Mechanics "FIDE" Sumer '06 Group B

So this tournament seems to have lasted forever which makes sense as it was an 11 round, round-robin event where the games where played self-scheduled. The tournament as a whole isn't quite over, but almost done, but I'm done with all my games finishing an acceptable 7/11 after a pretty disasterous start, but a strong finish. I only had 3.5/7 after my first 7 games and probably had a clearly superior position in all seven of those games at some point, but that's chess sometimes. My goal was to get 3.5/4 for my last 4 which I met after a spectacular swindle in my last game where my opponent could have sacked his knight to go into a position where I had a lone bishop vs 3 pawns and he was completely winning, but a little low on time he decided to keep his knight on the board and even up a pawn he was the one fighting for a draw which he was unable to find. I had some very interesting games this tournament and some messy ones as well. It looks as if I'll get equal 3rd at worst and probably clear 3rd which is a result I can be happy with. I don't know how happy I am with my play this tournament, I showed some nice technique in a few games, but in this last game I showed quite the opposite. In fact, looking back now, all of my wins were in endgames with 2 or fewer pieces on the board. I probably should have had one more real win, but I botched what would have been a very nice game to destroy my chance of that.

The only real "quality" I showed this tournament was my ability to convert lost positions into winning positions which is not a useless skill at all, but one I prefer not to have to use that often. Hopefully I'll continue my recent good results this weekend in the Cal Chess Labor Day State Championship tournament where I will be playing up into the "Master Section" I hope to soon be a regular part of.

Estimated Rating Change:
2134->2137

Chess Typos

So I was browsing for a moment and came across a review of a new DVD that is a repetoire for the black side of the french and then I ran across the following:


This DVD covers:

• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5
• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7
• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7
• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7
• 1.e4 e6 2.exd5
• 1.e4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.Nc3
• 1.e4 e6 2.d3 (King’s Indian Attack)
• 1.e4 e6 2.Qe2
• 1.e4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.b4 (Wing Gambit)

I really hope this isn't actually on the back cover of the DVD, I hope some editor somewhere along the way would have caught this mistake, but oh well, time for me to embarass somebody anyways (Note: feel free to point out all my typos and grammatical mistakes in this blog or even in this post). I find it quite difficult for white to play 2. ed against the French, this is a serious novelty that I can honestly say I have never faced over the board. I guess it's the 2 minute gambit line or something because after 2. ed, I will stop the clock, call the director, make an illegal move claim and then have 2 extra minutes on my clock. Alright, that was definitely a little harsh, but oh well. If you want to see the site for yourself click the link on the title.

Vladimir Pufnitieff Memorial

I haven't blogged in a while, mostly due to being busy and lazier with my free time now. I've been playing pleanty of chess with mixed results. I am taking part in an ongoing tournament that hasn't been too successful, but nothing too disasterous either. This weekend's tournament went fairly well though. I played chess I could for the most part be happy with other than a silly blunder in round 3 that I recovered from to draw that game against a 2000ish player. I won rounds 1, 2, and 4 in a simply fashion I could be happy with and round 5 I drew against Batchimeg Tuvshintugs (2300ish) to tie for 2nd place overall. I was a little unhappy with my 5th round game in that I misplayed the move order and got no advantage at all. I had one opportunity later to generate some winning chances, but I guess I felt some positional pressure and decided to liquidate into an endgame (pawn down) I was pretty sure I could draw. Overall a good result.

Rating Change Estimate: 2125->2135

Charles Bagby

NONONO. That's nuff said.

2145-> ~2125

Candidates Results

I can't say the tournament went horribly, but the finish wasn't great. I beat the 2nd lowest player in the field in round one fairly routinely. In round 2 I played my good friend NM Eugene Yanayt and after I equalized as black he decided he'd had it for the day so he offered a draw and we both got to end early. In round 3 I played for the fourth time (all as white) a strong expert Craig Clawitter. In the first 3 games there had been, a dragon, a hippo, and a french. The first one I was winning I messed up and drew, the second game I didn't really get anything and the position got kind of locked up and we drew. In the third game I beat him to qualify for the state championship candidates last year (which I couldn't play in). In this game, he decided to go back to the dragon, but since then I had switched from the 9. Bc4 lines to the 9. 0-0-0 lines against the dragon. He followed with Bd7 which is played, but isn't as good against 9. 0-0-0 so I quick got a huge initiative. He wisely sacked a pawn to keep his play alive, but eventually I got a big attack and that pawn became a powerful passed pawn and in the end I managed to display some tricks to simplify and be left with a promoting pawn which was easy to mop up. In the last round, I was willing to take a draw if I got nothing from the opening (although I realized I might have missed out on qualifying by tiebreaks had this happened, but I couldn't play in the championships anyways, I'm in Hawaii at that time). So in round 4 I played strong expert (although probably now master after this result) Francis Chen and that game was an absolute disaster. I was moving a little too fast in the opening and played a slight inaccuracy that allowed him to completely equalize with maybe even a slightly better position. So I played a move which I thought allowed him to liquidate and offered a draw which I was pretty sure he would be fine with. This is true, but this move carelessly blundered a piece so he decided to take the piece instead. Quite embarassing, but still a good overall result for the tournament.

