finishing me off than he should have. Eventually though he found a tactic that ended my threats and at that point I resigned.

Once again the picture was taken while I was thinking. This time I'm going to play 5.Be2.

2009-03-14 r3 Yearwood.pgn

I withdrew in round four. Unfortunately the course that I had booked in for the 16-17th had been cancelled and I had a long drive ahead of me to get back to Lloyd for work on Monday morning. I planned on withdrawing in the last round but withdrew a round earlier when I saw I was going to be paired with an 800 player. That’s probably not the right thing to do but I didn’t have any enthusiasm for such a game Sunday morning, plus my kids kept telling me how much they missed me and wanted me to come home every time they called. My Rp was 1866 and I gained a big 4 points!

Eric Hansen won the tournament with 5/5. Jan Lazo, Jesse Beaudin, and Rick Pedersen tied for second 4/5. Young Lazo's performance was particularly impressive with victories over Ristovic, Yearwood and T. Kaminski.

The Calgary chess club is a nice facility but there are a couple of drawbacks. First the skittles room is at the back so visitors have to walk through the playing room to get to it. Secondly their H-A/C fan is very loud and goes on and off constantly during the games.

Marching of to Battle in Calgary

2009-03-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

As a married chess player with kids who lives far from any chess clubs, it is hard to justify using up my free time and money to play in weekend tournaments. I thought I found an ingenious solution when I noticed that the Calgary “March of Kings” tournament was scheduled for the 14-15th and I was booked for an industry course in Calgary on the 16-17th. I was quickly able to book myself into another professional development course that I had been considering taking on the 12th and then it only made sense to stick around Calgary for the weekend. I could explain to my wife that by sticking around Calgary for the weekend I would be saving 12 hours of driving time and since I could stay at my brother house and my company was paying for the gas the tournament was costing me practically nothing.

That is how I ended up getting permision to play in the March Of Kings. So I packed my bags and said good-bye and headed out of town with my favourite CD’s for the long drive. (As an aside, Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” Cd is even better than I remember after not having listened to it for a couple of years – great song writing.) While in Calgary I was able to see the chess statue that is right outside my companies office. It is called “The Winner” by J. Seward Johnson Jr. and was made in 1988. I tried to figure out the position on the board that the subject is staring at but unfortunately the piece has suffered vandalism over the years and many of the chess pieces are missing.

I will post my games with analysis later this week when I have time to look at them more closely. Eric Hansen won the tournament with 5/5.

RybkaSmidka

2009-03-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

Although I've been trying to blog on a regular basis and want to include more games, sometimes it's hard when you don't play and have nothing new to say about chess. But today I do have something because I played my first ever game against Rybka. I haven't played a game for a while but I didn't feel rusty because I have been looking at problems daily. It was a 5 min game and unbelievably I could have drawn if I had spent a little more time on my 26th or 27th move. Blacks 24th move was an error that should have cost Black the win.

Rybka1.pgn

The first time I played against Fritz10 I won and was very happy about that until I realized I had reduced it's strength to 2000. I must of done that to Rybka by accident - or it just made a mistake capturing on b2 w/Queen.

Tactics, Tactics, Tactics...

2009-02-22T14:14:00.001-08:00

What is chess? It is two opponents struggling to outwit each other by making a series of calculated moves. A player can’t control what moves his opponent will make, so really the only thing he can do is make the best possible decisions at every stage/move of the game. Each one of these series of decisions must be part of an overlaying plan that he has developed and must be based on which single move at that time gives the best practical outcome, while weighing numerous factors such as; strength of opponent, time available, tournament considerations (do I need to win this game to get first, second, top under 1900 etc…) The player must also bear in mind; his piece development, king safety, attacking possibilities, pawn structure, possible endgame positions, etc…. During a game a player will have to make anywhere from 10 to 100 such decisions depending on the length of the game, and sometime these decisions will need to be made under enormous time pressure. The one thing that is common to each one of these decisions is the consideration of tactics. While playing chess the player needs to be constantly analyzing all the available tactics at his disposal as well as all the tactics available to his opponent.

When I was younger, I always thought my use of the available tactics in a game was one of my strengths, but now that I am older, I found that I am not as sharp as I used to be, and tactics has become one of my weaknesses, especially when facing the higher rated competition I see at tournaments these days. In order to strengthen this facet of my game I have decided to spend less time worrying about openings and more time practicing practical tactics. With a busy family life, I have only a limited time available to study chess and studying openings usually requires an extended period of time to go through different themes and variations. Tactics, on the other hand, can be practiced in time periods as short as minutes. I started my new practice regime around Christmas. The most important aspect of my regime is that I must have tactical problems available to me everywhere I go; at home, at work, in the vehicle. These problems are usually photocopies taken from anyone of the many books available on chess tactics. If I have a few free minutes, whether it’s while I’m eating lunch, going to the bathroom, waiting at a drive through, etc., I can look at one or more problems.

Another thing that I have just discovered which should help strengthen a players tactical ability is the “Chess Tactics Server”. It is a web page which presents you with an endless series of chess problems to solve and then rates you based on whether you found the correct solution and how long it took you to find it. I can usually find the solutions but my time seems to always be slower than recommended especially at the start of a session. The server tracks your progress and improvement over time so you can see the benefit of practice. I’m not sure of their rating scale as my rating on the server is much lower than my CFC rating, but it is the relative improvement that is important, not the rating number itself. I will add a link to the “Chess Tactics Server” on the side of my blog.

I think I have seen improvement in my tactical ability after only two months of practice so I plan to continue with this study method for the foreseeable future. Plus I did play very well in my last tournament and I hope some of it was because of the tactics I saw during the games. The only true test is time so I will have to see how I play in future tournaments.

Chess Schedule Update

2009-02-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

Today we decided not to travel to Edmonton for the schoolastic regional chess tournament. Last weekend we went to Edm. for a kids chess tournament and two days ago we had to go to edmonton to pick up relatives at the airport so I was tired of the travel, plus the kids were not that eager to play. They have not been playing at home at all and when they enter a tournament thay have not done as well as they expected and have been disapointed. I'm not sure it's fair to enter them in tournaments if they have not been practicing.

When were were in Edm on Saturday I played one round in the John chess casual tournament against Rob McCullough. It was a Kings Indian Defense where I was lucky when he missed a strong Nb5 that would have won my c7 pawn and instead played Ne4. After that I was able to build up a strong kingide attack and win with a Queen and rook attack along the open h file. The kids also played and lost their games against stronger players than they are used to playing.

I am now planning on playing in the March of Kings tournament in Calgary next month. It coincides with a business trip that I can extend over the weekend. Unfortunately the Northern Alberta Open is still not likely for me but I will make a prediction of the results when I know the participants but right now I'm leaning toward Sasata to defend his title.

Blindfold Chess (Blindman vs. Machine)

2009-02-04T19:36:00.000-08:00

The recent publishing of the book “Blindfold Chess” has lead to discussion on the chesstalk server. It got me thinking about the blindfold games I played years ago. When I was young I tried it out just to see if I could do it. It really impresses non chess players but it is actually easier than it looks. The trick is to check in your head where all your pieces are every few moves. My blindfold chess games were not very strong, most of the time, but good enough to occasionally beat my Novag Constellation. I’m not sure if my games even qualify as “blindfold” because I did have an empty board in front of me.

I remember the first time I ever played a blindfold game. It was a Saturday night and the hockey game was on the television. I placed a board and pieces on the table in front of my dad and challenged him to a game. I sat down on the floor in front of him with an empty board to look at, and called out my moves to my dad behind me as the Toronto Maple Leafs played hockey in front of us. I sure it must of been the Leafs playing because if it was Montreal I would have been more interested in the hockey game. My father is not a strong chess player and I was able to beat him but it did require intense concentration, especially as the game moved out of the opening phase into the middle game. A rematch happened right away but I was not as successful as before because I quickly lost track of where the pieces were sitting and kept trying to make illegal/ impossible moves and left pieces hanging everywhere.

As blindfold chess was on my mind today, I took out the weakest computer I have, the Go 1650L, and tried to play a couple of games without the pieces. I wrote down the moves but didn’t look at the previous moves on the scoresheet during the game. The computer was set on level 3 so it would move in less than 30 seconds. I’m not sure what strength that equates to but I am sure it is fairly weak.

Here, for your amusement, are the two “blindfold” games I played today. Please don’t be too critical of my play.

blindfold_1.pgn

blindfold2.pgn

I wonder if playing blindfold chess will help improve a players regular chess by increasing their visualization skills. Has anyone else tried playing blindfold? What has your experience been?

2009 Saskatchewan Open

2009-01-26T12:34:00.001-08:00

Here are my initial thoughts on the tournament. I will update it later this week and post more comments and all my games. (Edited comment I've added my games now)

Round 1
Bye
I had known about the tourney for some time and had pre-registrared but I didn’t really decide until the vary last moment to go. I had been thinking about taking the whole family and staying in a hotel. That way the kids could play in the unrated active while I played in the Open section – heck, maybe even my wife could be convinced to play in the unrated. On Friday though, I found out the kids were not that keen on the trip, which is unusual since they always enjoy staying in a hotel. So it was on to option two, where I go by myself, but I would only do this if I had a place to billet, since I’m too cheap to spend $$ on a hotel by myself. Around midnight on Friday I sent an email to the organiser asking if there was a billet still available and went to sleep. When I woke up Tyler had replied they would find me a spot so I packed my bags and headed east at 10:00 am Alberta time. The first round had already started so I had to rush to make the second round. 0.5/1

Round 2
Black vs. Micah Hughey 2190
After arriving I had 15 minutes to see who my opponent was and prepare something plus I had to go to the bathroom. While sitting there thinking I decided not to play the line I had looked at two days earlier when I looked at my previous game with Micah and instead would play a Scandinavian. The reason was that with his superior opening knowledge, I thought it would be better to avoid openings with tons of theory and hundreds of possible traps to fall into. I have only played the Scandinavian in online speed games before and chose the Nf6 line rather than capturing with the Queen because it is rarer. It quickly transposed into a Caro-Kann and even though I was in uncharted territory for myself, I think I played a great game. I gradually took the initiative and I knew I had the advantage when he offered a draw. I didn’t think my advantage was decisive so I accepted because I felt a draw against a 2190 payer is a good start for the tournament. 1/2

2009-01-sask1 Micah.pgn

Round 3
White vs. Igor Moshynskyy 1490.
I didn’t know what opening to expect but he played a Philidor. He sacked a pawn in the opening but only had minuscule compensation for it. Eventually reached a B+6p vs. N+5p ending. Came up with a plan to exchange pawns on the kingside so that I could penetrate with my K and help my passed pawn queen. It worked but I’m not sure if it was the best plan as it’s usually better to have pawns on both sides of the board when you have the B. 2/3

2009-01-sask2 Igor.pgn

Round 4
Black vs. Jamin Gluckie 2103, (my nemesis)
Found out at the bar on Saturday night that he was my opponent.
I hadn’t prepared anything against Jamin before the tournament. In fact, the people that I did look at their games the week before (Keith, Roy, Micah) I either didn’t play or changed my mind at the last minute, so I spent 20 min preparing something before going to sleep. At the time I thought this was one of the best games I’ve played but after Fritz looked at it I'm not so sure.
Jamin missed a couple of moves. The first time was after several exchanges where I take a pawn rather than retreat my bishop. If he takes the B with his queen he’ll leave his own B hanging. He ended up with some compensation as my position was cramped and defensive for some time but eventually I was able to free myself and hang onto my extra passed pawn. The second time was my Qb3 move which attacked his a4 pawn but more importantly allowed me to put my rook on d1. When I saw this move I saw that if I wanted to I could force the exchange of all the major pieces and leave just a B+6p vs N+5p endgame. I thought my chances of winning that were pretty good and I would eliminate any chance of losing and remove the possibility of any perpetual checks with his queen so that’s what I did. I should have taken more time before exchanging the queens and I would have seen that he had no good move to make and I could have just started marching my passed pawn to it’s queening square. After exchanging queens I was unable to find a way to march my passed pawn with out letting his N ravage my other pawns so I repeated some moves and accepted his draw offer. After the game Jamin was pretty sure I could still win by triangulating my King and the manouvering him into Zugzwang I think he was right but I will check with fritz. 2.5/4

2009-01-sask3 Jamin.pgn

Round 5
White vs. Rick Pedersen 1908
Jamin decided to withdraw after the fourth round and that changed my pairing from a 1350 player to Rick. I also thought about withdrawing too but I have never played Rick before and since I was playing very well I figured I better keep going. I quickly looked up a few of Rick’s games on the database and saw that he played a Pirc frequently. I have never played against a Pirc before so I planned on playing solid moves and decided I would accept an early draw if it was offered. Unfortunately Rick was in the running for prize money and was out for my kings blood. I played too quickly, maybe because it was the final round, and too passively. Plus I made the mistake to castle long which didn’t match the passive way I played the game. I opened up a file for his rook and then was killed in a typical queen + rook + rook attack. I could see the end coming for quite a while but couldn’t find the moves to prevent it. The only good thing was that it was over quickly and I got home at a reasonable hour. 2.5/5

2009-01-sask4 Rick.pgn

Overall I was very happy with my play, except for the last game. I played new openings for me in almost every game and for the most part played them well. On the other hand I realized there is a couple of things I need to work on. I need to learn how to defeat high rated opponents when I have advantage. I am too willing to accept draws from experts in superior position. Plus I'm still too weak on my openings. Rp=1923 and new rating should be 1807 (back over 1800) but it should have been better.

