Gurevich-Mulyar

From left: USCF Executive Director Bill Hall, GM Dmitry Gurevich, GM Manuel Leon Hoyos, FM John Bryant

Dmitry Gurevich takes down IM Michael Mulyar in the style of Capablanca: classical minimalism.

I congratulated Dmitry not only for his fourth Open win but also for the great result of his student Zhaozhi (George) Li, who tied for second Expert. (In most years, 6½-2½ would be sufficient for the first expert prize, but a 2199-rated player from British Columbia scored 7-2.) I told Dmitry (who, as always, gave all the credit to his student and portrayed his own role as minor) how George (a sixth-grader!) explained move-order subtleties in the 4.e3 Slav to me.  Dmitry replied, "I know, George is already teaching me stuff, too...."

Gelfand draws first blood

After six consecutive draws in the World Championship match between world champion Viswanathan Anand and challenger Boris Gelfand, Gelfand finally broke through to win game 7. In the final position, Anand has no reasonable defense against 39.Ng6+ Kg8 40.Rg7#. After 38...Rh1+ 39.Kxh1 e1(Q)+ 40.Kh2, Black would have to sac his queen with 40...Qxe5 41.dxe5, leaving White a rook up. WGM Natalia Pogonina, commentating at chessgames.com, observed, "Anand lost this game after provocative/weak play. Nothing special by Boris. Ok, 4-3 in Gelfand's favor, and now we are looking forward to fighting chess in the remaining 5 rounds."

As Pogonina indicates, there are only five games left in "regulation play." If the match is tied at that time, the tie will be broken by a series of rapid games, then blitz games if necessary, and finally if necessary an "Armageddon" game.

(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.

The opening trap that wasn't

Page 271 of Tony Miles' posthumously published biography, It's Only Me (an anagram of "Tony Miles"), mentions an opening trap in the Semi-Slav Defense with which Miles won a piece at move 9, but almost lost the game! The game is given below. It's very wild, and major improvements are doubtless possible for White. One possibility is 14.Bg5, which won quickly after 14...Ne4 15.Qxg8+ Kd7 16.Qxf7+ Kc6 17.Qe8+ 1-0 in Dimitar Marholev (2419)-Miroljub Lazic (2493), Cutro Open 2006. Unfortunately, Black gets to deviate too. Instead of 6...Bb4, as Jelling played against Miles, Black has scored 88% (+10 =1 -1) with 6...Qb6.