Rating Change: 2138->2145

State Championship Candidates Tournament

There's the state championship candidates tournament this weekend. It's a 4 round FIDE rated swiss event. The top 4 finishers get a spot into the the closed state championship (this event is also qualification based for that matter). It's a pretty tough field. There basically a few low rated players, a ton of experts and a few masters. I'll need to play better than I have been lately to have a chance of qualifying, but I feel up to the task and I would love to do some more damage towards my master title. I decided to give myself a new goal that's a little more ambitious than making master by the end of the year. I played my first tournament game on October 12th, 2002 so I would like to break 2200 unofficially (or officially would be fine too) by October 12th, 2005. That probably gives me a handful of tournaments between now and then, should make it attainable, but not trivial.

William Addison Open

My first tournament since moving to San Francisco was a success, kind of. I will say it's nice to be able to walk less than half a mile to a chess tournament. It turns out I can play like absolute crap and miss tactics 1600s would find and still finish with a 2500 tournament performance rating by the USCF rating calculator. I had an amazing result in this G/45 tournament scoring 4.5/5 against an average opponent rating of over 2000 and defeating 2 masters in the process. I tied for first with IM De Guzman to net a share for the 1st-2nd overall prize money. I don't know really how to feel about this tournament. I don't feel like I'm playing well at all, it was G/45 and I certainly cannot argue with the result (although I missed a win in the game I drew). Either way I still know I have significant tactical practice that needs to be done, but if I can play this badly and net a cool 20+ rating points in every tournament I'll be in healthy shape.
I have a fairly big event coming up next weekend in the SCCF state championship qualifier that I hope to do well in. Wish me luck.

Estimated Rating Change: 2111->2138 WOOHOO

Results [Updated]

Terrible, Terrible, Terrible. With no time to practice chess I guess my tactics have gotten a little rusty. So many blunders. I did manage to pull out one nice game in round 5, my only win for a total of 2/5, I should lose like 20 points or more, I don't feel like calculating it, just depressing. I'll put up the official change when it happens.

Woohoo, rating change not as bad as I thought:
2124->2110
Not pleasant, but I'll deal with it.

Round 1 Result

I lost in round 1 to GM Wojtkiewicz, I can't be too disappointed with the result. I made a few mistakes I would have liked to avoid, but I did realize this is my first ever game against a GM, so that is exciting for me. I hope to make my next one more successful. Either way, should be playing down tomorrow morning and up tomorrow evening if things go well. Hopefully I'll be reporting in with 2 more points in the tournament tomorrow night.

"Memorial" Day Classic 2006

So the "Memorial Day" tournament in LA this year is happening a week before memorial day which is , but what can I do about that. I strongly support there being a strong chess scene wherever I happen to live, but I can only do so much with no income and limited ability to attend a single tournament. I'm hoping to improve over my last result. I don't think this should be too big of a problem since last time I think in addition to not playing well I also ran into some bad luck. I only played close opposition in 2 rounds both were with black and I didn't otherwise get a chance to prove myself. Wish me luck!

Kamsky leads in Sofia

I don't have time for a long post right now, but Kamsky's results so far have been spectacular. He has beaten everyone in the field minus Topalov once and his only loss was at Topalov's hands who is 1.5 points behind him. Anand is in 2nd a full point behind and there have been many interesting games. I haven't had much time to study chess or blog recently due to school and Ditch Day activities (Ditch Day is a tradition at Caltech). Ditch Day happened on Wednesday so as soon as I get caught up in school I should be fine otherwise.