Keith MacKinnon won the tourney with 4.5/5, his only blemish was aquick draw against his buddy Kevin in round 4. Therefore my first prediction for 2009 came true. A second prediction should also have come true if I would have been able to finish of Jamin when I had the chance. Rick Pederesen came clear second with 4/5.

Thanks to Igor for putting me up for the night and thanks to the Saskatoon Chess Club for hosting a very strong event.

Chess in 2009

2009-01-16T23:09:00.000-08:00

As the new year is a couple of weeks old, I figured I would blog on my chess plans for the year and my chess predictions for the year.

Possible Tournaments:

January 2-4 Schleinich Memorial Calgary
= Had time off but it was too cold and I had no desire to play
Jan 24 - 25 Saskatchewan Open Saskatoon
- Preregistrared. 50% chance
Jan 31 - Feb 1 Trumpeter Classic Grande Prairie
- Not Likely
Feb 16 Regional Chess Challange St. Albert
- If the Kids want to play.
Feb 28-March 1 Northern Alberta Open Edmonton
- Conflicts with a special family day
March 14-15 March of Kings Cal
- Not Likely
April 4-5 Lethbridge Open Lethbridge
- Not Likely
April 10-12 Alberta Closed/Reserves Cal
- Not Likely
April 18 Alberta Chess Challenge Finals Edm
- Kids might play if they qualify again
May 14-18 Calgary International Open Cal
- Not Likely
June 6 Alberta Active Championship Cal
- Not Likely
June 27-28 Battle at the Border Lloydminster
- Conflicts with a special family day but might play a few rounds.
July 11-19 2009 Canadian Open Edm
- Would love to play
September 6-7 Over/Under 1800 Cal
- Would only consider if I'm over 1800 at the time
September 19-20 Medicine Hat Open Med Hat
- Plan to play again this year
October 10-12 Alberta Open Edm
- Maybe
November 21-22 Southern Alberta Open Cal
- Not Likely
December 19-20 WBX Tournament (part of EICF) Edm
- Maybe

2009 Predictions

Anand will retain his World title throughout the year.

Magnus Carlsen will be the highest rated player in the world by the end of the year.

Topolov will beat Kamsky in the Challenger match.

Ivanchuk will win the Canadian Open (I don't even know if he's playing).

Kevin Spraggett will end the year once again as Canada's highest rated player. I hope he plays in the Canadian Open.

The CFC will lose money again this year, but only a small amount compared to the USCF.

Robert Sasata will finally lose a rated game. Looks like he hasn't lost in two years.

Eric Hansen will be an IM by the end of the year and will be Alberta champion again, if he enters.

Keith MacKinnon will win the Saskatchewan Open.

I will finally beat someone higher rated than me.

Man vs. Machine vs. Machine vs. ...

2008-12-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

Over the years I have owned several different chess computers ranging from the very weak to Grandmaster strength. All of the early ones were dedicated units. Some were new and some I picked up second hand.

My first was some kind of Boris Diplomat that looked something like this. It was a very weak unit as I remember and I would estimate it would be rated around 1000.

Soon moved on to a Chess Challenger such as the the shown here. I don’t remember if it was model 7, 8 or 9 but I remember it being around 1400-1500 and the green cover was always bubbling up and it became hard to play on. I don’t remember what happened to these first two units, but I no longer have them.

I figured I needed to upgrade to a higher strength machine. I remember that it was the first time I ever ordered something over the phone (this was before the internet was invented by Al Gore). I looked at all the options and decided to purchase a Novag constellation from The Canadian Chess Computer Warehouse in Montreal. I had never heard of the company before so I was nervous it wouldn’t arrive but it did. I must say I was very happy with my Novag Constellation for many years. I think it was advertised around 1800 and therefore higher then my rating at the time I got it. It was my steady playing partner for several years as my rating improved. One of it faults was that it never learned from its defeats so that once I beat it in a certain line than every time after that, if we entered that line, I could repeat the earlier game and beat it again. This forced me to vary my openings or I would end up replaying games over and over. Even though I quit playing chess for many years I brought it with me when I moved to Alberta. Recently I took it out of the box for the first time in ten years.

When I started playing chess again I soon realized I would need to purchase a chess program for my personal computer if I wanted to be competitive with everyone else. When I quit playing chess in the early 90’s I didn’t own a computer and I don’t think affordable programs were that strong at the time. The Fritz program seemed the best for me so I tried the Fritz10 program and I must say it is an incredible program. It’s good to have your own grandmaster to analyse positions. I can remember trying to study my games years ago on the Novag Constellation and while it would catch any major blunders, I sure I missed many finer points. I was hoping when I visited PEI this summer I would be able to find my old games and put them through Fritz and see what wes revealed, but alas they had been tossed a couple of years ago.

Last year the kids spotted a Go 1650L at a garage sale. I picked it up for a cheap price. I assume the 1650 is supposed to be it’s rating but it seems much weaker to me in the few games I’ve played with it.

Finally I bought the kids the Chessmaster game for the Nintendo DS system. It claims that the top rating is 1850 and from the few games that I played against it I think that that is probably close.

So what I’ve decided to do is hold a tournament with all the programs and computers I still have and see what happens. The competitors are as follows:
Fritz 10 (Set at 2000)
Fritz 10 (Set at 1900)
Chessmaster DS (1850)
Human (currently underrated at approx 1800)
Novag Constellation (1700-1800)
Go 1650L (1650? )

So far I’ve played a few of the games and ran into a few problems. First I had to chose a time setting that wouldn’t take too long but still give a good game. I chose an active time of 30min per player per game. Then I had to find the manuals for the Novag and Go units so I could set the times appropriately. I was able to find the Novag manual on the internet but the Go unit was a little harder as I could only find the Spanish instructions and had to translate them as best I could. The problem is the time settings are different for all of them. When I played the Chessmaster DS against the Novag it was a good game - Novag lost the exchange but was able to trap the Chessmaster Queen and win it for the Rook. So Novag was probably winning but when the Novag’s time ran out on the Nintendo unit Chessmaster claimed a win and that was the end of the game. I guess I will have to adjust the time settings on the DS and replay the game.

An interesting game shown below where I couldn’t figure out how to stop the connected passed pawns and win with my extra rook.

machine tourney terry-2000b.pgn

Edited comments: I just remembered that I have a couple of other chess playing computer programs. First is the Chess game for Playstaion. I can't recall playing a complete game against it but I doubt that it is very strong.

I also have the Chess Titans Program that came with Windows Vista on my laptop. I know that it has 10 levels and on the lower levels it is extremely easy to beat. I've beaten it on level 8 but haven't finished a game on level 10 yet.

And finally I forgot about the Chessmaster 9000 program that I picked up for $10 in the sale bin at Staples a coupl of years ago. It is a great program for choosing various computer opponents with different personalities and a wide range of strengths. I think I will add it to the tournament.

Edmonton Jr Tournament

2008-12-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the X-mas Jr tournament in Edmonton. Both my kids decided they wanted to play this weekend but it was a close call. One flipped a coin to decide and the other was influenced by the guaranteed door prize. They were both very rusty, not having played since last April, but both did OK and I don't think they will lose any rating points.

I've been wondering if I been doing the best things I can to help them improve. Should I show them openings, endgames, or tactics? Should I try to teach them in a formal way or encourage them to play online. I know I shouldn't tell them to play each other because that causes nothing but problems. Whenever I do try to show them something I'm not sure if I am doing it effectively. I always thought teaching would be an easy thing to do (you know, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach") but now I realize that teaching requires a special set of skills and a lot of patience. Plus, the best teaching only occurs when there is a corresponding strong desire to learn.

Random Chess Predictions:
1.FIDE will change the qualifications once again before the next world champion is decided.
2. The CFC will continue to alienate a large number of it's members no matter what they do.
3. Canada's next Olympiad team could be much stronger if GMs Nakamura, Spraggett, and Kovalyov are eligible and willing to play, but that won't happen.
4. E4 Effort will win the WBX Team tournament in Edmonton next weekend, even though another team with an IM and underrated juniors joined today. Board winners as follows
Board 1 winner IM Proper followed by Sasata and Hansen (he didn't get a IM title for nothing)
Board 2 winner Jamin Gluckie followed by Me (not me but Me, because I won't be there)
Board 3 Peter Thompson followed by Zeggelaar (both teams have stacked board 3)

Meteors over Lloydminster

2008-12-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

As anyone who seen the news in Canada in the last two weeks probably knows, there was a huge meteor event over Lloydminster Nov 20th. I have this Friday off and was planning on going Meteorite hunting near Lone Rock to find pieces of the huge fireball that light up the sky over most of western Canada last month. I was looking out my office window at the time to make sure my command start on my vehicle worked when the whole parking lot lit up as bright as day for a couple of seconds. One of the workers at my company was driving home through the area that evening and had his passenger windshield shatter when it happened, either from a fragment or the sonic boom. The scientists have located over a dozen pieces and have narrowed down the search area where they expect thousands of fragments landed. Unfortunately it finally snowed today, so I doubt if I would be able to find anything if I went.

View from Edmonton

View from closer vantage point

Fragment embedded in frozen pond

Random Chess thoughts: (since this is supposed to be a chess blog)

1. Vote for Eric. He deserves it. Canadian Chess Player of the Year

2. My kids said they want to play in the Edmonton Christmas Kids tournament. Maybe chess is not just for nerds.

3. The FIDE world championship cycle is becoming more of a joke every time they alter their rules. I would prefer the candidate matches that they had twenty years ago.

4. There is no need for drug testing in chess and I hope the GM's of the world follow Shirov and support Ivanchuk over FIDE. Although I'm sure some of my opponent are hyped up on energy drinks!

5. FIDE's forfit rule for being late is unreasonable. I know I've been late before and when my opponent is late I would still prefer to play the game rather than win by forfit.

Who are You?

2008-12-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

I was curious as to who, if anybody, was visiting my blog so I put a live trafic feed at the bottom. I was surprised to see so many hits from all over Canada and even one from Finland! I was sure there was only three other people who read my site but when "The Big Ape" from Med Hat left me a comment I went to his blog and copied his idea using Feedjit. If you visiting don't be shy about leaving a comment.

On to chess. This week I played a number of games against Fritz lowered to 2000. Almost all the games were horrible. I think when there is no ego to protect then a person’s game suffers. I'm sure many of my blunders would not have been made against a human opponent because I would have been more careful, so as not to be embarrassed. When the computer beats me I don't feel the same crushing level of defeat that a human opponent can inflict. I find the same thing happens to me in online blitz games when I have no fear of losing face because I don’t know who I’m playing. Two weeks ago I played a series of blitz games against an opponent and after losing the first game badly I played several really good games and won in spectacular fashion. My opponent strongly suggested my play from game 2 on did not seem “natural” to him and that I had some outside “help”. If this was a face to face game I would have been highly offended but as I did not know him, other than that he was from the USA, I could have not cared less what he thought and so I just left. I should try to find those game if I can and look to see if my play was really as good as he thought.
Here is my last Fritz active game played while my son was doing his Judo class.

2008-01-01 Fritz.pgn

I think I played the ending rather well but I did miss a winning plan that Fritz revealed when I looked at it tonight.

Fritz vs Chaisson

2008-11-26T22:09:00.001-08:00

This week while waiting for my daughter at the swimming pool I took the laptop and played four 25 min games against Fritz. To make it fair I lowered the computer's strength. According to the directions it's strength was 2000, but it didn't seem that strong to me. I drew the first game, blundered the second and won the third and here is the fourth.

Fritz2000 2008-11-25.pgn

Edited comment: I 've played several more games since then and I lost every one, most with stupid blunders. I seem to be playing like its a blitz game.

Chess Is For Nerds?!

2008-11-18T22:25:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my company held it’s Christmas party in Edmonton at the Cree River Resort and Casino. There happened to be a kid’s chess tournament going on that Sunday at the Edmonton Chess Club and I figured my two kids would enjoy playing in it so I signed them up. They had always wanted to play in other tournaments in Edmonton and sometimes last year we specifically drove into Edmonton for some of these junior tournaments. I was surprised when they both told me that they didn’t want to play chess anymore and that chess was for nerds! ........Ouch. I didn’t want to push them into the tournament, so we spent the afternoon wandering around the mall and then driving home.

