Illinois Open in Oak Brook this Labor Day weekend!

Grandmasters Gurevich and Mitkov are among the preregistrants: action begins one month from today!


Sept 1-3. 2012 Illinois Open State Championship. 6R-SS. Open Section (40/90 SD/30 + 30/sec incr). Reserve and Booster Sections (G/90 + 30/sec incr). Doubletree Hotel 1909 Spring Road Oak Brook, IL 60523 - Phone 630-472-6000. $8500 Guaranteed + $250 Isaac Braswell Fighting Chess Award in Open Section. 


3 sections: Open, Reserve (U1800), Booster (U1400). Prizes (non-IL players eligible for max 3rd place in Overall Prizes and 2nd place prize for rating bracket prizes: Open - Overall: $1600-1000-300, (2399-2200): $350-275-200; (2199-2100): $250-200; (2099-2000): $200-100; (1999-1900): $200-100; (1899-1800): $200-100; Reserve (U1800) - Overall: $750-450-225; (1699-1600): $250-200-150; (1599-150): $150-100; (1499-1400): $150-100; Booster (U1400) - Overall: $250-125-75; (1299-1200) - $100-50; (1199-1100): $100-50. Open & Reserve FIDE Rated. Free Entry for IL FIDE titled players (WFM & above). 


EF: $64 by 08/04/2012, $96 by 08/18/2012, $128 thereafter and on-site. No checks at site, credit cards ok. Online registration preferred. No phone entries. Re-entry: $60 with 1/2 pt in first two rds only. Rd 6 bye must committ by end of Rd 2 otherwise zero pt. Players in contention for prizes must play final rd or have 1/2 pt bye committed to by the end of Rd 2 otherwise ineligible for prizes. Special Rules for Playing Up: $10 more if 150 pts or less from cut off of section, $25 more if 151-300 pts from cut-off, $50 more if 301+ pts from cut-off (Example: 1620 wants to play in open, 180 pts from cut-off, pay $25 more to play up).NOTE: Playing up fee paid in cash at the door - players will be registered in their normal rating section unless you come to the TD room to request playing up. 


Schedule: 10am and 4pm each day. Mailed entries: North American Chess Association 4957 Oakton Street Suite 113 Skokie IL 60077. All mailed entries must be received by 8/24/2012. Questions: sevan@nachess.org. No Phone Calls. Advance entries and online registration at: http://www.nachess.org/ilopen2012. 


Hotel: $91/night + tax. Ask for Chess Rate. 


Boards, Sets, Clocks Provided. Must use organizer provided equipment. Chess vendor onsite. August Rating Supplement. Special Workshops: Chess in Education plus TD/Rules Workshop. 1-day Scholastic Event. For registration on the 1-day scholastic event please visit http://chessforlife.com/chess/wint11/scholastic.html. 


USCF and ICA mbrshp required for main event.

Thinking: Fast and Slow

I'm about two-thirds through the audiobook version of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking: Fast and Slow.  This book is a useful corrective to Malcolm Gladwell's recent bestsellers Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and Outliers: The Story of Success. Kahneman doesn't deny the usefulness of intuition, but argues that intuition has its limits, even for experts.  (For example, even the most experienced pediatrician assessing a newborn's health may be better off relying on the routine of the Apgar score than a subjective evaluation, even though that subjective evaluation is itself generally very accurate.)

Outliers popularized the 10,000-hour rule: years of deliberate practice in chess (or guitar, or corporate taxation, or...) will allow one to develop an expert's intution.  Kahneman (a behavioral psycholgist, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics) doesn't discount the usefulness of the grandmaster's intuition, but in summarizing his body of research for a popular audience, he argues that such intutition is a type of "fast thinking" that is wrong far more often than experts care to admit. Chess is a concrete game, and software engines have repeatedly proved the value of colorless algorithms over romantic intuition. (Botvinnik's highest praise for his archrival was—I paraphrase— "Smyslov had a very strong algorithm in the 1950s.")

