Spanked by Uncle Marv

Here's another Morris Giles vs. Marvin Dandridge encounter. The North Central Open was one of the Midwest's strongest tournaments in the early 1980s.

White asks more of his position than is there: not good policy against Dandridge.

The difficult opponent

Tal had a massive negative score against Korchnoi, Fischer lost several famous games to Geller, and the late Morris Giles had a miserable score against Marvin Dandridge. Marvin found three of the four games that he remembers having played against Morris, all wins; the fourth was an uneventful draw.

This game in from the final round of the 1984 edition Fred Gruenberg's Put the Fun Back into Chess, which Dandridge won ahead of GMs Bisguier and Gurevich, as well as Colias, Martinovsky, DeFotis, and several other strong masters.  You'll find the crosstable in the February 1985 Illinois Chess Bulletin. 

Although Morris lost this game, it's a nice example of his attacking style. Marvin rarely went looking for tactics, but had (and has!) an excellent sense of danger and (like Korchnoi) is a strong counterpuncher. Both players were several years away from their peak strength.

Illinois Chess Database update coming soon

I received my update of ChessBase's Mega Database 2013 a couple weeks ago.  This gives me a good reason to stop procrastinating and update the Illinois Chess Association's Illinois Games Database in the next month or so.  I expect to have the update completed before March 1st: might take a bit longer for the goodies to appear on the site.

Folks who make substantial contributions to the database (please send me your games in PGN or CBV format) and/or who are current members of the Illinois Chess Association as of February 28, 2012 (time to renew!), can, upon request, receive the PGN file of the completed 2013 database.

Submitted games should have been played under tournament conditions by an Illinois resident or in an Illinois event.

We're particularly interested in adding missing games of the friends we've lost in the past year: Morris Giles, Jon Burgess, Tom Fineberg, Isaac Braswell, Ron Washington, and Fidel Serrano, among others.

Memorial for Morris Giles at 11 a.m. today

Radcliff-Hunter Parish House
3800 S. Michigan Ave

11 a.m.

(thanks to Daaim Shabazz)

And stop by the Youth Chess Foundation of Chicago event at De La Salle (3434 S. Michigan) afterwards: the kids will be playing until 3 p.m.

More Morris Giles games...

...are featured in this article from The Chess Drum.

"Why are you trying to play tactically against Giles?"

That's the question Angelo Sandrin asked me circa 1985, the point being that the chessboard equivalent of a street brawl was tailor-made for Giles's hypertactical style.  Even so, he was never afraid to take big risks in order to win, so our games were incredibly fun!

Sometimes I gave Morris a scare; sometimes he rolled me off the board.  The following game, the first time we played, was slightly atypical.  Normally, he would kill me tactically; here, he neutralized my showy demonstration, then ground me down positionally from a slightly superior ending.

Morris Giles tactics quiz at The Chess Drum

FM Morris Giles - FM Eugene Martinovsky

White to Move

We're honoring the memory of the late Morris Giles.

Daaim Shabazz of The Chess Drum assembled a great tactics quiz based on Giles's victories against great Chicago players of the 1980s.  Check it out!

An unobvious fork

The teenaged Giles sets a trap for one of Chicago's (and America's) top players, and Andrew Karklins takes the bait:

Morris Giles, 1953-2012

Story on The Chess Drum.  I am just stunned.  FM Morris Giles was a genius and a gentleman: I will miss him.

Much more to follow. For now, here's Giles's masterpiece (and arguably the most brilliant game ever played by a Chicagoan): he beats six-time U.S. Champion Walter Browne on Browne's home turf, the Najdorf Sicilian, with a positional piece sacrifice for an enduring light-square attack, then a queen sacrifice leading to a smothered bishop mate.

Giles,Morris (2451) - Browne,Walter (2617) [B98] 
U.S. Open, Boston, 1988
[GM Robert Byrne]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 

The most aggressive attack against the Najdorf Sicilian is 6 Bg5, which inhibits the original intention of this sharp, counterattacking defense - 6...e5? - which would yield White a hammerlock on the center after 7 Nf5. Nevertheless, the criterion of 6 Bg5 is whether it leads to more victories than the almost-as-ambitious 6 f4 or 6 Bc4 or the conservative 6 Be2 or 6 Be3 or 6 a4. The verdict is not yet in.

6...e6 7.f4 Be7 8.Qf3 Nbd7

Developing with 8 . . . Nbd7?! has been considered so bad that the leading texts on the Najdorf refuse to analyze it. The unanimous opinion is that Black must prevent the potent 9 Bc4 by 8...Qc7 Yet Browne had played it at least twice before, against the grandmaster Nick DeFirmian in last year's [i.e., 1987's] United States invitational championship and also against the international master Patrick Wolff in Philadelphia last year. It is remarkable that on both occasions, his opponents chose the forgiving 9 O-O-O, allowing him to reach regular lines of play with 9 . . . Qc7.

9.Bc4 

Giles was not so generous, but played 9 Bc4 with the intention of breaking up the black formation.

9...h6

9...Qc7 10.Bxe6 fxe6 11.Nxe6 followed by 12 Ng7 and 13 Nf5. On 9 . . . h6, Giles, of course, could not make any immediate sacrifice.

10.Bxf6 Bxf6 

Browne could not recapture with 10...Nxf6 11.f5 e5 12.Nde2 which gives White a hammerlock on the d5 square.

11.0–0–0 Qb6 

White to play

12.Nxe6!? fxe6 13.Bxe6

It is more than likely that Browne had prepared and relied upon 10 . . . Bf6 11 O-O-O Qb6 to get him through the opening without incident. But he must have minimized Giles's sacrifice with 12 Ne6!? fe 13 Be6, opening the black king position and achieving a powerful grip on the light squares.

13...Nf8

 Browne could not play 13...Ne5, as 14.Qh3 Nd7 15.e5 Be7 16.Nd5 is overwhelming.

14 Bb3 Be6

What is remarkable is that even after Browne had plugged the worst gaps in his position with 13...Nf8 and 14...Be6, Giles was still coming.

15.e5! dxe5 16.fxe5 Bg5+ 17.Kb1 Rd8 18.h4 Be7 

19.Ba4+! 

A devastating shot, one point being that 19 . . . Bd7? would be smashed by 20 Rhf1 Qg6 21 h5!

19...Nd7 20.Nd5 Qa5

It was futile to play 20...Bxd5 21.Qxd5 Qc7 because 22.e6 b5 leads to mate after 23.Qh5+.

21.Rhf1 Rf8 22.Qh5+ Rf7 23.Bb3 g6 24.Qxg6 Nf8 

Now Giles abruptly ended the struggle:

White to play

25.Nc7+! Qxc7 26.Qxf7+

 In the face of 26 . . . Bf7 27 Bf7 mate, Browne gave up.

1–0