How did chess get such a bad rap? Two years ago they wanted to play in tournaments all the time and they did very well. My daughter had a scholastic rating that put her in the top 10 in the country for girls in grade 4 and my son came second for grade 2 at the Alberta Provincial Chess Challenge. Now they don’t want to play. I know this is partly because they didn’t do so well in their last tournament, which was the 2008 Alberta Chess Challenge. My boy was very sick that day and was so drugged up on cold medicine he couldn’t stay awake between rounds, and my daughter got very discouraged after a loss and played badly. A bad result can be very discouraging, I know it is for me, but this is not the only reason for their change in attitude. I think the main reason is the way our society puts down intellectual endeavours. Children pick up on this very quickly. It’s not that they don’t want to play chess, it’s that they don’t want their friends to know they play chess. Chess has been branded with the nerd label and apparently being good at chess gives you zero social status.

Being good at sports on the other hand is cool, but I guess this has always been the case. I can remember growing up my two older brothers were both gifted athletes and received the rewards and accolades that come with that, such as popularity and an attractive status to the opposite sex. I loved sports just as much, but being only average athletically; I never received the same rewards. Still it seemed to me that being an average hockey player was better than being a good chess player and if someone asked me what I did for fun I would list the sports I played rather than chess. This attitude is still engrained in me. Recently when I was going to Medicine Hat for a tournament and I was asked at work what I was doing for the weekend, I thought twice before answering. Do I really want these people to know I play chess? They might think I’m a strange, geeky, weird nerd - if they haven’t figured that out already. I reasoned that we are all grown-ups here, and I shouldn’t have these childish fears, so I answered truthfully and said that I was playing in a chess tournament. I could tell by their expressions and their questions that they couldn’t understand why someone would want to do that. If I had said that I was going to a curling bonspiel I know I wouldn’t have got the same reaction.

Maybe the nerd label will one day be removed from chess. I know when I was younger computers were associated with “nerds” but today every kid wants a computer. I think intellectual achievements are just as important as athletic ones but I know that society does not agree with me yet so I will continue to encourage athletic activities for my kids and I will try to convince them to play chess again, but it might be a losing battle.

Meet the new rating, just like the old rating

2008-11-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

I see my match against Jamin was rated and my rating has dropped to 1787. This is the exact rating that made me quit chess 15 years ago.

A long time ago, as a scrawny teenager, I wandered into the Charlottetown chess club at the YMCA and joined their monthly tournament. I wasn’t used to playing with a clock but over the course of the month I won a couple of games and threw a couple away and I got my first rating. I think it was around 1300, but I knew I could do better. I joined the club and started playing regularly every Tuesday evening. I improved quickly and started winning most of the club tournaments. My rating seemed to climb naturally but I developed some bad habits. I relied mainly on tactics to win games and I didn’t concentrate on my own game. That worked against the other players in the club but when I left the Island to play my first big tournament I found that I wasn’t as good as I thought. The players in Ontario had much more opening knowledge than me, and I had no tactical advantage. When I got back home I started studying a bit more and concentrating on just a few openings. My rating continued to climb to a peak of just over 1900 but then fell back and settled in the 1800’s and stalled there. I needed more games against higher rated opponents to improve, but there was no internet then and I couldn’t afford to travel to far off tournaments. As other things in life took over my time, I stopped playing regular weekly games and when I did play a tournament my rating started to tumble. I remember my last tournament falling into the Blackbourne Gambit trap to a young kid and and seeing my rating drop below 1787. I decided then that I wasn’t going to play another tournament unless I was prepared and studied my openings.

Years passed, I moved to Alberta, I got married and had children and had not thought about chess much until my kids started playing. After re-entering tournament chess, I have now played ten events and though I think I have improved over the last two years, my rating has now dropped back below 1800 again. Some of my bad habits have changed and some are the same. On the positive side, I do concentrate on my own game now and I don’t have the same desire to wander around the room to try to find a more interesting game. On the negative side, I find I can sometimes have very little enthusiasm when I’m playing a game especially if it is against a lower rated player or if I think I should be doing something else that day. I’m missing a lot when looking at tactics now compared to before. These may be things that go along with getting older, but my weak openings are just a result of my lack of useful studying. The question is now, what to do about my chess?

Option 1. Quit again. I f I do this it will probably not be a conscious decision, but rather a gradual lowering of interest until I find I haven’t played for a long, long, time.
Option 2. Play less regularly probably at a 1700 level. Maybe play in one out of town tournament a year plus the Battle at the Border. The question is, would I get enough enjoyment out of this to continue playing without falling into option 1.
Option 3. Really start studying and see if I can improve to 2000. The problem with this is that there is not enough time in the day to balance work, family, and an obsessive hobby like chess.

I hope I don’t end up choosing option 1, as I still get enjoyment out of playing a good game whether it’s a win or a loss. Plus I haven’t really played a complete tournament yet and I feel there is one inside me waiting to come out. Right now I have no definitive plans to play in an upcoming event. Maybe in the new year.

The End of the Match

2008-10-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

Well today the championship match is finished. Really it was over after the champion went up three wins without losing but the players continued to play on until the finish. A couple of poor games in the middle of the match did the challenger in. You might be thinking that I am discussing Anands victory today in the Anands-Kramnik world championship, but actually I’m talking about the slightly less prestigious Gluckie-Chaisson Match .

Going into the match I had planned out my goals and opening strategy for each game. Since I haven’t beaten anyone over 2000 in a rated game yet, my main goal was to win one of the games, secondly to try some new openings, and finally to try to get 1.5/4 points. Before the match Jamin and I agreed that the loser would pay the rating fee and that he had to get 3 points to claim the win. Here is a summary of my pre-match plans and how they worked out.

Game 1 – I expected to go into my new favorite French Defence line but Jamin spoiled my plans by playing the Sicilian. I feel comfortably in most Sicilian lines and aside from a couple of lapses I played fairly well but eventually succumbed in a pawn down endgame.

Game 2 – I planned to surprise Jamin with the Dutch, but I didn’t know the opening well enough to play a good game when he strayed from my studied line.

Game 3 – I originally planned to play a Kings Indian Attack against his French, but after he had played the Sicilian in game 1, I had to prepare for that again. When he played the French, I went back to what I had prepared for game 1, but I couldn’t remember the correct move order and lost a piece in the opening.

Game 4 – Was supposed to be either a Benko Gambit if I needed to win or a Queen’s gambit Accepted if I was hoping for a draw. When I found out Jamin played the Benko as black I decided that I shouldn’t play that opening, but I still needed a win, so I tried the King’s Indian. Here’s game 4 for you viewing pleasure.

Game 4

Going into the final game, I felt I had nothing to lose, so I planned on playing for a win at all costs. Before the game I went for a couple of after work drinks with co-workers and managed to get a few warm-up games in. One of my fellow engineers from Calgary had been talking about playing a game against me since he found out I played chess, so I laid my board on the table and promptly beat him four games in a row while munching on wings, ribs and beer. I left him there to drown his sorrows and headed over to Jamin’s house full of confidence, to finish our epic battle/masacre.

Gluckie,Jamin (2054) - Chaisson,Terry (1807) [E81]
Match Lloydminster (4), 28.10.2008

2008-10-28 Gluckie-Chaisson.pgn

Overall I have to say I'm very disapointed with this result. Before the match started I would have said the chance that I would lose all 4 games was very slim. Even though if you do the calculations based on our rating difference it works out to a 25-40% chance of a 4-0 shut-out, I honestly felt that if I played to the best of my ability there was no way I would lose every game. In fact, in my last 6 games against expert rated players I have only 1 loss and 5 draws! Two draws against Roy Yearwood (2158 & 2098), one draw each against Anastasia Kazakevich (2156), Sardul Purewal (2094), and Jamin Gluckie (2114) and the lone loss against Keith MacKinnon (2058). The performance rating for just those games is an impressive 2054. I expected to score somewhere between 0.5-1.5/4. But when you throw away a couple of the games the chances of a shut-out rapidly increases. The good thing about playing someone that much higher though is that you are not risking alot of points and I will will only drop maybe 24 points.

Another of my goals for this match was to try new openings, especially as black. The Dutch I played in game 2 was a flop and I didn't learn anything other than don't play what you don't know. In game four I did try out a new stratagy for me in the KID and I think I did learn something from that game.

This was the first time I have ever played a match. Would I play another----Yes, but hopefully perform better.

Jamin Gluckie Match Part 2

2008-10-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

Or I like to call it now the "Massacre at the Border" (MATB for short)

Jamin has come to the board each time better prepared than me and has definitely won the psychological battle.

Game 3

2008-10-03 Chaisson-Gluckie French.pgn

One Game left, where I will have black.

Game 4: To Follow

Medicine Hat Open

2008-09-28T21:17:00.001-07:00

Round 1
Paired against an unrated junior Jordan Schibler. He is in grade 10 and came second at the Alberta chess challenge. I now dread playing juniors. I had a strong advantage (+2.8) and an attack against his king but I erred on my 20th move. I got distractred from my attack when I thought I could fork his rook and then pick off his center pawns.

Right after I played 20.Be7 I saw that If I took the d6 pawn my bishop could be trapped, but I didn't retreat the bishop and hoped that my opponent wouldn't see that. He didn't, but after that we traded down to a rook ending where I was at best equal. We played until all the pawns were gone and then admitted the draw. The correct move in the diagram is of course 20. h6. A disappointing result.

Round 2
Stan Longson (1378). I played too conservatively in the opening and gave him an advantage. Fritz says it was not as much an advantage as I thought. Position after 18...Qe7

He made the following interesting tactical play 19. Nxg6. I was worried about my weak king but luckily he started to tire and made a string of small blunders that I took advantage of to capture a full point. He had this problem in all the games I saw him play. After concentrating so hard for a few hours, sometimes you just go blank for a while, and in chess that when it all falls apart. I won but was still not very happy with my play.

Round 3
John Quiring (1817). He played a line of the Petroff where he sacs a knight on f7. I had not seen this exact line before but I was pretty sure I should be able to take the knight and come out with the advantage. I missed a very simple queen check in my calculations allowing him to recapture a knight and come away with two free pawns and a strong attack on my open king.

8.g6?? (Nd6 was needed). I played well enough from then on to last to move 48, but there was no way to save the game. This was the one move of the tournament that really bothers me. At this point I had 1.5/3 and had not played a good game.

Round 4.
A very interesting round. On board 1 Keith MacKinnon was playing John Quiring and had a winning position but overlooked a devastating tactic. John missed the winning move and then shortly after flagged and withdrew from the tournament. On another board, Don MacKinnon sacked his queen and then missed a mate in one, which his opponent also didn't see, and then went on to lose. My opponent was Roy Yearwood (2174). He is probably my favorite strong player to play against because I enjoy going over the game with him afterwards, plus in my two previous games against him I played reasonably well.

Chaisson,Terry (1811) - Yearwood,Roy (2174) [B00]
Med Hat Open Hewlett (4), 28.09.2008
B00: Queen's Fianchetto Defence, Nimzowitsch Defence
1.e4 Nc6 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3 d5 last book move according to Fritz 4.e5 Nd7 5.d4² Black has a cramped position. Black's pieces can't move: c8+f8 5...Nb6 6.Be2 At first Roy thought that this was a novelty but he opened up his book "Play The 1...Nc6" and found a game from 1994. I liked this more than Bb5 because I think it leaves more flexibility 6...Bf5 7.Nh4 e6 This looks weakening to me but Roy didn't like the idea of retreating the bishop [7...Be6!?² should be considered-Fritz] 8.Nxf5± exf5 9.0–0 Be7 10.Bb5 Qd7 11.Qf3 g6 [11...0–0!? 12.Qg3 Rfd8±]

12.a4!+- A strong move that takes advantage of the placement of the black knights. Fritzs gives me a plus 1.4 12...a6 13.Bxc6 bxc6 Black has to double another set of pawns or lose a pawn after a5. The structural weakness make any endgame dangerous for black 14.Bh6 Played to prevent castling [14.Ne2 0–0+-] 14...Bf8 [14...Qe6!?±] 15.Qf4 I wanted to keep pressure on but fritz sees [15.Bxf8 Rxf8 16.a5 Nc4 17.Qd1 Nxb2 18.Qb1 Nc4 19.Qb7 Ke7 20.Qb4+ Ke6 21.Na4 Rfb8 22.Nc5+ Ke7] 15...Bxh6 16.Qxh6 Qe7 17.b3 Nd7 18.Rfe1 0–0–0 19.Qe3 Nf8? [19...Nb8 20.Ne2+-]

20.a5? [20.Qd3+- and White has triumphed 20...Kb7 21.b4 Ne6 22.b5 Qd7 23.Reb1 c5 24.bxa6+ Ka8 25.Rb7 Rb8 26.Rab1 c4 27.Qf3 Rxb7 28.axb7+ Ka7 ¹] 20...Ne6± 21.Na4 Kb8 22.b4! Ka7 23.Nc5 Nxc5 24.bxc5 [24.dxc5?! g5=] 24...Rb8 Here my cell phone rang. Although I hadn't heard any announcement about cell phones, I believed that Roy could have claimed a win. The funny thing is that the exact same thing happened to Roy the day before. During that game Roy told his opponent that he could claim a win but his opponent declined and they played on. In the spirit of giving back, Roy did the same for me. He made his next move and then offered a draw. Although I still have the advantage, I gladly took the draw because I would not have felt right about continuing to try to win. 25.Reb1 Rb5 ½–½

Round 5
There was now an uneven number of players in the tournament and I knew I had a long 5 hr drive so I withdrew. Plus with only 2/4 I was pretty sure I wasn't in the running for a prize. Keith had 4/4, another unrated junior (Ben ???, an exchange student from Europe) had 3, and three others had 2.5/4.