But humans play chess with a clock, and in human-vs.-human play, we don't have time to figure everything out. (We try to do that in the post-mortem, and then at home, and after that we feed our analysis to the computer to check our results.)  So the intuition of a Capablanca, Kramnik, or Carlsen is a very good thing for human players to have.

How to translate these insights into studying chess and teaching chess? Algorithms are essential in pawn endings, but knowing general principles about the outside passed pawn, protected passed pawn, and the opposition are pretty darn important, too.  And knowing the general principles of rook endings (defending king belongs on the short side, checking distance, recognizing the preconditions for a successful frontal defense) is important, but sometimes you gotta calculate, too.

Thinking: Fast and Slow is strongly recommended reading for folks in business and the social sciences. It might even be tangentially useful to chess players, though I'm not sure how....

"Chicago's Ron Washington, 1951-2012"

Daaim Shabazz remembers Ron (click to read) .

Ron in 2007; swiped from The Knights of Castle Kimbark

9-year-old beats Grandmaster in tournament play!

Awonder Liang and his brother Adream have been playing a "killer" tournament schedule this summer: the Chicago Open, the Philadelphia International, the World Open, and (right now) the Washington International.

Yesterday, Awonder defeated his first Grandmaster!  The current World 8-and-Under Champion defeated the former World Senior Champion, GM Larry Kaufman, in Round 3 of the Washington International.

Proud papa Will Liang writes:

Awonder has become the record holder for the youngest chess player in the United States to have beaten a Grand Master in a tournament game of chess. The new record Awonder has just established is 9 years 3 months and 20 days. The previous record was established by now super GM and world number 8th chess player Fabiana Caruana on September 28, 2002. Caruana's record was 10 years one month and 29 days. Awonder has broken Caruana's record by 10 months and 9 days.

The very next round, Awonder drew with three-time U.S. Champion Joel Benjamin in the kind of technical ending that GMs routinely win against experienced International Masters.

To assuage Grandmaster Kaufman's pain, buy his wonderful book The Kaufman Repertoire for Black and White: A Complete, Sound and User-friendly Chess Opening Repertoire.  It's a wonderful one-volume reference for ambitious tournament players with limited time to study. But you may want to consider 8...Ba6 against the Scotch.

Cloud Gate cityscape

The talented Anna Yakimenko reimagines the "Bean."

"Chess hustler of North Ave. Beach drowned in Lake Michigan"

7-18-06 Chess Pavilion on the Lakefront at North Avenue. Ron Washington (Left) and Daniel Jones (Right) enjoy an evening of warm weather and chess as citizens come out and play and take to the bike paths. Photo by Scott Stewart/Sun-Times

Photo and story (follow this link) copyright Chicago Sun-Times.

Ron Washington: Gone but not forgotten

This impromptu memorial was set up at the Pavilion today:

And here are a few of Ron's friends who gathered to honor his memory today:

David Franklin, who sent these photos, writes, "Another, bigger, memorial will take place this coming Friday, August 3, 5 p.m. at the pavilion at North Avenue Beach." It's likely that there will be another memorial service on Saturday at Christian Funeral Home (3100 W. Irving Park), but that's only tentative...more tomorrow.

Chess in Lake Wobegon

Not that much to do with chess, but we could use a smile. Hat tip to Colleen Devlin.

Sad news

Updated 2:46 p.m.  it's confirmed that our friend Ron Washington drowned in Lake Michigan on Friday.

At 2 p.m., [North Avenue Beach] lifeguards attempted to rescue 61-year-old Ronald Washington, a former collegiate hoopster and self-described chess “hustler” who for years had been a fixture near the beach.

Washington, of the 100 block of West Maple Street, was fully clothed when a lifeguard pulled him from the water near 1400 N. Lake Shore Drive, according to police and park district spokespeople.

Washington was pronounced dead at 4:30 p.m. at Northwestern Hospital.

Earlier report (without Ron's name) on the WGNTV website.

Much more later: enjoy your summer day, but please enjoy it safely.

