Girls' Invitational, Round 1

Closer to home, here's some action from the North Shore Chess Center in Skokie. The Denker, Barber, and Girls' Invitationals will complete play later today.

It's a Najdorf, and White has done well out of the opening: is it OK to take on c5 and play Bxa6? 

Miranda Liu demonstrates why not....

Thanks to Vince Hart for sending game scores!

Wrapup - 2012 Illinois Class Championships

Jim Froehlich (left) plays  Mario Bartocci

Keith Ammann reports on the ICA website!

There are more photos at illinoisclass.com.

Speaking of which, didn't Ruy López de Segura advise his readers to place the chess board in such a way that their opponents would be blinded by the light of sun?  Two veteran Illinois tournament players  discovered that artificial light works equally well:

Giving a new meaning to "reflection":
neither player has been identified at the time of this post

6th grade results - All Grade

Continuing the All Grade box scores by section (see last night for earlier posts)....

Matthew Stevens (1965) won the 32-player sixth-grade section, running the table with 4-0.  Akhil Kalghatgi and Maxwell Jong tied for second with 3½-½: Maxwell gained 89 rating points despite getting Black three times in four games. Jonathan Tan, Rishi Narayanan, Miranda Liu, Jacob Zhou, Ricky Roman tied for fourth with 3-1 scores. 

Here's the MSA crosstable and PlyCount report.

(Not) Winning a Won Game

Here's another game from last month's ICA Girls' Invitational Championship at the North Shore Chess Center.  I hope that both Adele and Miranda will forgive me for publishing a game in which they made 51 good moves and only one bad one.  But I found this game so instructive because it's so typical.

The stylish way to win a game is by direct attack against the enemy king.  In real life, we don't get to be stylish as often as we'd like.  So we win a piece instead.  When we talk about "winning a piece" in chess, we mean winning a bishop or a knight, worth about three pawns.  In this game,  Miranda wins a piece for a pawn: in quiet middlegame positions, this advantage is usually sufficient for a win.

When you win a piece for a pawn, what's the easiest way to win?  Well, you'd like to use your extra material to queen a pawn and then checkmate with overwhelming force.

But put yourself in your worthy opponent's shoes.  You may be winning, but you have one less pawn than she does.  So if the defender could keep trading one of her pawns for one of your pawns until there was only one pawn left, that extra pawn would be hers.  True, you would still be up a piece, but you'd have to look for a way to checkmate without making a queen.  That's much harder!  (Rule of thumb: in pawnless endings, one often has to be up by five "points" to win.) 

DEFENDERS WANT TO TRADE PAWNS, NOT PIECES.  (Here, we use "pieces" in a second sense: kings, queens, rooks, bishops, and knights, but not pawns.  Yes, I know we can't trade kings.  And yes, we usually talk about chess sets having thirty-two pieces, not sixteen pieces and sixteen pawns: this third meaning of "piece" is actually the most common one.)

THE SUPERIOR SIDE WANTS TO TRADE PIECES, NOT PAWNS.  Every pawn is a potential queen.  Guard your potential queens just as you do the one that's already on the board!

Adele Padgett – Miranda Liu [D45]

ICA Girls’ Invitational

March 31, 2012

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 Be7 5.e3 0–0 6.Be2 c6 7.0–0 Nbd7 8.Bd2 dxc4 9.Bxc4 b5

White to play

Miranda chooses a Meran Variation setup. As White's bishop is not that active on d2, Black should get nice play.

10.Bd3 Bb7 11.e4 a6 12.Rc1 c5 

White to play

 The typical Meran break.

"At Chicago chess tournament, girls rule the board"

Caeley Harihara of Rogers Park is a freshman at Payton 

Photo: Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune

Nice coverage in this weekend's Trib.

Local highlights:

Caeley Harihara (photo above) was playing on the top board in final round of the 16 & Under Section.  She lost to 16U winner Lilia Poteat of New York, and finished tied for third with 4-2.

Anjali Toly tied for second in the 12 & Under section, finished 5-1, and gained a bucket of ELO.

Miranda Liu (post-event rating 1675!) scored 5-1 in the 10 & Under Section, finishing tied for third in a 59-player field.

Shreya Managalm (already 1397!) "only" scored 4½-1½ in the 8 & Under Section: Shreya won her first four games, drew the second-place finisher in round 5, and lost to Maggie Ni of Texas in round 6.

Crosstables here.  The KCF All-Girls National Championship (organized by the Kasparov Chess Foundation and Renaissance Knights) drew 230 players in six sections.  And the event will return to Chicago next year!

Illinois Youth Invitational Championships

Results are here!

Congratulations to the winners:

In the Illinois Chess Association Denker Qualifier (High School Invitational Championship), NM Sam Schmakel took clear first with a 4½-½ score, and wins the right to represent Illinois at the Denker Tournament of High School Champions.

In the ICA's Girls' Invitational Championship, Miranda Liu took first on tiebreaks over Penny Xu, each with an undefeated 4-1 score.  Miranda wins the right to represent Illinois in a national event.

In the ICA's Barber Qualifier (K-8 Invitational Championship), George Li took clear first with 4½-½ and wins the right to represent Illinois at the Barber K-8 Tournament of Champions.

Thanks to Sevan Muradian and the North Shore Chess Center for hosting and directing this event, to Warren Program director Pattie Zinski and the ICA Youth Committee members who organized this event for ICA (Brad and Andi Rosen were instrumental, I'm sure there were others), to Vince Hart for his absolutely amazing coverage on this blog (scroll to the many posts below for a treat), and to the players, coaches, and parents who helped make this happen.   Eight-year-old Shreya Mangalam deserves special mention for stepping in as a last-minute replacement, even though she was the youngest and lowest-rated player in the field.  Shreya's score does not reflect her excellent play!

I'll look at some of the games in detail as busy season allows.

Miranda Liu wins Grade 4-5 Title

Congratulations to Miranda, who had a result that most adults would be delighted with: her 6½-½ score included three wins and a draw against Class B players in the last four rounds!  Vincent Do, Nikhil Kalghatgi, Hanson Hao, Akhil Kalghtgi, Chetan Reddy, Jonathan Tan

Daniel Parmet directed for Bubbacat Chess, assisted by James Aman.

Crosstable here: 183 players in this section, including some very strong young players!  5 points was a very impressive score in this section....

All Grade results (4th & 5th grades)

First, a few more pictures:

Miranda Liu won the 67-player 4th-grade section with a perfect 5-0.  Chetan Reddy and Jonathan Tan drew with each other and won the rest of their games to take equal second with 4½.  Matthew Stevens, Jack Xiao, Nikhil Kalghatgi, Cassie Parent, Adarsh Mattu, Ricky Roman, Brian Chung, and Andrew Lim tied for fourth with 4-1 scores.

Anshul Adve and Jack Curcio tied for first in the 58-player 5th-grade section with a draw against each other and wins in their other four games.  James Wei, Abe Sun, Haoyang Yu, Shayna Provine, Lorenzo Barbin, Andrew Fei, Daniel Bronfein, and Mihir Bafna tied for third with 4-1 scores.