Overall another so-so tourney with some good moments balanced with some bad play. Because I played an unrated player, I'm not sure what my ratings will be but I'm expecting an Rp=1750?? and I will lose a few points I'm sure.

ps. I guess I ended up winning a class prize with 2.5/5. The TD gave me a half point bye for my last round.

Jamin Gluckie Match : Part I

2008-09-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

Game 1

A titanic back and forth struggle. Jamin surprised me with his opening and made any preparation I had done moot. I missed a bishop move in the late opening that cost me a pawn. After taking a long time I came up with a good plan to fight back. I managed to equalize and actually had an advantage for a brief time. Jamin fought back and regained the advantage. It came down to a Queens and pawns ending that I think I should of been able to draw but I made a beginner mistake when I allowed him to trade Queens.

I played 53. Qf4?? and let him trade queens into a won ending. Argh... My only explanation for this horrible move is that it had come down to 2 mins on both of our clocks and I don't seem to play very well in time pressure. I'll post more of the game later.

Game 2

A very disappointing game. The only good thing about it was that I managed to surprise Jamin by playing the Dutch. He's never seen me play this before, mainly because I never played it in anything other than a blitz game online. I quickly lost my way in the opening when Jamin didn't follow the same line he played in the Canadian Open. I was hallucinating some phantom counter tactical move and walked into dropping a piece. I didn't want to lose in less than 25 moves so I played another 10 moves before I resigned. I don't really want to post anything from this game because I don't think there much to learn from it but this was my last chance to save the piece with a6 but instead I played 13. O-O-O??

At this moment I'm still planning on playing in the Med Hat Open this weekend.

Next Events

2008-08-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

It looks like my next chess event will be a match against Jamin Gluckie. He proposed the match and I gladly accepted. I know it will be a tough challenge for me as he is a couple hundred points above me in the ratings but it will be a good opportunity for me to spend some time on chess and hopefully learn something new and improve. We haven't decided when we will start the match as we both are fairly busy this month but I expect it will be closer to the end of the month. If anyone has any suggestions as to what to play against Jamin don't be shy about passing them along.

Also, next month I might try to play in the Medicine Hat Open if work and family commitments allow.

Chess On Prince Edward Island

2008-08-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

I just returned from vacation with my family on PEI, which is where I grew up. We had a wonderful time plus I did get some chess activities in. First, I was looking through my parents attic hoping to find my old scorebooks with all my games from the 80’s and early 90’s but unfortunately they were all thrown out the same way my old hockey cards and comic books had been thrown out years earlier. At least this time the monetary value was not as much, but there was some sentimental value of these old games for me. I know I had some good games against Peter MacKean, Joe Horton and others that I hoped to analyse now with Fritz. I did find my old chess set and three old books. “An Experts Guide to Chess Strategy”, “Grandmaster Chess (Lone Pine 1975)”, and “Learn Chess Quickly”, which gave me something to read during the vacation. “Learn Chess Quickly” was actually an unreturned library book from my old High School. Oops, I wonder what the late fee is now? Reminds me of a Seinfield episode.

Also while on vacation, I decided to play a few rounds in the UPEI Open. I knew that IM Tom O'Donnell was playing and with only a dozen or so players registered I figured my chance to play him was good. There was a good mix of masters, experts and A players plus a few young kids.

Round 1
Game 1 was Friday night and my opponent was none other then IM Tom O'Donnell. Here is the game

O'Donnell,Tom (2458) - Chaisson,Terry (1822) [C42]
UPEI Open PEI (1), 25.07.2008
C42: Petroff Defence: 3 Nxe5 and unusual White 3rd moves
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 I have been playing the petroff against all my higher rated opponents mainly because it annoys many players and I know it as good as any of my other opening but my results have been horrible 0–7 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Nc3 Nxc3 6.dxc3 Be7 7.Bf4 last book move 7...Be6 my opening knowledge in this line is now over as my last move shows [normal is 7...0–0 8.Qd2 Nd7 9.0–0–0 Nc5] 8.Nd4 0–0 offering the bishop for a knight and a strong center 9.Bd3 [9.Nxe6 fxe6 10.Qg4 Nd7±] 9...g6 protects the diagonal and makes room for the B at g7 [9...Nd7!?² is interesting] 10.Nxe6± fxe6

11.Bh6 Rf6 [11...Rf7 12.Qg4 Bf8 13.Be3±] 12.Qg4 [12.h4 c6 13.h5 g5 14.Bxg5 Rf7+-] 12...Nd7± 13.f4 Nc5 14.0–0–0 [14.h4 Nxd3+ 15.cxd3 e5±] 14...Nxd3+² 15.Rxd3 [15.cxd3 Rf5 16.h4²] 15...Qd7 [15...Rf5 16.h4 Bf8 17.Bxf8 Qxf8 18.h5²] 16.Re1 now the e6 pawn becomes a point for attack [¹16.h4!?±] 16...Bf8 17.Bg5 Rf5 the only way to protect e6 18.Qh3 [18.Rh3 Re8²] 18...Re8 [18...h6 19.Bh4³ (‹19.Bxh6 Rh5 20.Qg4 Rxh6µ) ] 19.g4 Rf7 20.Rde3 Bg7 finally develop my bishop to a useful diagonal but it won't be around much longer to be any benefit 21.Bh6 Ree7 At this point white has 60 min and black has 52 min until the time control at move 40 22.Qh4 Bxh6 23.Qxh6

23...Rf6 [I thought about 23...Qa4 but was worried about an attack on the open king 24.f5 e5 25.Kb1 (25.fxg6 the move that scared me but then I would have 25...Rf2! after this move I think all white has is a draw) 25...gxf5 26.gxf5 Rxf5 27.Qh3=] 24.h4 [24.f5 e5²] 24...Ref7 Tom said that after I doubled my rooks on the f file he didn't see much of an advantage for white. Still [¹24...Qa4!? must definitely be considered 25.Rf3 Qxa2=] 25.h5 gxh5 26.Qxh5 Rxf4 [26...Qa4 27.f5 Qf4 28.Kb1± (28.fxe6 Rxe6 29.Kd2 d5–+) ] 27.Qg5+ Kh8 28.Rxe6 Rf1! only move 29.R6e2 [29.Qh6 Rf8²] 29...Rxe1+ [Fritz still suggests 29...Qa4!?² ] 30.Rxe1± Rg7 31.Qf6 Qf7 32.Qd4 b6 33.b3 creates a nice spot to place the king and be safe from any checks

33...Kg8 [should have played 33...a5 and solidified my queenside 34.a4±] 34.Kb2 Qd7 35.Qd5+ Kh8 36.g5 this move was stronger than I had anticipated 36...Qf7 Now was the last chance for a5 37.Qd2 Qg6 Both of us have 14 min to make 3 more moves 38.Rf1 Rf7 [38...Rg8 39.Rg1±] 39.Qd4++- Kg8 40.Re1 Rg7 1st time control reached with 9 min to spare for white and 3 min for black. Next time control is remainder of game in 1 hour with no increments. [40...c6 41.Qc4 d5 42.Re8+ Rf8 43.Rxf8+ Kxf8 44.Qf4+ Qf7 45.Qd6+ Kg8 46.Qxc6±] 41.Qd5+ [41.Qg4!? Kh8 42.Qc8+ Rg8 43.Qxc7 Qxg5+-] 41...Kh8 42.Qa8+ too late for a5 now 42...Rg8 43.Qxa7 Qf7 44.Rg1 h6 I thought this solved my problems but [44...d5 45.Qa4+-] 45.Rh1 h5 [45...Rxg5 46.Rxh6+ Kg7 47.Rh4+-] 46.g6 Rxg6 [46...Qxg6 47.Qxc7 b5+-] 47.Rxh5+ Kg7 48.Qa8 Rh6 49.Qg2+ Kh7 50.Qe4+ Kg7 51.Qg4+ [¹51.Rf5 and White can already relax 51...Qe6 52.Rg5+ Kf7+-] 51...Kh7 52.Qf5+?? hands over the advantage to the opponent [¹52.Rg5 and White wins 52...c5 53.a3+-] 52...Qxf5± 53.Rxf5 Kg6 54.Rf2 Rh5 55.a4

55...Rf5?? This is where I quickly decided that I had to get my king over to the queenside even if it allowed him to exchange rooks otherwise he was just going to cut off my king from the action while he improved his queenside position. Plus with a SD time control I was worried about running out of time. In the two minute review I had with Tom after the game I think he agreed with me. [Fritz recomends ¹55...Rh7± ] 56.Rxf5+- Kxf5 57.b4 Ke5 58.c4 Ke6 59.c3 Kd7 [59...d5 does not save the day 60.a5 bxa5 61.bxa5+-] 60.Kc2 Kc6 61.Kd3 d5 [61...Kd7 is not the saving move 62.Ke4+-] 62.Kd4 dxc4 63.Kxc4 Kb7 64.Kd5 Kc8 If Black now would get b5 in, he might survive 65.Kc6 Kb8 66.c4 Kc8 67.a5 bxa5 68.bxa5 Kb8 69.a6 Ka7 70.Kxc7 Kxa6 71.c5 Black resigns. I think I played reasonably well but what do you guys think? The game didn't finish until after 12:30 and I didn't have a chance to go over it with Tom unfortunately.[71.c5 Kb5 72.c6+-] 1–0

Round 2
I was paired against one of the young kids and took him way too lightly. I knew he was rated 1613 and beat a master in round one but the master said he hung a piece. Just before the game started I noticed that the pairings were wrong because another player had joined the tournament and that should have affected who my opponent was. The TD said he knew that but he didn’t want to change it because he wanted to allow my young opponent to have tougher competition during this tournament. I didn’t argue the point and I won’t complain now just because my result was not good. I played foolishly in the opening and was down two pawns for nothing before I settled down and couldn't recover. This is my first loss against a lower rated opponent and as I expected it happened against a junior – they always seem to be under-rated. I found out after the game that he had only just completed grade 4!!! and has won the Canadian scholastic championship every year. I guess I need to say "I am not smarter than a Fifth Grader." He was an extremely sharp kid and more importantly he was nice and polite and did not seem to suffer from some of the ego problems some other child prodigys seem to have. He had an outstanding tournament beating a master, then beating me, losing to IM O’Donnell, and he was winning against a 1950 junior when I left during round four. If I had beat him, I’m sure in 15 years I would be telling everyone how I beat “GM Dorrance” without mentioning that he was 10 at the time.
Position after 12...Nc6

13. Qb2?? Completely the wrong idea in this position and totally forgeting about the hanging pawn on e5. 13. Qe3 was necessary. From then on I was able to win back one pawn but young Adam made great decisions and was deserving of the win.

Round 3
This was a planned bye as I had some partying to do.

Round 4.
I only had 0.5 points and was expecting a very low rated opponent but was happy to find out I was paired against a 1785 player. By move 15 we both had 50 min left to the time control at move 40 but then he started taking alot of time to make his moves.
Chaisson,Terry (1822) - Enman,Jim (1783)

Chaisson - Enman2.pgn

Round 5.
I could see that I would probably be playing someone lower rated and it was a beautiful sunny day. I decided that I would rather spend the afternoon on the beach and I know that's what my wife wanted, so I withdrew. Overall 1/3 with 2 good games and one bad/humiliating game. Rp = 1818 but I lost 11 points to drop to 1811.

2008 Battle at the Border

2008-06-28T23:38:00.000-07:00

Round 1
Paired as white against Roy Yearwood (2158). Just before the game Tyler Janzen warned me to beware 1…Nc6 because Roy will play it against anything and sure enough 1.e4 Nc6. I never played the Nimzo before and chose to avoid theory with 2.g3?! I misplaced my knight early in the opening and Roy immediately attacked my king with h5!? I should have been down a pawn but Roy missed his chance and I then started to play more solid. He tried to create an advantage that wasn't there and I ended up 2 pawns ahead in a 2 rook ending. He offered a draw which I declined but then a few moves later after losing my weak front "b" pawn and trading a set of rooks I took the draw. I'm a little upset that I didn't continue playing because I think I still had good winning chances with very little risk.