Chicago Class: Class D recap

Congratulations to two Illinois players, David Sye and Terrence Aguinaldo, who tied for first in Class D with 4½-½ scores. (Sye's prize was limited to $500 because he had recently had a rating more than thirty points over the class ceiling; Aguinaldo won a full $1,000.)  Another local player, Ga Luang Liu, shared third place with Hongbin Chen of Michigan and Sean Cramer of Ohio: each won $166.67.

David Sye shares nice analysis of what could have occurred in his pawn ending in the money round in his post on chess.com.

(David titles his post "A complicated endgame position from the Chicago Class," but really, the position is easy if you've taken the time to learn some basic tricks--and there are several cute finesses in this simple-looking position. There might even be lines that David correctly doesn't mention because they're not Black's best try, but are still worth looking at....)

  Class D crosstable is here!

HAL 2000 plays chess

Albert Chow reminds us that yesterday would have been the late Stanley Kubrick's 84th birthday. Here's the most famous chess scene from a Kubrick film:



And here's a nice recap of the game that was the basis of HAL's combination:



For a scene from the noir masterpiece The Killing, see this earlier post.

The scene in The Killing is based on the Chess and Checker Club of New York, also known as the "Flea House," frequented by Kubrick, Bobby Fischer, and many dubious characters. As an innocent teenager visiting Manhattan in the 1970s, I stumbled across the Flea House. On my way up the stairs, I passed a gentleman and two ladies leaving the Flea House attired in such a way that I assumed the "Chess and Checker Club" was a cover name for a house of ill repute. (It was a Saturday night: who knows, I might have been right.) So I turned around and went back down the stairs....

Mesgen Amanov lecture & simul at North Shore Chess Center tomorrow!

Dutch grandmaster Loek Van Wely had to postpone his lecture, but the winner of the 2012 Chicago Class is a more than capable pinch-hitter. Mesgen is not just a great player, but a wonderful teacher! To spend six hours with a grandmaster for the bargain-basement price of $16.67 per hour is a wonderful deal. Details here!

Self-analysis is cheaper than psychotherapy

I had narrowly escaped against NM Nolan Hendrickson at King's Island last year: one would think that I would have learned not to challenge him in an objectively dead-drawn ending.  (Right around the time I made the losing blunder, I told Albert Chow that the game would be over soon: I was right about the timing, but wrong about the result.)

Chicago Class recap: Master Section

You know it's a tough event when you beat a GM and finish out of the money.  WGM Anna Sharevich knocked off GM Nikola Mitkov in round 4, but lost to GM Mesgen Amanov in round 2 and IM Qignam Liu in the final round: ridiculously difficult pairings.  And Gopal Menon defanged GM Mitkov's Grand Prix attack and drew IM Angelo Young in the first two rounds, but had less fun on Saturday night, as he got ground down by GM Dmitry Gurevich in a rather harmless-looking ending. You have just joined a very large club, Gopal.

Oh yes, prizewinners.  GM Amanov converted against IM Young in the last round and made his 4-1 first place on tiebreaks ($1,366.67) look routine.  FM Carl Boor continues to impress: he beat GM Gurevich's pet anti-Catalan system, grinding the grinder down in an ending (no mean feat). IM Qignam Liu also had a very steady event, highlighted by his last-round win against WGM Sharevich.  Both Boor and Qignam Liu won $1,266.67.

I had the pleasure of losing to Guijue Zhou in round 4: in the postmortem, she had the most kind and tactful way of suggesting to me the stupidity of my middlegame planning.  She, Matthew Marsh of Tennessee, and super-junior Kevin Cao of Missouri each won $466.67.

Hangover P.S.

Not the kind that kills brain cells, but the hangover one gets from playing five masters in one weekend. It certainly doesn't feel like I'm imagining mental exhaustion, but this article suggests otherwise.

"A brain without sugar is not a brain": this quotation is traditionally attributed to Alexander Alekhine, though I can't find the source.

Chicago Class hangover report

It's normal to feel exhausted on the morning after a weekend event.  I did not enjoy (deservedly) losing a superior bishop-vs.-knight ending in the last round, but I had fun!

The Nikola Mitkov-Gopal Menon time scramble in round one sounded like an metronome: I have never heard players move as quickly in tournament play as they did.

