Irrational Exuberance, or, Looking for Sacs in All the Wrong Places

Jim Abbott, the winner of this game, gained a ton of rating points at the Greater Midwest Classic.

My ...Bxh2+ was more than a bit too overoptimistic, and I understood this when I did it. But I still sacked the piece. Hmm.

David Franklin called this move "going Morozevich" (after the brilliant Russian GM who does something impulsive whenever the position bores him).

Crunch

From tonight's round: you can follow on Monroi.  Hmm, Yury Shulman makes me want to switch to 9.Nh4.

Never say die! redux

Last Christmas I published Latino-Dumas, a game in which White on move 3 hung an entire piece to a queen check. Rather than resigning (as some others had done in the same position), Latino played on and went on to win the game! Here's a similar example: White blunders a piece on move 5, also to ...Qa5+, yet goes on to win. White's 6.Nc3 is an improvement on GM Ivan Farago's "Resigns," as in Farago-Bliumberg, 1994. To be precise, 6.Nc3! had been seen before, in Kunte (2536!)-Varga (2494!), 2008. That game ended in a draw!

How strong was the loser of our subject game, who won a whole piece on move 5, but went on to lose? She is Anna Ushenina, who at the time of this game was rated 2458. Later in the year, she went on to win the Women's World Championship, thereby automatically becoming a grandmaster.

It's fascinating to analyze this game with an engine. How could a strong player go from being a clear piece up to losing the game? She didn't play a terrible blunder, but rather a number of second-best moves: 11...b5 (11...Qb4! 12.Qe2 Bxd4-+), the weakening 14...gxf5?! (14...O-O), 20...Bb7?! (20...Qb5), the decentralizing 21...Nh5?!, 23...a5? (23...Nhf6!), and 24...Bg7? (24...Nhf6!). Her final mistake was 25...Ndf6? According to Houdini 3, she would still have kept a large advantage with 25...a4!, driving the bishop off the a2-g8 diagonal, e.g. 26.Bd1 Ndf6 27.Be2 (27.e5 c5! 28.exf6 Nxf6!) Kf8 28.Nd6 exd6! 29.Bxb5 cxb5 30.d5 Re8. Of course, all of this is much easier to see with Houdini, rather than a ticking clock, next to you.

The moral(s) of the story? Don't expect a "won game" to win itself. Stay alert and try to play the most accurate and incisive moves. Don't be afraid to give back some material to simplify the position into one that you can win more easily and/or gives the opponent fewer counterchances.

On the other side of the board: if you have a losing position, don't mentally give up the game. Keep the position complicated, and keep setting problems for your opponent. Be alert to tactical chances. Don't resign unless you have no realistic chance of winning or drawing the game. (This will vary depending not only on the position, but also on your strength, your opponent's strength, and the clock situation. Ushenina would probably have won this game if at had been played at a standard time control rather than rapid.)

Michael Adams in Downers Grove

I played in the English grandmaster's clock simultaneous exhibition in Downers Grove last night: Adams scored a very clean 10-0 against players with median ELO comfortably above 2000. (Well, Adams did get overambitious against Jeff Dixon and was probably losing for a couple moves.)

The gracious Michael Adams signs a book for some bald guy

  Here's my game: not too embarrassing, but I lost the handle somewhere around move 32.

Thanks to Grandmaster Michael Adams, Steffen Klug, Daniel Parmet, and the Downers Grove Chess Club for a fun evening!

CICL action

The big fish get away precisely because they are big fish. David Franklin of the Rogue Squadron annotates his loss last week to Igor Tsyganov of DRW Trading Group. (Last November, Igor drew GM Alexander Shabalov at King's Island.)

CICL: Watch out for Loyola!

I play for the Rogue Squadron in the CICL East Division, and we're very fortunate to have David Franklin as our first board.  David lost his first game ever in CICL this week, to John Gurczak of Loyola.

The innocuous-looking 4.e3 has teeth.  I don't like combining ....dxc4 with ceding the bishop pair after ...Bg4, but top players have done just this several times in 2011, including Bruzon and Gashimov at the World Cup.  Kamsky's 7...a6 scores very well for Black, but that could simply be attributable to the fellow pushing the pawns.

And on Board 3, USCF Expert Isaac Braswell was upset by Peter Dimpoulous of Loyola, who won a pawn, then sacked a couple pawns back for a fierce kingside attack.  (Isaac is a lightning-fast calculator and a time-trouble addict: even though he lost this game, realize that he was finding reasonable defensive moves in an instant!)

Of course, the Rogue Squadron won 4-2 because we are objectively awesome.  But hats off to John, Peter, and our other worthy opponents from Rogers Park!

Blood from a turnip

Mesgen Amanov has a gift for squeezing the maximum from apparently sterile positions on the White side of the Slav.

A trap in the Slav

This trap is similar to several others where a player plays B-KN5 (i.e. Bg5 or Bg4, depending on color), then follows it up with P-K3 (e3 or e6), allowing the opponent to win the unprotected bishop with Q-R4+ (Qa5+ or Qa4+). These include (a) the notorious 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 c6 3.e3?? Qa5+ 0-1, Z. Đorđević-M. Kovačević, Bela Crkva 1984; (b) 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 c6 3.Bg2 Bg4 4.c4 e6 5.cxd5 cxd5?? 6.Qa4+ Bachler-Van Meter, Midwest Masters 1985; and (c) 1.g4? d5 2.Bg2 Bxg4 3.c4 c6 4.Qb3 e6 5.cxd5 cxd5?? 6.Qa4+ Van der Heijden-Van Ranwooy, Walwijk 1978. These games offer further evidence for GM John Nunn's "LPDO" (Loose Pieces Drop Off) principle.

"Even my good games are bad...."

Matthias Pfau and I played an interesting opening variation in our Chicago Industrial Chess League game last night.

Interested in submitting games to the ICA's chess blog?  Contact Maret Thorpe to find out how!  (The current publishing process is a little tricky, so if you want to send PGN to me, I can help you publish until we get the process smoothed out.)

A trap in the Slav

After 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Bg4?! (3...Nf6 is normal) 4.Ne5 Bh5 5.Qb3!, Black must play 5...Qc8! As the game below shows, the natural 5...Qb6? is a fatal blunder.

A trap in the Slav and QGA

In the post below, Bill remarked that Jayakumar-Shetty was an uneventful draw. Indeed, but there was one moment of potential drama that Adarsh wisely avoided. Had he played 10.Rd1?? instead of his 10.Re1! he would have fallen into a trap that has claimed many victims, including former Women's World Champion Maia Chiburdanidze. In addition to the Slav Defense (as in Adarsh's and Chiburdanidze's games), it also often arises from the Queen's Gambit Accepted, e.g. 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Qa4+ c6 5.Qxc4 Bf5 etc. After 10.Rd1?? Bc2!, Black must give up the exchange, since 11.Rd2?? Nb6 wins the queen.

U.S. Cadet Championship

NM Adarsh Jayakumar (whose family is returning to Chicagoland in a couple weeks) is playing in the 2010 U.S. Cadet Championship in Crossville, Tennessee.  He's -1 after two rounds.

In Round 1, Adarsh got a nice position on the Black side of a Modern Benoni, but then got a little too creative.  The punishment was thematic.

Round 2 was an uneventful draw:

There are no easy opponents in these junior invitational events!