Chaisson,Terry (1817) - Yearwood,Roy (2158)
2008 BATB Lloydminster, Alberta, 28.06.2008
1.e4 Nc6 2.g3 e5 3.Bg2 Bc5 4.Ne2 h5 5.d4 Nxd4 6.Be3

6...h4? ( lost all advantage, Qf6 was the correct play) 7.Nxd4 exd4 8.Bxd4 Bxd4 9.Qxd4 Qf6 10.Qxf6 Nxf6 11.h3 d5 12.exd5 hxg3 13.fxg3 Bf5 14.c4 0–0–0 15.Nc3 Rhe8+ 16.Kf2 Bd3 17.b3 b5? (giving away a second pawn for no reason)

18.cxb5? (18. Nxb5 is better since 18...Re2+ 19.Kg1 is not a great threat) Ne4+ 19.Bxe4 Bxe4 20.Nxe4 Rxe4 21.Rad1 Rb4 22.Rhe1 Rxb5 23.Re7 Rd7 24.Rxd7 Kxd7 ½–½

Round 2
Paired as black against Jamin Gluckie (2114). I played the unusual, but playable Budapest Gambit to avoid my normal openings that Jamin knows and has had no difficulty crushing. Although I didn’t have realistic winning chances for most of the game I think I defended with my N+B against his 2B’s very well. I created a passed “b” pawn and Jamin was forced to trade his passed “e” pawn in order to capture it. I hoped that I could race over and capture his g and h pawns and win but Jamin knew I would be one tempo short. Result another draw but very satisfying.

Gluckie,Jamin (2114) - Chaisson,Terry (1817) [A52]
2008 BATB Lloydminster, Alberta, 28.06.2008
A52: Budapest Gambit 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+ 5.Nd2 Qe7 6.Ngf3 Nc6 (e5 is the focus of attention) 7.e3 Ngxe5 8.Nxe5 Nxe5 9.Be2 0–0 10.0–0 Bxd2 11.Qxd2 d6 12.Rac1 Bf5 13.Qc3 Ng6 14.Bg3 Rac8 15.Rfd1 [15.c5 Rfd8 16.cxd6 cxd6±] 15...Rfe8 16.c5± dxc5 17.Qxc5 Qxc5 18.Rxc5 Be6

19.Rxc7 [19.Bxc7 Bxa2 20.Bb5 Re4±] 19...Rxc7± 20.Bxc7 Rc8 21.Rd8+ Rxd8 22.Bxd8 Bxa2 23.Bf3 b5 24.Bc6 Bc4 25.f4 f6 26.Kf2 Kf7 27.g3 Ke6 28.b4 Ne7 29.Bxe7 Kxe7 30.e4 Kd6 31.Be8 g6 32.Ke3± Ke7 33.Bc6 Kd6 34.Bb7 Kc7 35.Ba8 Kb6 36.Kd4 White prepares e5

36...a5 37.bxa5+ Kxa5 38.e5 [¹38.Kc5!? Bb3 39.Bd5±] 38...fxe5+= 39.fxe5 Kb6 40.Bd5 Bxd5 41.Kxd5 Kc7 42.Kc5 Kd7 43.Kxb5 Ke6 44.Kc4 Kxe5 45.Kd3 Kf5 46.h3 g5 47.Ke3 g4 48.hxg4+ Kxg4 49.Kf2 h5 50.Kg2 ½–½

So far so good. Two draws against 2136 average opponents. Tomorrow morning I'm paired against Micah Hughey (2210). I need to continue to play steady.

Day 2
After a very good day yesterday, today was a huge disappointment.

Round 3.
Paired as black against Micah Hughey (2187). We ended up in a tactical line of the four knights that I had seen once before in a book but I played some unnecessary moves to try to chase his queen of a diagonal and missed my chance to castle safely. I ended up in a lost position and then moved into a mate in one. I didn’t give Micah much of a challenge today. As an aside, I think Micah is the first person to beat me twice in regular rated games, which only shows that I haven’t played many rated games.
Game:
Hughey,Micah (2210) - Chaisson,Terry (1817) [C55]
2008 BATB Lloydminster, Alberta (3), 29.06.2008
position after 10.Qxd4 here I should have played the simple O-O

Qe7 11.0–0 Be5 12.Qd3 Qd6 13.Re1 Kf8 14.Qb3 Bxh2+ 15.Kh1 Bf4 16.Bxf4 Qxf4 17.Bxb7 Rb8? (17...Bxb7 18.Qxb7 Qh4+ 19.Kg1 Qe8 was the only slim hope) 18.Qa3+ Kg8? 19.Re8# 1–0

Round 4
I was paired as white against Josh Timm (1152). Obviously this kid was underrated as he had just drawn his game against Rick Pederson (1921). I was not happy with the pairing because so far I had a performance rating of 2020 and was hoping to finish the tournament with a Rp>2000 but now it was impossible - even if I won. I needed a pairing against someone over 1540 but those are the breaks – you get what you get. I don't think I played with the same enthusiasm that I did yesterday and we reached a very drawn looking closed position with an open e file that allowed for the exchange of all the major pieces. I tried to press for a bit with two B’s vs a B + N but I couldn't break through without improving his knight so end result - draw. He played very well. I kept expecting him to make a mistake that I could capitalise on, but he never did.

Chaisson,Terry (1817) - Timm,Josh (1152)
2008 BATB, 29.06.2008

17... Rxe1+ 18.Rxe1 Re8 19.Bh4 Rxe1+ 20.Qxe1 Qe8 21.f4 Qxe1+ 22.Bxe1 Nd7 23.Kf2 Kf8 24.b4 b6 25.b5 h6 26.h4 f6 27.Bd2 Kf7 28.Bh3 Ke7 29.Kf3 Kf7 30.g5 f5 31.gxh6 Bxh6 32.Bf1 Kg7 33.Kg3 Kf7 34.a4 Kg7 35.Bh3 Nf6 36.Kf3 Kf7 37.Bf1 Kg7 38.Bh3 Kf7 ½–½

Overall it was an OK result that could have been a lot better if I had kept my focus today. Rp = ~1800 and I will probably gain a half dozen CFC points. I might have had three games against FIDE rated players, but I’m not sure if Jamin is FIDE rated or not. As usual Jamin ran a smooth, well organized, and professional event.

Warm-Up for BATB

2008-06-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight I played 4 rapid games against Jamin to warm up for the Battle at the Border. I thought I'd try out different openings and concentrate on just making solid moves. In the past I've had a tendency to be overly aggresive when I've played Jamin. The first game went according to plan. Although I got lost in the opening I made solid moves and managed to draw the game. I'm not convinced that I remembered it correctly (I may have transposed some moves out of order) but here it is.

Gluckie,Jamin (2114) - Chaisson,Terry (1817) [D26]
Friendly game 30 min 25.06.2008
D26: Queen's Gambit Accepted: 4 e3 e6 5 Bxc5 c5 sidelines
1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 e6 5.Bxc4 c5 6.0–0 Bd7 7.Nc3 Nc6 8.Bd2 Be7 9.Bb3 cxd4 10.exd4 0–0 11.Bg5 Nd5 12.Bxe7 Ncxe7 13.Ne5 Rc8 14.Qh5 Nf6 15.Qf3 Bc6 16.Nxc6 Nxc6 17.Rad1 Qb6 18.d5

18...Nd4 19.Qe3 Nxb3 20.Qxb6 axb6 21.axb3 Nxd5 22.Nxd5 exd5 23.Rxd5 Rfd8 24.Rxd8+ Rxd8 25.Rc1 Kf8 26.Kf1 Rd2 27.Rc8+ Ke7 28.Rc7+ Rd7 ½–½

In game 2 Jamin surprised me by not playing the French. I think he's played the French against me every game as black. Instead 1.e4 c5!? I blundered my queen in the middle game when I didn't see his knight was still covering h6 but I was lost anyway as I made the mistake of castling queenside into a strong attack.

In game 3 I planned on playing a Nimzo-Indian but Jamin surprised me with his move order and we transposed into a KID. I blundered an exchange and he gave the exchange back to get passed pawns on the a, b, and c files. I was able to blockade his passed pawns for a while but while I was running out of time he eventually pushed through.

Game 4 was another Sicilian!? I didn't follow may plan of making solid moves. I played a wild (unsound) pawn rush on the king side and was eventually made to pay for my folly.

I'm looking forward to the Battle at the Border this weekend although as usual I don't feel prepared.

Lunchtime Blitz

2008-06-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

Don't know why I'm posting a blitz game. I'll probably delete this post later, but I liked the Rook sac at the end.

Me - Guest1261760 [A00]
Friendly Game, 3m + 3s Café, 11.06.2008
1.e3?? (Oops! I meant to play e4!! winning - now I'm lost) Nf6 2.g3 c6 3.Bg2 d5 4.f4 Ne4 5.Bxe4 dxe4 6.Ne2 f5 7.d4 e6 8.c4 g6 9.b4 Bxb4+ 10.Bd2 Be7 11.Nbc3 0–0 12.h4 h5 13.Ng1 Kg7 14.Nh3 Bf6 15.Ng5 Bxg5 16.hxg5 Nd7 17.Rb1 Nb6 18.Qe2 Qe7 19.c5 Nd5 20.Kf2 Nxc3 21.Bxc3 Kf7?

22.Rxh5! gxh5 23.Qxh5+ Kg8 24.Rh1 Qg7 25.d5! (mate is coming) 1–0

Former Canadian World Chess Champion Re-appears

2008-06-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

While I am at a business conference this week I had some spare time last evening and was browsing the internet and came across some info about former under 10 Canadian world Chess champion Jeff Sarwer. Most people don't know Canada had world chess champions. Jeff had a meteoric rise in chess as a 7, 8, and 9 year old in the late 1980's and then disappeared of the face of the earth for 20 years. At the time there were many who questioned his father’s home schooling methods and his chess vagabond lifestyle. The family went into hiding after Jeff and his sister (who won the world under 10 girls) were seized by Ontario’s child protective services. They stopped playing chess and hid out in Europe.

I hadn't known that he was the real life model for the character Jonathan Poe, Josh Waitzkin's nemesis, in "Searching for Bobby Fischer". Unlike the movie version, in real life Jeff was two years younger and their final game was a draw and they tied for the championship. In the movie version Josh sees he has a win but offers a draw to his opponent who refuses.
Here is the real game:
[Event "US Primary Championship"]
[Date "1986.??.??"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Jeff Sarwer"]
[Black "Joshua Waitzkin"]
[ECO "E76"]
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. f4 O-O 6. Nf3 Nbd7 7. e5 Ne8 8. Bd3 c5 9. dxc5 Nxc5 10. Bc2 a5 11. O-O b6 12. Be3 Bb7 13. Qd4 dxe5 14. Nxe5 Qxd4 15. Bxd4 Rd8 16. Bxc5 bxc5 17. Na4 Bxe5 18. fxe5 Rd2 19. Rf2 Rxf2 20. Kxf2 f6 21. e6 Nd6 22. Nxc5 Rc8 23. Nxb7 Nxb7 24. b3 Nc5 25. Re1 Rc6 26. Be4 Ra6

27. Bc2? (27. Kf3) Rxe6 28. Rxe6 Nxe6 29. Ke3 Kf8 30. Ke4 Ke8 31. g3 Kd7 32. Kd5 f5 33. a3 h6 34. b4 axb4 35. axb4 Nc7+ 36. Kc5 e5 37. Ba4+ Kc8 38. Bc6 e4 39. b5 e3 40. Bf3 Ne6+ 41. Kd5 Ng5 42. Be2 Kc7 43. Ke5 Ne4 44. Kd4 Kd6 45. Kxe3 Kc5 46. g4 Nd6 47. Kf4 g5+ 48. Ke5 fxg4 49. Kf6 g3 50. hxg3 Ne4+ 51. Kg6 Nxg3 52. Bd3 Nh1 53. Kxh6 g4 54. Kg5 g3 55. Be4 Nf2 56. Bd5 Nd1 57. Kf4 Nc3 58. Bc6 Ne2+ 59. Kf3 Nd4+ 60. Kxg3 Nxc6 61. bxc6 Kxc6 62. Kf3 Kc5 63. Ke3 Kxc4 1/2-1/2
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1473029&kpage=2