And it was pure joy to watch Carl Boor and William Aramil analyze a speculative queen sac in another player's Dragon Variation game: they got so engrossed in the possibilities that they were looking at a plethora of variations fifteen to twenty moves deep.

More later: for now, the crosstables are here!

Belated congratulations....

...to the newest National Master in Illinois, Jonathan Kogen!

Jacqueline Piatigorsky obituary in L.A. Times

What a life!

A beautiful miniature

I'm sure some of you have not seen this beautiful miniature, played in 2001 by GM Alex Yermolinsky against Indiana's Emory Tate, who became an IM in 2007. Tate likes to go his own way in the opening. Here he played a type of Schmid Benoni with 1.d4 c5 2.d5 e6 3.Nc3 (Yermo could have played 3.c4, with a regular Benoni) exd5?! 4.Nxd5. On White's sixth move, Fritz much prefers 6.Bf6! to Yermo's 6.Bh4, analyzing 6.Bf6! d6 (6...gxf6?? 7.Nxf6#) 7.Nxe7 Bxe7 (7...gxf6 8.Nxc8 leaves Black with a gruesome pawn structure and a bad bishop) 8.Bxg7 Rh7 9.Bc3, when Black is a pawn down, and against the "Yerminator" might as well resign. After 6.Bh4 Qa5+ 7.c3, Black would have been OK (Fritz says even slightly better) following 7...Nxd5! 8.Qxd5 Nc6 9.e4 d6. Instead, his 7...Nf5?? allowed a stunning coup. Take a look at the diagram below. Do you see it?

Ever since I saw this game, I have tried to pull off the same thing myself in blitz games. I succeeded in Rhine-NN, 5-minute game, playchess.com, November 19, 2007: 1.d4 c5 2.d5 e6 3.Nc3 exd5 4.Nxd5 d6 5.Nf3 Nf6 6.Bg5 Nbd7 7.e4 Qa5+ 8.c3 Nxe4?? 9.Qa4!! Qxa4 10.Nc7#.

A trap in the Franco-Sicilian

The Franco-Sicilian (1.e4 e6 2.d4 c5!?) is a tricky line that usually transposes to a standard Sicilian Defense after 3.Nf3 cxd4, to a Schmid Benoni after something like 3.d5 Nf6 4.Nc3 d6, or to standard Benoni lines after something like 3.d5 d6 4.c4. After 3.d5 Nf6 4.Nc3, my opponent played the weaker 4...exd5?!, allowing the strong 5.e5!. Now Black would not be too happy after 5...Ng8 6.Qxd5 or 5...Qe7 6.Qe2, and would drop a pawn after 5...Ne4 6.Nxe4 dxe4 7.Qd5. Instead, he played the tit-for-tat 5...d4??, as several other of my Internet opponents have done. This sort of thing may work OK in lines like the Alekhine-Scandinavian 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e5 d4, but not here. I played 6.exf6 dxc3 7.Qe2+!, forcing Black to drop a piece with 7...Be7. Black resigned. Note that the clever 6...Qa5!? 7.Bd2 dxc3 8.Bxc3 Qb6 9.fxg7 would not have helped Black.

An old chestnut

It's been a long time since anyone has blundered into this trap against me. It's one of the oldest known opening traps. This entire game was first noted (and perhaps played) by Greco in 1619. Note that 6...Bg7!, as in Lombardy-Regan, New York 1974, is a big improvement over 6...Nf6?? Unfortunately for Black, as I've previously written, that line is busted too. My opponent lost the old-fashioned way, 1619 style.

See you at the Chicago Class!

Still time to enter on site tonight or tomorrow a.m.!

Jon Burgess made me post this game

Both Marty Wilber and I were a bit embarrassed by our play.  But the proud father of the tournament winner made nineteen excellent moves before falling for a coffeehouse tactic.

The best thing about tripled pawns...

...is that there are three of them.

In the last round of Saturday's Evanston Tri-Level, Matthew Wilber never really let me in the game.  While I was worried about getting mated, White shifted attention to the queenside and won in spite of the tripleton.  Or because of it!