Tournament Results

I had a bad tournament this weekend. I won all my games playing down, but I was playing way down, and I lost 2 games playing up and even where the up was not by much. What can I do?
Rating change estimate: 2036->2024

Weekend Tournament: Los Angeles County Open 2006

The posts have been pretty scarce lately, I'm trying to make sure I graduate on time. However, I can't miss the opportunity to play a decent weekend event so I'll be driving the 15 minutes to the Los Angeles County Open in Monterey Park. It's not my favorite format with the one, large open section and the first day when I'll be looking for my big upset is 30/90 SD/30. I'll hopefully make a couple of updates this weekend of a positive result.

Mechanics Chess Club

I was up in San Francisco on Monday for a job interview (which I think went well) so I decided in the time I had before I had to leave for my flight I'd pop into the Mechanics Chess Club. It's a very nice club, not a whole lot of people around in the middle of the afternoon, but they had a very nice setup and if I end up living in the area I look forward to playing there.
Also, I don't know if Mechanics US Chess League is looking for an improving expert to play on board 4 in some matches or just to have on their roster, but if someone reading this knows tell them I'm interested :-).

Chess Books

I figured things have been rather quiet lately here so I decided to talk about a few books I have been going through recently and books I've finished recently.

Excelling at Chess Calculation by Aagaard
I really like this book, there are some very interesting problems and it really does give ideas on how to improve your calculation and things to be weary of while calculating. I've actually read through it once before, but reading it now it's obvious my first reading wasn't too attentive. I'm not sure how much of this book is easy to pick up, most of it needs to be done through practice which it doesn't necessarily provide on it's own, but it does give suggestions for organization of thought.

Chess Self-Improvement by Zenon Franco
This book has a pretty cool cover and the first time I heard of it I thought it was pretty dorky and that the book wouldn't be of much interest to me. Actually this is an interesting book and if you spend the time to really go through the games with serious concentration you can gain a lot. I feel like if you spend the effort this is as closed to a simulated game environment you can probably get. The moves he asks you to try to figure out vary in difficulty and the points are awarded in various fashions. I will note, don't even both with this book if you plan on just skimming through it, that's a waste of your time.

School of Chess Excellence 1: Endgame Analysis by Dvoretsky
I bought this book really recently and have just started working through it, but it seems very good so far and is much more theoretically based than the bulk of Dvoretsky's other work Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. Here a lot of time is spent talking about playable positions and I feel like I will be able to learn a lot from this book. He goes over some very tough endgame positions from real games, often times where players had hours to analyze in adjournment.

Chess for Zebras by Rowson
A good deal of the book so far is spent presenting information from Seven Deadly Chess Sins in a different manner, but a lot of it is spent on chess improvement. I don't know how particularly relevant it is to me now in this manner, but after reading a review of this book and browsing through it I decided it was certainly worthwhile. His writing style is very candid and always enjoyable. It's certainly one of those books I could work through, not absorb anything and still enjoy it.

On the shoulders of giants...

One of my favorite quotes:

“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

To me I always find it strange when people refuse to study openings because they claim it's just wrote memorization. And to be fair, there is some memorization involved, but I think far less if you do it right. Let's make a quick mention of a very popular opening, the Najdorf. After 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cd 4. Nd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 black plays 5.. a6!? This is one of a few moves available to black in the position, but why when black has only one piece developed is he playing this move a6? It somewhat violates many opening principles. It doesn't develop a piece or really even prepare to develop a piece. Nb5 isn't exactly threatened in the position although if black intends to follow up with e5 in some variations this square is protected. However, if we look in many Sicilian lines, Nb5 or Bb5 even when they're sacrifices are important ideas, but certainly time can be taken out to play this a6 later if it can be done now, right??? Well, black is making a useful move that he will almost certainly have to play later in order to see what white does next and also prepares some moves that he will not necessarily play. For example, black would love to play 5.. e5 without including a6 if it weren't for the problem of Bb5+ now white can go to f5 either after 6.. Bd7 7. Bd7+ 8. Nf5 or just 6.. Nbd7 7. Nf5. I'm sure 90% of the players who play the Najdorf below probably 1800 don't even know why a6 is the move there when there is a simple reason that is much easier to remember than the move itself. I think for the most part if you really understand and opening when you encounter a new theoretical move you will understand the logic of it. If you find yourself uncomfortable when your opponents play strange moves in your pet lines, it's probably time you took your pet opening out for a walk in the park to see what's really going on.

Western Pacific Open Results! (Updated)

I had a solid performance this tournament. Not necessarily a performance I dream of, but it was close.

In round 1 I played the top seed from the 3-day schedule as I predicted, IM Timothy Taylor. I actually got a strategically complicated position against him and was doing find pretty much the whole game, I was even slightly better for a while, but eventually I just miscalculated and collapsed.