Last October Jeff, now nearly thirty, played in a tournament for the first time in twenty years. It was an open rapid event in Poland with 4 GM's and two IM's and Jeff tied for second with only one loss to one of the GM's. Here’s one of the games that shows his attacking style.
[Event "Malbork Castle, Poland semi-rapid"]
[Site "Poland"]
[Date "2007.10.02"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Jeff Sarwer"]
[Black "Radoslaw Jedynak"]
[ECO "E22"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "2559"]
1. d4 e6 2. c4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Qb3 c5 5. e3 O-O 6. Nf3 b6 7. a3 Bxc3+ 8. Qxc3 Bb7 9. Be2 d6 10. O-O Nbd7 11. b3 Rc8 12. Nd2 Qe7 13. f3 d5 14. Bb2 Rfd8 15. Rac1 Ba6 16. Rfe1 cxd4 17. exd4 Rc7 18. Qe3 Rdc8 19. Bd3 Nf8 20. f4 Qd7 21. h3 Ng6 22. g3 Ne7 23. Nf3 Qd8 24. Ne5 Nd7?
25. Bxh7+ Kxh7 26. Nxf7 Qg8 27. Qxe6 Nf6 28. Ng5+ Kh8 29. Nf7+ Kh7 30. Ng5+ Kg6 31. Qe3 dxc4 32. bxc4 Bxc4 33. g4 Qd5 34. f5+ Nxf5 35. gxf5+ Qxf5 36. Nf3 Kh7 37. Ne5 Bd5 38. Rxc7 Rxc7 39. Rf1 Qe4 40. Qxe4+ Nxe4 41. Rc1 Rxc1+ 42. Bxc1 b5 43. Nd7 Kg6 44. Nc5 Ng5 45. Nd3 Nxh3+ 46. Kh2 Be6 47. Nc5 Bf5 48. d5 Kf6 49. d6 Nf2 50. d7 Ng4+ 51. Kg3 Ke7 52. Kf4 Bxd7 53. Nxd7 Kxd7 54. Kxg4 Kc6 55. Bb2 g6 56. Kg5 Kd5 57. Kxg6 Kc4 58. Bg7 Kb3 59. Bf8 a5 60. Kf5 1/2-1/2

I remember back when I was a chess playing university student reading about him in the Canadian chess magazine (whatever it was called at the time) and also seeing him being interviewed by Barbra Frum on CBC News. The interview left a bad taste in my mouth at the time - mainly because of the condescending tone from the interviewer - and from the 9 year old. Jeff has set up a website http://jeffsarwer.com/ and has posted many old news clips and interviews. It is a very interesting site. He has also posted some of his games at http://www.chessgames.com/ with comments which is where I found these two games.

It's good to know that you can come back to chess after a long hiatus and enjoy it and have some success. I hope he plays some more.

1 Year Of Chess

2008-03-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

So what have I learned or observed after one year of chess. On the general side, I see over the past 15 years there has been a drop in number of tournament chess players especially in the lower to average skill level. Originally I thought it might be that the Edmonton chess club was too elitist, but I now see that it is a common problem across the country. When I played in the late 80’s early 90’s the median player in a tournament was a 1500 player. When I’ve played in Edmonton in the last year it was more like 1800. Part of this might be due to a rating inflation over the years (the CFC has thrown rating points into the system every now and then) and part of it might be that I’m comparing to 15 years ago when I played within a small pool of player on PEI, but I think mostly it is that the lower rated players are not getting as much out of playing in a tournament as they used to. They can get all the chess satisfaction they need playing online. If tournament chess is to flourish it must find some way to cater to the average chess player and provide them with something they can’t get online.

On the personal side, when I compare myself to one year ago I think I’m a stronger player now. When compared to 15 years ago I don’t think so, mostly due to a loss of tactical strength. Even though my opening knowledge is one of the weakest parts of my game I believe it is better than it was years ago. Back then all I had was my “Penguin Pocket Book of Chess Openings” (200 pages) and my BCO that I never looked at much because there were no explanations, just lists of moves. Now I can study openings with Fritz, plus I’ve borrowed books from the Edmonton chess club’s vast library. My only problem is remembering the openings that I have studied. Another thing I’ve noticed is that I do much better with longer time controls now, mainly because shorter time controls require quicker tactical solutions and better opening knowledge.

As an engineer by profession, I can’t help but to analyze my results and track my progress (with graphs even). When I look back on my chess experiences this year there are some things that were good,
- My record with white was 10 wins, 2 losses, 4 draws
- My record against players rated lower than me is 12 wins, 0 losses, 3 draws
some things that were bad,
- My record with black was only 2 wins, 9 losses, 1 draw
- My record against players rated higher than me was 0 wins, 11 losses, 2 draws
- My tendency to fall behind on the clock and blunder as soon as I hit time trouble
And some things that were ugly.
- Witnessing a violent confrontation between chess “parents” at a chess event.

Will I continue to play tournament chess? Yes, I think so, because I enjoy it, and it is a stimulating intellectual challenge that is an outlet for my competitive spirit. I can also set goals for my self (which I won’t reveal here) and work toward achieving them. When I played years ago I had two main goals. One was to become provincial champ, which I achieved, and one was to reach a rating of 2000, which I did not. I don’t think I reached my potential as a player back then, mainly due do living in an isolated area and rarely having an opportunity to play strong players. Now, when I play in Edmonton there are always numerous strong players, and with the internet, isolation is not as much of a problem. I can go online anytime and find any number of players who can easily trounce me.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone with my observations about my games against them. I welcome any comments. My next tournament may not be until the 2nd annual Battle at the Border in June. It should be a great event.

Terry Chaisson

Northern Alberta Open 2008-02

2008-03-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

After the Saskatchewan open the previous weekend I was not very confident going into this tournament and to tell the truth not very excited about playing in it.

Round 1 Opponent - Richard Roberts (1459)
A good first round win against the Sicilian. Last year I came out of 13 years of chess retirement at the NAO and I was paired on board 1 vs. IM Vicentee Lee. Needless to say this was much easier. Position After 18.Qd2 I believe Black miscalculated the following exchange 18...Nxc2+?? 19.Kd1+- Qxd2+ 20.Kxd2 Nxa1 21.Nxf6 Rg6 22.Nd5 Kd7? [¹22...Nxb3+ 23.axb3 Kd8+-] 23.Rxa1 b5 24.Rf1 and I went on to win after 10 more moves 1–0

Round 2 Anastasia Kazakevich (2152)
She played the Sicilian and after opening the c file we exchanged Queens and all the rooks and she surprised me by playing 25…Bc5 and offering a draw which I accepted. I thought she would keep playing to try to get the full point from someone rated 350 points lower even though I think I had the stronger position. After the tournament I wondered if I accepted too quickly but at the time I was more concerned with gaining back some of the points I lost the previous week and I didn’t want to risk anything. Fritz rates the position as += (0.33). My score now 1.5/2.

Round 3 Keith MacKinnon (2081)
I knew Keith played the Lopez exchange version sometimes and I wasn't prepared for that line so I played the petroff. I got a great position and was able to win a pawn and have a great attack against his king. We both had about 27 min left on our clocks and I was fairly sure it was a won position for me until I played 22...Nhg5?? I was deciding which Knight to retreat to g5 and chose the wrong one. Fritz suggests 22...f4!? which I did not consider at all [22...f4 23.gxf4 Nh4–+ 24.Qg3 Nf5 25.Qxh3 Nxe3 26.Qg3 Nxd1 27.Bxd1 Bxf4] Even after losing the piece for a pawn I still felt my position was close to equal due to his weak king and Fritz actually shows black with a slight advantage 23.h4³ Nxh4 24.gxh4 Ne4 25.Bf2 Re6 26.Nbd2 Rg6 27.Qf3 Rh6 [here Fritz suggests 27...Be6!?µ] 28.Nxe4= fxe4 [I thought about 28...Rxh4+ 29.Bxh4 Qxh4+ 30.Kg1 fxe4 31.Qf2 Qh6] 29.Qxe4 Rf6 30.Qe2 Bf5 31.Bc2 Qd7 [31...Bxc2!? 32.Qxc2 Qd7=] 32.Bxf5² Qxf5 33.Bg3 Re6 34.Qf2 Qe4+? [¹34...Qxf2!? 35.Bxf2 Rf8± I was down to 10 min on my clock now and my play deteriorated] 35.Qg2+- Bxg3 36.Qxe4 Rxe4 37.Nxg3 Rxh4+ 38.Kg2 Re8 39.Re1 Kf7 40.Nf5 Rxe1 41.Rxe1 Re4?? Black crumbles [41...Rg4+ 42.Kh3 Rg6+-] 42.Nd6+ 1–0 Even though I lost, I think this was my most enjoyable game of the tournament. 1.5/3

Round 4 George Sponga (1554)
The night before I asked Micah what George played for openings and he said he played no specific opening but he like to make odd h6, g6 pawn moves and I should try to take advantage of superior development by sacrificing to develop an attack. Sure enough George played d6, h6, g6, and c6 in the first 7 moves but I think I waited to long to sack a pawn and I don't think I was better after the opening. Position shown after 27.Qf4 which lead to the following simplification. 27...Bxf6 28.Qxf6+ Qxf6 29.Rxf6 Kg7 30.Rb6± Nd7 31.Rxb7 Nc5 32.Rb5 Nxb3 33.cxb3 He is tenacious and it came down to a rook ending. I was very pleased with the way I played this especially considering how badly I blew a rook ending last week against Roger. 33...Ra8 34.Ree5+- Rac8 35.Rxa5 Rc2 36.Re3 Rd8 37.Rb5 Rd1+ 38.Kh2 Rdd2 39.Rg3+- Rc1 40.Rb7 Rdd1? Trying for a cheap mate in the corner 41.Rf3 Rh1+ 42.Kg3 g5 43.Rbxf7+ Kg8 44.Rf2 Rcd1 45.Rb7 Rd3+ 46.Kg4 Re1 47.Kh5 Rd6 48.Rbf7 Re8 49.R7f6 Rde6 50.Kxh6 R8e7 51.Rxe6 Rxe6+ 52.Kxg5 1–0
Score now at 2.5/4

Round 5 Sardul Purewal (2094)
This was a surprisenly easy game for me. I didn’t use exsesive time in the opening like I usually do and I never felt in any danger throughout the game. He played the Scandinavian Defense and seemed to be willing to exchange pieces including the queens. I admit I was playing conservatively and based on his willingness to exchange I offered a draw after 20.c3 in the position shown. He declined and said that he was going to play to the end and we continued to play on - exchanging more pieces until we got to a knight and pawn ending. He tried to force a pawn through on the queen side but I was pleased with the way I played this end game too and we reached a position where he had to repeat moves otherwise my outside passed pawn and superior king position might have won it for me. 20...b5 21.Na5 Bc5 22.Rd3 Nh5 23.Be3 Bxe3+² 24.Rxe3 c5 25.g3 Nf6 26.Nb3 Ke7 27.Re2 Kd7 28.Kd2 Kc6 29.Ke3 Rd8 30.Rd2 Rxd2 31.Nxd2 Nd7 32.f4 f6 33.b3 a5 34.a3 Nb6 35.c4 a4 36.cxb5+ Kxb5 37.bxa4+ Nxa4 38.Kd3 Nb6 39.Kc3 c4 40.Kd4 e5+ 41.fxe5 fxe5+ 42.Kc3 Na4+ 43.Kc2 Nc5 44.Kc3 Na4+ 45.Kc2 Nc5 ½–½

Final score 3/5. Overall I was very pleased with my results from the tournament especially compared to how I played last week in Saskatoon. In my 3 games against expert players I had 2 fairly easy draws and a won position (that I managed to lose). Plus I managed to get the full point from both of my lower rated opponents. Rp=1944 and brought my rating up to 1817. Thanks to the guys from Saskatoon for getting me a ride to edmonton and to Micah for putting us all up. If not I probably wouldn't have played.

2008 Saskatchewan Open

2008-03-11T21:47:00.001-07:00

Three weeks before this tournament I was pretty optimistic about my chances. I had played Jamin a few more rapid games and thought I acquitted myself fairly well. Then the Wednesday before the tournament I played Jamin again and played extremely badly which was an omen for the upcoming weekend. The tournament was a personal fiasco for me from the start. Due to my son’s hockey tournament which started Friday night, I decided to not drive to Saskatoon until Saturday morning. I knew this would make a long day for me but when the organizers changed the Saturday schedule from three games to two games I figured I could handle it. I woke up at 4:30, tried to go back to sleep for an hour but couldn’t, so I took my shower and left home at 6:45. It was minus 50!! with the wind chill and my vehicle was making a strange noise all the way to Saskatoon whenever I got over 100 km/h. I got to the university a half hour early but took a while to find a parking site and then went to the tournament room with what I thought was 10 min to spare. It was then I realized that I had overlooked the time change between Alberta and Saskatchewan and the round was already underway so I got a forced 0.5 point bye. I almost turned around and drove home right there, and if I knew how I would end up playing, I probably would have.