With this smooth performance, Matthew won the "Liberté" section of the Bastille Day Tri-Level, scoring 3½-½.  NM Jon Burgess, Matthew Stevens, Zachary Holecek, Abe Sun, and Bill Brock tied for second with 3-1 scores. 

Ansari Amir won the Egalité section with a perfect 4-0; David Sye took clear second with 3-1.

Michael Feldmann won the Fraternité section with 3½-½; Kevin Taylor, Brandon Zborowski, Jerry Neugarten, and Blake Wolf tied for second with 3-1.

Thanks to Maret Thorpe and Evanston Chess for hosting fifty players at the Levy Senior Center!

Only a few hours left for Chicago Class early entry

You can still enter online for this weekend's event (it's in Wheeling, July 20-22 or 21-22, take your pick) after Monday, July 16, but it'll cost more.

I don't like to play chess for money: I find it a distraction.  On the other hand, I do cash my prize checks, and I bet you do, too.  This weekend's guaranteed prize fund is $20,000!  (As always, not guaranteed by me, but Bill Goichberg has been doing this since the 1960s....)

So enter now!

Details on ICA Tournament Calendar.

Preregister for the Illinois Open in Oak Brook this Labor Day weekend

$64, such a deal!  GMs Nikola Mitkov and Dmitry Gurevich are among the preregistrants.  (Yury Shulman is coaching the U.S. team at the Olympiad, and Mesgen Amanov may be repeating his Board 1 appearance for Turkmenistan, so you only have to fight your way past two Grandmasters this year.)  Angelo Young and Albert Chow are among the many-time winners looking to add another title to the collection.

Here's a link.

Albert Chow annotates...

Albert selected some interesting games from the Chicago Open to annotate for the ICA website.  In this first installment, 1.e4 (best by test) is featured.

Enjoy!

Don't ask me what's going on....

As someone who gave up on the King's Indian more than twenty years ago, I always root for the queenside attack. So FM Eric Rosen (who usually doesn't throw pieces to the wind) makes me happy in the following game.  A piece gets sacked on 28, then an Exchange a few moves later...so I guess that's a deferred rook sacrifice.

Black sacs back to reach a not-quite-tenable rook ending, and Eric gets to display his typical outstanding technique.

The talented loser of this game, IM Daniel Naroditsky, is the author of the second third book I've ever read that was written by a teenager (I'm not sure that I finished Une Saison en Enfer, post pedantically amended to include Radiguet's Le Diable au Corps: oh you Frenchies). Naroditsky's Mastering Positional Chess is strongly recommended.

Ed. Lasker-Thomas redux

The king hunt and conclusion of the game below are a bit reminiscent of the famous game Ed. Lasker-Thomas, London 1912. Had my opponent and I played 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.h5 d6, we might have repeated Mora-Suttles, Tel Aviv (ol) 1964, another spectacular game that ended with a queen sacrifice and a draw by perpetual check.

New chess club in River North Wednesday nights

Bienvenido to UNAM Chess Club!  Keith Ammann reports on the ICA website.

6:00 to 8:30 Wednesday nights at 350 W. Erie (hmm: a leisurely stroll from my office).

Two more Yury Shulman chess camps this summer!

The 2008 U.S. champion (and third-place finisher in the just-finished World Open) is offering two more camps this summer.  One is next week in Barrington, the other is July 30 to August 3 in Palatine.

Both camps feature a four-grandmaster lineup: Yury Shulman, Mesgen Amanov, Alexander Onischuk, and Gregory Kaidanov: very impressive.  More info here!

Chess camps with IM Florin Felecan

Hot off the email.  As always, no warranty, express or implied...but Florin is a really nice person and a wonderful teacher :-)

Chess Camps with International Master Florin Felecan

July 16th - July 20th

August 13th - 17th

Location: North Shore Chess Center

Address: 5500 West Touhy Ave Suite A Skokie, IL 60077

Hours: 9:00am - 12pm for beginners (unrated - 899) | 1:00pm - 4pm for intermediate (900 - 1600)

Max # of Attendees: 16 per group

Fee: $225 per week

Cash / Checks ok - due the first day of camp. Snacks provided.

