Road trip: Kings Island Rd 1

Hey, it's a blog.

I had a casual dinner with Andrew Karklins at the Melrose a week ago Monday, and wound up playing him in Ohio on Friday. A perpetual cheapo salvages my iffy position.

Checkmating the queen

On Tuesday night at the U.S. Open, Dmitry Gurevich made it look easy.

Chess is hard, installment #17,421

Here's a position from a game that GM Yury Shulman played on Friday at the World Open:

Shulman-Ludwig, World Open 2012
Black to play

Try to find Black's best move in the above position: not easy!

Not bad for a sixth-grader (or a supergrandmaster)

GM Michael Adams (photo: Chicago Tribune)

Grandmaster Michael Adams (perhaps a few years past his peak, but still #18 in the world on the live ratings list and still Britain's top player) is in town for the Chicago Open (you have two days to preregister!).

This past Saturday, Adams lectured for six (!) hours at the North Shore Chess Center, then gave a simultaneous exhibition against nineteen twenty-one brave souls.  (GM Adams only lost one game: to a sixth-grader!  (To be fair, just as GM Adams is no ordinary grandmaster, National Elementary Co-Champion Alex Bian is no ordinary sixth-grader.)  The grandmaster makes a "typical" simul oversight: Alex finishes his task with steady and crisp technique.

Final score per Sevan Muradian: 16 wins, 4 draws, and the above loss.

One or two people may still be able to squeeze into the Adams simul in Downers Grove on May 23rd.

Round 1, US Championship: Shulman and Kaidanov draw

Both players were going for the full point today.  Yury Shulman opens the h-file against the castled king, and Gregory Kaidanov strikes back in the center.

Fighting chess

Congratulations to NM Adarsh Jayakumar, who became a United States citizen yesterday! 

Adarsh and IM Arjun Vishnuvardhan had a fun brawl on Tuesday.  Arjun makes me want to start playing the Bogo-Indian: he was very close to putting the game away.  But Adarsh slipped away to a tenable ending, Arjun pushed too hard, and....

(Updated to correct scoresheet transcription error.)

Today's Round 1 action: 27th North American Masters

Black against Grandmaster Mesgen Amanov is the second-toughest pairing possible in Illinois!  FIDE Master Gauri Shankar almost made it to a tenable endgame.  But not quite....

Round 2 is wrapping up right now; Round 3 begins at 1 p.m. tomorrow.