Round 2 was against Chris Achtemichuk (1719). It was a very tactical game. I found a tactic to go up a pawn and then he had one to get it back. I went up a pawn again and then we reached this position with black to play. He sacked the exchange to free himself but missed Bxd5. Instead 27...Rxf5? [¹27...Bxd5!? 28.exd5 Qxf5±] 28.exf5+- Qxf5 29.Qe6 Qf4?? 30.Nxb5+- Rd8 31.Qg4 Qf6?? 32.Nc3+- Bd4 33.Ne4 Qf7 34.Ra5 Rxd5 35.Rxd5 Bxd5 36.Qe2?? Time trouble [¹36.Nc5+-] 36...Bc4= 37.Qe1 time trouble for rest of game - arbiter keep score 37...Bxf1 38.Qxf1 Qf4 39.f3 g4 40.hxg4+- h5 41.Qb5+?? Bb6= 42.Qe8+ Ka7 43.Qxh5 Qc1+ 44.Kh2 Qg1+ 45.Kg3 Qe1+ 46.Kh2 Qg1+ 47.Kh3 Qh1+ threefold repition with about 2 mins left for both players ½–½

Round 3 was against Roger Blum (1861). The game reached the position shown with me in time trouble again and an arbiter keeping my score when Roger played 44.Kg2 to try to lure the black king onto the same rank as the rook. I replied 44…h4 and knew that I just needed to keep the king around the g5 pawn for a draw. When Roger then played 45. Rb5+ rather than play Kf6 like I planned I played 45…Kf4?? for some reason (maybe I was hoping for a cheap mate on the 1st rank). This lead to 46. Rb4+! And he queens his pawn. I played on for another 10 moves before he captured my rook.

Round 4 was against Tyler Janzen. I let the previous games blunder affect the way I played this game. I was hoping to win quickly so that I could get home. I missed a chance to play e5 and win a piece early and then tried to force something that wasn’t there and ended up with the following position after Tyler played 20…Rd8xd4. Two minutes later, while I was thinking about my reply he offered a draw which I accepted immediately. I should have taken my time to consider but I had been looking at 21. Nxd4 Qxd4+ 22. Kh1 Nf2+ 23. Kg1 Nd3+ 24. Kh1 Nxe1 and 21. Bxg4 Rxe4 22. Qf2 Rxe1 23. Rxe1 Qxf2 24. Kxf2 Bxg4 and did not like my prospects. I had not seen 21. Kh1 which I think he just noticed when he suddenly offered the draw. After 21. Kh1 Rxe4 22. Bxe4 Nf2+ 23. Kg1 Nxe4+ 24. Qe3 f5 25. Qxb6 cxb6 26. Rac1 when black goes down the exchange for a couple of pawns.

1.5/4 with an Rp=1586 which brought my rating down to 1783.

1st Annual Battle at the Border 2007-10

2008-03-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Jamin Gluckie was the main organizer of this event in my hometown. I also have to give Jamin some credit for getting me back into tournament chess as he played several rapid games with me before my first tournament and occasionally since then. The event was a great success and attracted several master players and an IM and a WFM from Norway who were studying in Edmonton at the time. It was a four round accelerated swiss so I knew ahead of time that I would yo yo from high to low rated players again. One of the nice things about playing in your hometown is that you can sleep in your own bed.

Round 1 was against Roy Yearwood (2117). He is a very eloquent talker and I really enjoyed going over my game with him afterward. Position after 19...f5 A standard f5 pawn push. At this point I really liked my position 20.exf5 1:18 - The first exchange of the game 20...Qxf5 1:08 - here I start to lose the thread of the game gxf5 or Nd4 [¹20...gxf5!? 21.f4 Rbe8µ] 21.Bd5+ Kh8 22.Ng5 White now has the initiative 22...Nd8 disconnects my rooks [¹22...Rbe8!?³ is interesting] 23.f4² Bxd5 24.fxe5 Qd7 25.Rxf8+ Bxf8 26.cxd5 dxe5 27.Rf1± Be7 28.Qc4 Qd6 A blunder. I looked at Bxg5 and Nf3 for a long time but then changed my mind just before I moved as I thought that Qd3 stops his d pawn and protects my a pawn but I completely forgot about my hanging piece. Maybe Nh6 [28...Bxg5 29.Bxg5 Nf7=] 29.Qxg4 Qxd5 30.Qe4 Qd7 31.Qxe5+ Black resigns as mate is coming[31.Qxe5+ Bf6 32.Rxf6 Kg8 33.Bb2 Qd4+ 34.Bxd4 Nc6 35.Qe6+ Kg7 36.Rxg6+ Kf8 37.Nxh7#] 1–0 A good example of how quickly a game can go downhill.

Round 2 was against Doug Unruh (1487). He had his wife assist him by making his moves on the board. Before the game I was worried that it might distract me but once the game started it never bothered me at all and even though I think I played poorly that was not the reason. I played the opening very badly and missed several good moves for both sides but when he played 11...Bf5?? I was able to win a piece. [¹11...Nxc3 would save the game 12.bxc3 Be7±] 12.dxc5+- Qe7 13.Qe1 Nxc5 14.Bg5 f6 15.exf6 Qf7 16.Qe5 g6 17.Qxc5 Kb8 18.Bf4 Rhe8 19.Rad1 Bxc2 20.Rxd8+ Rxd8 21.Qe7 Rd7 22.Qxf7 Rxf7 23.Re1 b6 24.Nd4 Bf5 25.Nxc6+ Kb7 26.Nd8+ 1–0

Round 3 was against WFM Silje Bjerke of Norway. I played the opening badly again and in fact made the exact same mistake I had made in a game in my last tournament Still my position wasn’t too bad until I chose a poor defensive plan 22... Kd8 & 23...Qc8, which ended up decentralizing my queen and tying it up to protect a pawn 22...Kd8? (diagram) [¹22...Kb8!?= might be a viable alternative] 23.Qa8+ Qc8 24.Qc6 e5 [¹24...Ke7!?±] 25.g5+- Qxh3 26.Rf3 I did not see this simple move [26.gxh6 Qxe3+ 27.Kb1 exf4 28.Qxa6 Qe4+ 29.Ka1 Rf5µ] 26...Qe6 [¹26...Qd7 27.Qxd7+ Kxd7 28.gxh6 Ref8+-] 27.gxh6 exf4 28.Bb6! Rd7?? 29.Bxc7+! Rxc7 30.Rxd6+ 1–0 On the positive side this was the only game I have ever played where I had an advantage on the clock after the opening.

Round 4 was against Tyler Janzen of Saskatoon. He outplayed me in the opening without using any time of his clock but allowed me to play 15.Qg4! Rg8 16.Ng5 Qc4 17.f4?? Bad move. I was also thinking of Bf4 but Qh5 is strongest. [17.Qh5 g6 18.Qxh7 Rf8 19.Nxe6 fxe6 20.Qxg6+ Kd8 21.Bg5+ Kc7+- 22.Rac1 Pins the Queen; 17.Bf4 h5 18.Qf3 Rf8 19.b3] 17...Nxe5 18.Qh5± Ng6 19.f5 Qb4 20.Be3+- Qh4 21.Qxh4 Nxh4± 22.fxe6 fxe6? 23.Bf2+- Kd7 24.Bxh4 Rge8 25.Nf3 Rab8 26.Ne5+ Kd6 27.Bg3 Rb5 28.Rac1 Ke7 29.Rc7+ Kf6 30.Rf1+ Missed a mate in two [30.Bh4+ Kf5 31.Rf7#] 30...Kg5 31.Rxg7+ Kh6 32.Rxa7 Rb6 33.Bf4+ Kh5 34.Rxh7# 1–0

Overall another tournament where every game went as expected by ratings. I finished at 2/4 which was good enough for shared first in under 1900. Rp=1820 and brought my rating up to 1810.

2007 Alberta Open 2007-Oct

2008-03-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

This 3 day event was held over the Thanksgiving weekend and had 50 participants. I yo-yo’d back and forth losing against higher rated opponent and then beating lower rated ones.

Round 1 was against Dale Hassel (2262). I completely mis-evaluated the opening and was crushed. After the game Dale explained that my whole plan to push f5 was faulty but at the time I had no other plan. 12...f5? [¹12...c6!?±] 13.dxe5+- dxe5 14.Rad1 Qf6 15.c5 Nd7 16.Nd5 Qd8 17.exf5 gxf5 18.Nh4 Nb8 19.Nb6 Qe8 20.Nxa8 then resigned on move 35 1–0

Round 2 was against Keith Aartsen (1447). Position after 7…h6?? I played 8. Bxf7! Kxf7 9. Ne5+! Ke8 10. Nxg4 and won the game after 32 moves.

Round 3 was against Micah Hughey (2113). He played some kind of pseudo-Marshall and used no time on his clock where as I used plenty of time in the opening. I saw a tactic for myself and couldn’t find a refutation at the board so I played it. 12.Bxf7+ Kxf7 13.Rf5+ Bf6 14.Rxf4 Qd3 15.Rf3 Bxf3 16.Qxf3 Qxf3 17.gxf3 Obviously he played this variation many times before and when he played the clamping Qd3 I new I was in big trouble. I sacked the exchange to try to free myself but it was too late. I lost after 47 moves when he sacked the exchange back and we would both queen but he would win my queen with a skewer check.

Round 4 was against young Jonathan Mrugala (1680). He played 30.Qh3+ which allowed me to play 30...Qh5+³ and then exchange off the queens 31.Qxh5+ Kxh5 and enter a minor piece ending. At this point we both believed we had the better position. 32.Bh3 Ne7 33.Kf3 Kg5 34.Kg3 h5 35.Be6 Ng6 36.h3 Nf4 37.Bc4 37...Ne2+ [¹37...h4+!? 38.Kh2 Kf6µ] 38.Kf2= Nc1 39.Be6?? I was too aggressive with my knight and if he had played [¹39.b4 cxb4 40.Ke1± I would have been in trouble] 39...Na2³ 40.Ke2 Kf4 41.Bf7 h4 42.Kd2 Nb4 43.c3? Nc6–+ 44.Be6 Ne7 45.b4 Kg3 46.Bd7? Ng6 47.bxc5³ bxc5 48.cxd4?? [¹48.b4 the only rescuing move 48...dxc3+ 49.Kxc3 cxb4+ 50.Kxb4µ] 48...cxd4–+ 49.Kc2 Nf4 50.b4 Nxh3 51.Kb3 Nf2 52.Kc4 Ng4 and I mated him on move 72. 0–1

Round 5 was against Vlad Rekhson (2175). The position shown was reached after exchanging queens on e4 with 26.Bc8 Qxe3 27.fxe3 Another knight vs bishop endgame but this one I mishandled and allowed him to get an outside passed pawn 27...Nd8 28.Kf2 a5 29.Kf3 b6 30.Ke4 Kf7 31.b4 axb4 32.cxb4 Nc6 33.c3 h5 [33...d5+ 34.Kd3=] 34.a4 h4? [34...d5+!? 35.Kd3 Ne5+ 36.Ke2 Nc4²] 35.Bb7± Ne7?? [35...Nd8 36.Ba8 Ke6+-] 36.a5+- f5+ 37.Kd4 c5+ 38.Kd3 bxa5 39.bxa5 Ng6 40.Kc4 Ke7 41.a6 1–0

Round 6 was against Mike Sekuloff (1614). I played the opening badly and once again he was looking to sacrifice but he missed his chance when he played 11...Be6 [instead of ¹11...Bxh3!? 12.Be3 Bg4µ] 12.Bg5 Bc7 [still 12...Bxh3 13.gxh3 Qg3+ 14.Kh1 Qxh3+ 15.Nh2=] 13.Qd2 Nd7 14.Bh4 Nde5? [¹14...Qf4!?² would keep Black in the game] 15.Nxe5+- Nxe5 16.Bg3 f6± 17.Nd4 Rae8 18.Nb5 Qd7 19.Nxc7 Qxc7 20.Qf4 g5? [¹20...Qc5= and Black is still in the game] 21.Qe3 Qd7 22.Bxe5 fxe5? 23.Qxg5++- Qg7 24.Qxg7+ Kxg7 25.Rxe5 1–0

Overall every game went as expected by ratings. I finished at 3/6 which was good enough for shared first in under 1800 with Vitaly Motuz and Allen Wu. Rp=1883 and brought my rating up to 1809.

Edmonton International (Sectional) 2007-Aug

2008-03-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

After experiencing the yo-yo effect during my first tournament I was hoping that this sectional, run in conjunction with the Edmonton International, would give me a better indication of my current playing strength. Round 1 was Friday evening and after achieving a good position a clear pawn up, and my opponent having double isolated c pawns, I missed my chance to maintain my extra pawn on e4 with 13…f5. Then I reached the following position after 18.Bc7=.