Send registration information to ffelecan2000@gmail.com and contain name, age, & rating of camper.

Tournament at North Shore Chess Center this weekend!

Another email cut-and-paste.  (I really like the Plus-Score format!)


12th North American Amateur Open
Saturday and Sunday July 14th & 15
Plus Score Event!

 

Saturday and Sunday July 14th and 15th - North Shore Chess Center (Skokie, IL) 12th NA Amateur Open - 4R-SS G/90 + 30/sec increment. North Shore Chess Center, 5500 West Touhy Ave., Suite A, Skokie, IL 60077.847.423.8626. EF: $40 for non-members of the chess center, $30 for members of the chess center received by 7/11.All $5 more onsite. Onsite registration - up to 15 minutes prior to round 1 or round 2. If registering prior to round 2, you will receive a half-point bye for round 1. Round times: 11am and 4pm each day. Half-point byes available in any round except final round. Prizes: 4.0 = $100, 3.5 = $75, 3.0 = $50, 2.5 = $25; Top U1800 & U1600 - DGT 960 clock or DGT NA Clock. Comparble prizes provided if you have previously won these prizes. Biggest Upset (150+ points): Free entry to following month Amateur Open tournament + book prize. Parking: Free self-parking. Online registration only. Additional questions email to: sevan@nachess.org. USCF & FIDE rated. For online registration and list of more events please visit -www.nachess.org/events. More info and registration seehttp://www.nachess.org/events. Max 40 participants.

$5 chess in Evanston this Saturday!

Another email cut-and-paste:

Levy Senior Center, 300 Dodge Ave., Evanston, IL 60202

Evanston Chess Presents:

July 14, 2012, 9:00am-5:00pm

Tri-Level, 4SS G/40 delay 5

Three Sections, USCF Dual Rated

Our guest master will be NM Jon Burgess

Section Gold: 1700 and over
Section Silver: 1200 - 1699
Section Bronze: Under 1200 and Unrated

1600 - 1699 may play up to Gold. 

1100 - 1199 may play up to Silver. 

Published USCF Regular Rating determines eligibility. 

Unrated players may be placed up at TD discretion.

From time to time Evanston Chess pays one or more titled players to play in our events. We usually do not pair them against each other. Even if they should lose (it does happen) we may pair them with the highest score groups.

Four rounds. Digital clocks are required and will be set to G/40 plus 5 seconds delay. Accelerated or decelerated pairings at TD discretion. Sections may be combined at TD discretion.

Registration from 9:00 to 9:30 AM. Players must check in by 9:30 am; players who arrive late will receive a half-point bye for the first round. First Round 9:45 am, last round over roughly 5:00 pm. No Lunch Break: We need to be finished by 5:00 PM, so there will be no extra time between rounds for lunch.

You may take one half-point bye in any round but the last.

Entry fee is $5, please pay cash (no checks) at the door. Masters and Experts play free.

Pre-registration is encouraged: Help us start on time. Send name, USCF number, and telephone number to enter@evanstonchess.org

Junior players (under fourteen years) rated 900+ are welcome. Sorry, but we do not accept junior players rated under 900. Must be accompanied by a parent throughout the event.

Bring clocks. -- Wheelchair accessible. No Smoking.

Welcome to FM Carl Boor

...who, I learn from the World Open crosstables and the magic of Googling, is now teaching in Chicagoland!

Check out Carl's website.  I can't recall having met the gentleman, but he seems to be doing OK in the World Open (click on standings of the Under 2400 section, not yet final as of 2 a.m. Chicago time).

P.S. Monday a.m. - Carl tied for first.  NM William Aramil won his last two games to finish in the money in the same section.

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!

From the World Open

GM Nikola Mitkov finds some weaknesses to exploit:

Eric Rosen in U.S. Junior Closed

Nice interview with Eric on WLS TV here:

 

Of course, Eric is no stranger to the Closed: he did very well last year, and he has the knack of raising his game a notch in top-level events.

