Friday, April 5, 2013

NM Brian Schuman

I just saw Brian's name in a current USCF mailing list, which surprised me because I knew he'd passed away some years ago.  (My brother-in-law David, who himself died in 2009, was Brian's auto mechanic, so I'm guessing that Brian passed away at least five years ago.)  I believe Brian lived in or near Rogers Park, but I'm not sure.

Games, remembrances, etc. would be appreciated.

Queen sac-a-palooza

This is a fun game, concluding with two pseudo-queen sacrifices, but Houdini as usual points out improvements for me. Obvious ones. D'oh! This game upped my record on GameKnot.com to 29-0.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Really silly Internet game

I just started playing on GameKnot.com, which has correspondence games with a minimum length of 2 days per move. That was the time control for the following game, believe it or not. GameKnot assigns one an initial rating of 1200 and initially only lets one play against very low-rated players. That probably explains why I'm 27-0 thus far. This game raised my rating to a walloping 1612, exactly 800 points below my USCF correspondence rating. This game is even sillier than most, but the final mate is kind of picturesque, albeit no Dodge-Houghteling :

Congratulations to Illinois' newest Senior Master...

Anand on Carlsen

Interview in The Indian Express.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Carlsen and Kramnik lose, tie for first, Carlsen advances

This Candidates tourney has been a real doozy. If you haven't been following it, here's a little recap. After seven rounds, the halfway point in the double round robin tournament, Carlsen and Aronian were dominating the field, each with three wins and four draws. Former World Champion Kramnik had drawn all seven games and trailed both leaders by 1.5 points. Then Kramnik went on an incredible tear, scoring 4.5 points in the next five games, to vault into the lead! He beat Aronian in the last of those games after Aronian blundered away an easy draw. That was Aronian's second consecutive loss, leaving him 1.5 points behind Kramnik. Meanwhile, Carlsen was unrecognizable as White against Ivanchuk, who had an incredibly erratic tournament. Carlsen played badly throughout the game and lost after missing a possible draw in the rook ending. So after 12 rounds, the standings were Kramnik 8/12, Carlsen 7.5/12, Aronian 6.5/12, with just two rounds to go. Then in round 13 Carlsen eked out an endgame win as Black against Radjabov, while Kramnik was unable to convert his advantage against Gelfand. Aronian drew against Grischuk, falling out of contention.

This set the stage for an incredibly dramatic last round. Carlsen and Kramnik led with 8.5 points. Carlsen had White against Svidler, while Kramnik was Black against Ivanchuk. Ivanchuk, as mentioned, had been extremely erratic, losing five games on time before move 40. (By comparison, Fischer lost twice on time in his entire career.) Carlsen was leading on tiebreaks, since the first tiebreak was number of wins and he had won five games to Kramnik's four. So Kramnik had to hope Carlsen did not win in the final round, and if so had to outscore him: if Carlsen drew, Kramnik had to win, while if Carlsen lost, Kramnik would have to win or draw. Kramnik must have figured that Carlsen would at least draw as White, so he (Kramnik) would have to win. Carlsen, on his part, must have feared that Ivanchuk would get in his usual time pressure and flag, in which case he (Carlsen) would have to win.

The upshot was that both of the leaders played badly. Carlsen got nothing out of the opening, got extremely low on time (he had something like two minutes for his last 12 moves in a complicated position), and barely made the time control, only to find himself in a hopeless ending. Kramnik, meanwhile, played the opening dubiously, trying to keep the game complicated and hope that Chukky would flag as usual. Chukky was having none of it. He handled the complications deftly and made time control with a minute to spare, with a completely winning position. Both Carlsen and Kramnik lost, leaving them tied for first with 8.5 points. So Carlsen, despite losing as White for the second time in three games, backed into a tie for first and a win on tiebreak. He will face Anand for the World Championship in November. An unbelievable finish.

Aronian meanwhile won nicely against Radjabov. He and Svidler tied for third with 8 points. Gelfand (Anand's challenger last time) and Grischuk tied for fifth with 6.5, Ivanchuk was seventh with 6 points, and Radjabov was last with 4.

Third IM norm for Adarsh Jayakumar

Adarsh (pictured below with Grandmaster Friðrik Olafsson) recovered from his Icelandic adventure to score a very impressive third IM norm at the Philadelphia Open (performance rating FIDE 2470!). Adarsh now needs to make FIDE 2400 to earn the title.

   

 We also hear there was a little chess played in London the past few days....

"University of Illinois is a bracket-buster — in chess"



Story in the Chicago Tribune. It's amusing that Illini freshman Eric Rosen, the 2011 National High School Champion, is given credit for "having captured the third-grade Illinois state championship."

Go Illini!