In round 2 I play an unrated who gave me a scare when I overlooked a trick he had, but then I realized that this was not a trick at all as it dropped his queen, I wasn't feeling in the best form for this game, but I won fairly quickly and even mated in the endgame with most of the pieces on the board.

In round 3 I played NM Ilya Serpik who I have faced now for the 3rd time going into this game my record against him was 1-0-1 and we have even played some blitz in between rounds so I was feeling good. He played some offbeat line and I got a very nice position out of the opening with black. I actually threw away most of the edge I got by not spending enough time on some of my moves, but I still got a position with good pressure. He blundered shortly after and I converted no problem.

In round 4 I played NM Gregg Small with white. We reached a very complicated position in the middle game which I decided to show:
White to move
So, I might not have chosen the best continuation here, but I think I found a strong idea. Here I played Nb2!? (The whole point of the maneuver I had made from c3 to d1 was to go to c4). I was showing this game to some friends and they have the nerve to criticize this move which I believe I have full compensation if he takes the exchange which he didn't. I probably could've played Be1 first preparing the same idea, but this was still fine. The line I calculated was 19..Nf2+ 20. Rf2 Bf2 21. Nc4 Qa7 (forced) 22. Rf1 Bc5 here I stopped feeling that if nothing else I would have Qg3 Rdg8 Qh4 with some serious compensation, but in fact, I have a knockout that I couldn't calculate all the way in advance, but looked dangerous. 23. Ne5! fe 24. f6 Kd6 (forced or it's basically mate) 25. fg Rhg8 (or Rhe8 Bg5 with a strong attack) 26. Bc4! and the pawn is immune due to Qf6+ 26.. Kc7 27. Bg8 Rg8 28. Qh5 and white has 3 pawns for the sacrificed piece and a continue attack +/-.

Unfortunately for me, things did not end so brilliantly in the game. My opponent wisely declined the exchange and instead played Be8 after which he eventually broke though at the wrong moment which lost a pawn in a position where I was up a pawn and had a better position. Unfortunately in some mutual time trouble (although his was worse) I fell for his last trick in the position which gave him a slightly better endgame which he ground down very well.

In round 5 I got what I deserved for failing to convert my won position in round 4, I was paired against a 1475 player. I won quickly, but I gained (almost) nothing from the game. It did however bring me up to 3/5 which through some miraculous series of events allowed me to qualify for the state championship candidate tournament in June. I'm looking forward to that and I'm hoping to be able to qualify for the state championship there.

Estimated rating change 2129->2135, not bad, I'll be hoping to be doing some more damage in upcoming events. (Note, had I won my 4th game, it would've been another 12 points gained regardless of my result last round against the IM I would've been paired against)

Rating Change Actually: 2129-2137 due to unrated finishing 1900 instead of expected 1800

Weekend Tournament: Western Pacific Open

I'll be driving down towards LAX later today to play in round 1 of the Western Pacific Open. If the pre-entries are reliable (I have multiple reasons to believe they are not) then I'll be playing IM Timothy Taylor in the 1st round. I've lost to him twice including one major blunder in the opening which caused me to resign on move 8. Since I've never scalped an IM, I would love to make this my first. I'm feeling pretty well prepared for this tournament as a whole. I had one disappointing game recently, but I believe as a whole I played well that game and I've been doing a lot of tactical exercizes since then to try to build my awareness. Anyways, if I have some nice results I'll be sure to keep you posted.

Gambits Part 5: Another Marshall Gambit

This is definitely the most famous of Frank Marshall's gambits and probably currently the most theoretically important. I have found only one game between masters so far in 2006 where white dared to allow the Marshall, but at top levels anti-marshall systems haven't been yielding much of an advantage if any for white, they're just less worked out. Here is the critical diagram after black's 9.. d5

I've included pleanty of my personal views and explanations here.

Gambits Part 4: Marshall Gambit in the semi-slav

When you hear the words "Marshall Gambit" you're probably thinking of a position that arises from the Ruy Lopez, but the truth is that Frank Marshall was responsible for a handful of gambit openings that are still employed at the highest level of chess today with incredible soundness and strength. Here I have started within his gambits with the Marshall gambit against the semi-slav

I have provided some analysis mostly covering a recent game Aronian-Vallejo Pons but also talking a little bit about some ideas. Not the normal ideas I usually like to provide, but this line is very theoretical and I'm not trying to turn this into a theoretical survey. Check here for my analysis.