Field report: TJWO Round 3

Travel photos and woodpushing

FM Michael Langer of Austin, Texas (the grandson of Lev Abramov, who captained the Soviet team in the famous USSR vs. World match in Belgrade) drove me to Mount St. Helen's on Tuesday. I was amazed that the devastation wrought by the 1980 eruption is still so evident: a dozen miles away, the remains of entire forests effaced by the eruption indicate the direction of the lateral blast. Closer to the volcano, stumps remain where the rest of the tree was vaporized.

The blast zone, many miles away:
everything in the valley was devastated on May 18, 1980

As bad as 1980 was, the Mount St. Helen's eruption was small potatoes compared to prehistoric volcanic eruptions in the Cascades.  One doesn't want to be around when Crater Lake blows again. (I've always wondered what Strangelovian continuity-of-government plans are in place for the Yellowstone Caldera "event": but we chess players do tend to be paranoid.)

Oh yes, chess.

A trap in the Benko Gambit

A lot of players don't want to face the pressure that Black gets on the a and b files in the main lines of the Benko Gambit (1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5!? 4.cxb5 a6), so they decline the gambit with something like 4.Nf3, 4.Qc2, or 4.cxb5 a6 5.b6. The Bosnian-Dutch GM Ivan Sokolov essayed such a line against super-GM Vassily Ivanchuk at the Olympiad last year, but ended up on the wrong end of a miniature. Sokolov tried 4.Qc2 bxc4 5.e4 d6 6.Bxc4 g6 7.b3??, a move that had been played in previous games by several players, including Sokolov himself. Ivanchuk rudely awakened him with 7...Nxe4!, and suddenly Sokolov was the one playing a gambit, since 8.Qxe4? Bg7 would spear White's rook. After 12.Qe2, White seemed to have some compensation, since his pin on the e-file made it hard for Black to castle. However, Sokolov didn't help his cause with the caveman-like 13.h4?, allowing Black to plant his knight powerfully on e5. Ivanchuk then wrapped up the game in just 12 more moves.