Wihnon,Jason (1816) - Chaisson,Terry (1779)
Edm International D 110'+30 03.08.2007
18...Bd5 [18...Rd7 19.Rxe6 Rxc7 20.Qh3=] 19.Bxd8² Bxe4?? [¹19...Rxd8 would save the game 20.Qd1 f5±] 20.Qxe4+- Rxd8 [20...Qd2 there is nothing better in the position 21.Bc7 Kh8+-] 21.Qe6+ This is the check that I missed in my analysis at the board when I took on e5 with the bishop Kf8 22.Qe7+ Kg8 23.Qxd8+ Kf7 24.Qe8# 1–0

Round 2 I played a teenager (who are almost always underrated) and achieved the following position. At the time I was sure was it was a winning position but after placing my king in a bad position I was the one forcing the draw.
Wu,Allen (1711) - Chaisson,Terry (1779)
Edm International D 110'+30, 04.08.2007
42.c5 h5 43.Kc4 h4 44.c6 Rc8 45.Kd5 h3 46.Rb7+³ Ke8?? Black is ruining his position [¹46...Kf6 and Black can hope to survive 47.Rh7 f4 48.Rxh3 g5=] 47.Rh7± h2 48.Rxh2 Kf7 49.Kd6 Rd8+ 50.Kc7 Rd3 51.Kb7 Rb3+= 52.Kc8 Kf6 53.c7 Rc3 54.Kd7 Rd3+± 55.Kc6 Rc3+ 56.Kb6 Rb3+² [56...Rb3+ 57.Ka5 Rc3±] ½–½

So after 2 rounds I had a disappointing 0.5/2 points. Round 3 I played a decent game against Trevor from Saskatchewan and my 2 connected passed pawns were decisive.

Chaisson,T (1779) - Robertson,Trevor (1581)
Edm International D 110'+30, 04.08.2007
34.Kf3 Ra3+ 35.Kxf4 h3 36.Rh1 Rh8 37.f3 Ra2 38.c6± Rg2? [¹38...Ke7 39.Ra1 Rxa1 40.Rxa1 Rh4+ 41.Kg3 Rxb4 42.Ra7+ Kd8 43.Rd7+ Ke8±] 39.b5+- d4 40.Ke4 Rh4+ 41.Kd3 h2 42.c7 Rh3 43.Rbf1 Rh8 44.b6 Rb2 45.Rb1 Rf2 46.Kxd4 Rxf3 47.Rbf1 Rh4+ 48.Kc5 Rxf1 49.Rxf1+ Ke7 50.c8Q h1Q 51.Rxh1 Rxh1 52.Qb7+ Kd8 53.Qxh1 Ke7 54.Qh7+ 1–0

For round 4 I asked my opponent if he wanted to play Saturday evening since the club was open for the grandmaster tournament anyway. He graciously agreed and that was supposed to allow me to start home earlier on Sunday but I ended up having to take the family to the West Edmonton Mall amusement park Sunday afternoon anyway. This is my favorite tournament game I’ve played. I just love the white pawn storm – in fact 11 of my first 17 moves were pawn moves. I thought I played a great game but of course Fritz found many improvements. This brought me to 2.5/4 and into contention.

Chaisson,T (1779) - Sequillion,Aaron (1729)
Edm International D 110'+30, 04.08.2007
16.fxg6 hxg6 17.h4 18.Qc2 18...Rdd7 19.h5 gxh5 20.Rxh5 20...fxg5 21.Bxg5 Nf6 22.Bxf6 Bxf6 23.Nf5 Rh7? [23...c4 24.Qg2+ Rg7 25.Bg4 cxd3 26.0–0–0+-] 24.Qh2 Rxh5 25.Bxh5 Kf8 26.0–0–0 Rh7 27.Rh1 Qd8 28.Qg2 Bg5+ 29.Kb1 Qf6 30.Rf1 Bf4 31.Qg6?? not a good decision, because now the opponent is right back in the game [¹31.Rg1 and White could have gained the advantage 31...Ne7 32.Qg4+-] 31...Qxg6= 32.Bxg6 Rd7? [¹32...Rh2= would keep Black alive] 33.Rh1+- Kg8 34.Be8 Rd8 35.Bxc6 bxc6 36.Ne7+ Kf8 37.Nxc6 Rd7 38.Rh8+ Kf7 39.Rh7+ Ke6 40.Rxd7 Kxd7 41.Nxa7 Ke6 42.c4 Kd7 43.Kc2 Bg5 44.Kb3 Bd2 45.Nb5 Kc6 46.Nc3 Be1 47.Nd5 Ba5 48.Ka4 Bd2 49.a3 Be1 50.b4 cxb4 51.axb4 Bf2 52.Ka5 Bh4 53.Ka6 Bf2 54.b5+ Kd7 55.b6 Kc6 56.b7 1–0

My final round was Sunday morning against Mike Sekuloff and Mike was in the mood to sacrifice. I believe he missed the Bishop retreat 11 …Be6 and later on 19 …Ne4.
Sekuloff,Mike (1680) - Chaisson,T (1779)
Edm International D 110'+30, 05.08.2007
10.Bxf7+?? gives the opponent counterplay [¹10.Qe3 Bxf3 11.Qxf3± (11.gxf3?! Qe7=) ] 10...Kxf7–+ 11.Qc4+ Be6 12.Nxe5+ dxe5 13.Qxc5 Qd6 14.Qb5 a6 15.Qe2 Rhf8 16.Be3 Qc6 17.Qf3 Qxe4 18.Qg3 Qf5 19.Bc5 Ne4 20.Rxe4? [20.Qe3 Nd6 21.Qxe5 Qxe5 22.Rxe5–+] 20...Qxe4 21.f3 21...Qf4 22.Qf2 Rfe8 23.Re1 Bd5 24.Be3 Qf6 25.Qg3 Re6 26.b3 b6 27.c4 Bc6 28.Bc1 Rae8 29.Bb2 29...Qf4 30.Qf2 e4 31.Qd4 Qf6 32.fxe4 Qxd4+ 33.Bxd4 Rxe4 34.Rf1+ Kg6 35.c3 Re1 [¹35...Re2 seems even better 36.Rf2 Re1+ 37.Kh2 R8e2–+] 36.Kf2 Rxf1+ 37.Kxf1–+ Kf7 38.g3 g5 39.a3 Kg6 40.b4 Rf8+ 41.Ke2 h5 42.h4 gxh4 43.gxh4 Rf4 44.c5 Rxh4 45.cxb6 Rxd4! Double attack: b6/e2 46.cxd4 cxb6 47.Kf2 Kf5 48.Kg3 Ke4 49.Kh4 Be8 50.a4 Kxd4 51.a5 bxa5 52.bxa5 Kc5 0–1

I finished at 3.5/5 which I found out later was good enough for shared first with Jason and Allen. Rp=1863 and brought my rating up to 1795.

2007 Northern Alberta Open 2007-02

2008-03-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

This was my first tournament after coming out of Chess retirement. I knew I wasn’t prepared but I figured if I didn’t try it now, when would I? I didn’t get to ease myself in gently since my first game was on board 1 against IM Vicente Lee (2349). I was surprised that with a 1787 rating I was on the bottom half of the players list but I didn’t get too stressed out about it. I just assumed I would lose and played it as a warm up (against the strongest player I ever played). I resigned with black after 32 moves when I lost a third pawn. 15...Qc7? [¹15...Qd6±] 16.Qxd5+- Be6 17.Rxe6 fxe6 18.Qxe6+ Qf7 19.Bxh7+ Kf8 20.Ng5 Qxe6 21.Nxe6+ Ke7 22.Nxd8 Kxd8 23.Rb1 Kc7 24.Be4 Nc6 25.f3 Rd8 26.g4 b6 27.Kf2 Ne7 28.Rb5 Rd6 29.h4 Ng6 30.Rg5 Nxh4 31.Kg3 Rh6 32.Rxg7+ 1–0

Round 2 was against an unrated player MacKendrick,Callum and I won in 32 moves. 12.d4 Qxe6 13.dxe5 Bxe5 14.Bf4 Nd7 15.Bxe5 Nxe5 16.f4 0–0 17.Rxe5 Qxc4 18.Qd5+ Qxd5 19.Rxd5 Rad8 20.Rxd8 Rxd8 21.Nc3 c4 22.Rd1 Rxd1+ 23.Nxd1 b5 24.Kf2 Kf7 25.Ke3 Ke6 26.Nc3 a6 27.g4 b4 28.Ne4 a5 29.Kd4 b3 30.axb3 cxb3 31.Nc5+ Kd6 32.Nxb3 1–0

Round 3 was against Andrew Boik (2166). After 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 I was already out of my book. By move 14 I was losing and I resigned on move 29. Position after 15...Ba6? 16.Qd1?? gives the opponent counterplay [16.Nc4 Nc2 17.Nxb6 Bxe2 18.Nxd7 Nxa1 19.Nxb8 (19.Bxa1 Bxf1 20.Kxf1 Rxb3 21.Nxf8 Kxf8–+) 19...Rxb8 20.Rxa1 Rxb3 21.dxc5 Rxb2 22.c6³] 16...Bxf1 17.Bxf1 Nc6 18.Rc1 Nxd4 19.Bxd4 cxd4 20.b4 a5 21.bxa5? Qxa5 22.Nb3 Qa4 23.Nbxd4 Qxd1 24.Rxd1 Bxa3 25.Kg2 Bc5 26.Re1 Rb2 27.Kg1 Ra8 28.Re2 Bxd4 29.Rxb2 Bxb2 0–1 That ended day 1.

Day 2 started against another unrated player Amasaid Magdi but he was a very strong player and had already beaten Roy Yearwood (2137) in round 1. I played the Philidor Defense and was outplayed but after several errors by both of us I missed several chances such as 44...Rd6?? [¹44...Rd1+ 45.Ke2 h3 46.Kxd1 h2µ] 45.Nd4+- h3?? I thought I had calculated this correctly but I was wrong 46.Nf5+ Kf3 47.Nxd6 h2 48.Rf5+ Kg3 49.Nxe4+! Nxe4 50.Rh5 Nd2+ 51.Ke2 Ne4 52.Kd3? Nf2+–+ 53.Ke2 h1Q?? The final mistake with 10 min left. I still don’t know why I did not play Nh3 because I had seen it earlier. After this the knight cannot stop all the pawns. [53...Nh3! 54.Rh8 h1Q 55.Rg8+ Kh4 56.Rh8+ Kg4 57.Rg8+ Ng5–+] 54.Rxh1+- Nxh1 55.a5 Nf2 56.a6 Ne4 57.a7 1–0

The last round was a win against Myron Loke, a nice kid rated 1252. 18.Qb5+ Qd7 19.Nxd6+ Ke7 20.Qxd7+ Nxd7 21.Bb4 Kf6 22.0–0 a5 23.Bc3 Ke7 24.Nxb7 Ra7 25.Nxa5 Kf6 26.Nc6 Ra6 27.f4 Kg6 28.Nxe5+ Nxe5 29.fxe5 Rd8 30.d6 Rd7 31.a3 Kh6 32.Rf3 Raa7 33.Rd1 Ra8 34.Rd4 g6 35.Rh3+ Kg7 36.e6 1–0

Overall I didn’t play anyone with a rating within 400 of mine and only 1 game was close. I only lost 8 rating points to drop to 1779 and I didn’t embarrass myself so mission accomplished.

Welcome to my blog

2008-03-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

White To Move.

I have to be honest. I have never seen the attraction of blogs. The thought of writing personal thoughts and then posting them on the internet for everyone to read does not appeal to me. I have a strong suspicion that most of what is written is mindless drivel and musings of the self important. Recently though, I have seen several chess blogs that I’ve found interesting and I thought that I too could write about my results from the chess tournaments I have entered. I doubt many people will be interested in my mindless chess drivel but then I don’t have any illusions that it has any importance at all so I don’t care.

Chess is a hobby that I took up again last year after a long hiatus. I used to live on Prince Edward Island and play chess at the Charlottetown chess club. I even managed to become provincial chess champion but the pool of players on PEI was fairly small and the highest my rating got was in the 1900’s. I stopped playing chess in 1993 or 1994 and didn’t play another game until a year ago aside from playing against my kids. They had seen my old chess set sitting in the closet and wanted to play the game with the funny little pieces. I was surprised that my wife also knew how to play and so we taught the kids the basic moves and occasionally played a few games.

Then by chance there happened to be a children’s chess tournament in our town with players from Alberta and Saskatchewan. I entered my kids just for the experience. The following year I entered them again in the same tournament and then several others in Edmonton. They had improved dramatically and at one tournament my daughter’s success was like a spark to me. She was in a six player sectional and had won her first 4 games, then like an old pro offered a draw to her opponent in the last round to win her first gold medal by a half point. It was an exciting result and rekindled in me the desire to challenge myself and see if I still could achieve a modest level of success at chess. Plus I had just given up playing rec hockey and this could fulfill that need for competition, so with that in mind I packed my suitcase one weekend and went of to Edmonton fir the 2007 Northern Alberta Open.

Sol'n to problem: Qxc6 allows mate with the Knight