The event starts July 10th: more info at the St. Louis website.

For the norm

Back to last month's New York International: Adarsh Jayakumar had a sizable opening advantage against Alan Stein, but it evaporated in the middle game, and it seemed that either player could win. Then Adarsh sets an subtle, lethal trap....

The agony of defeat

Before we go back to celebrating Adarsh Jayakumar's wins, let's look at a painful loss.  (Not that you or I would have done any better: it's hard for me to see just where Adarsh went wrong.)

From the Philadelphia International

Adarsh Jayakumar was on track to pick up his third IM norm, but faded at the end.  Here's a nail-biting win against Columbian GM Gildardo Garcia from Round 2:

The trapper trapped

My opponent in the following game responded to my King's Gambit with the bizarre 2...f5? The Symmetrical Defense to the Queen's Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c5?!) is dubious enough, but the same thing on the kingside really should lose by force. I won a rook with the little tactical trick 3.exf5 exf4 4.Qh5+ g6 5.fxg6 Nf6 6.g7+! Nxh5 7.gxh8(Q), and was quite confident of victory. Sure, he can try to trap my queen on h8, but that never works in these positions, right? To my dismay, however, I couldn't figure out how to extricate my queen, and managed to lose the game!

I later learned that Chigorin-Hruby, Vienna 1882 had continued 7...Qh4+ 8. Kd1 Nf6 9. Bc4 d5 10. Nf3 Bg4 11. Be2 Bxf3 12. Bxf3 Nbd7 13. Re1+ Kf7 14. b3 Rb8 15. Bb2 Bh6 16. Bxf6 Qxe1+ 17. Kxe1 Rxh8 18. Bxh8 c6 19. Nc3 1-0. My opponent deviated with 7...Qe7+ 8.Be2 Nf6, intending to trap the queen with an eventual ...Bg7. One possible improvement is 11.Bxc7!?, when 11...Qxc7? would be met by 12.Qxf6. Another improvement is 12.0-0 (rather than my 12.0-0-0), when the rook on f1 X-rays Black's pieces on the f-file. Yet another improvement is 13.Nf3 0-0-0 14.Ne5! Then 14...Bg7 would be met by 15.Nxc6!, winning spectacularly (15...bxc6 16.Ba6#; 15...Rxh8 16.Ne7+ and 17.Nxf5; 15...Qxe2 16.Nxa7+), while 14...Nxe5 15.dxe5 Bg7 (or 15...Nd7 16.e6!) would allow me to get a lot of wood for my queen with 16.exf6 Qxf6 17.Qxd8+. Instead, my 13.Bc7? was an eccentric idea, intended to prevent him from castling. I continued my weak play by overlooking his 15...Bh6+ winning my queen, and resigned. Embarrassment city.

Chicago chess players: "There are many good ones, but no club"

This Chicago Tribune story is hot off the presses (belated hat-tip to Keith Ammann).

P.S. 7/5/2012: the original link didn't work, so I uploaded the image of the 1887 newspaper article, thinking that one could click on it to magnify it.  Oops!  If you're dying of curiosity, you can download the image to your desktop, open in Windows Paint, and resize to (say) 250% to read.

But it ain't *that* interesting :-)

 

ugly HTML, beautiful event

The Chicago Class is an Illinois Tour event!


5th annual
CHICAGO CLASS

July 20-22 or 21-22, 2012 - Wheeling, Illinois

$20,000 GUARANTEED PRIZES

July 20-22 or 21-22   Illinois
Trophies Plus Grand Prix Points: 120 (enhanced)

5 round Swiss, 40/2, SD/1, d5 (2-day option, rounds 1-2 G/75, d5).
No residence requirements.

At the luxurious Westin Chicago North Shore Hotel, 601 North Milwaukee Avenue, Wheeling IL 60090. From Chicago, I-294 north to US-45 north; from Milwaukee, I-94 to Lake Cook Rd to US-45 south). Free parking.  

In 8 sections; no unrated allowed in Master or Expert.  Rated players may play up one section.

Master Section (2200/up): $2000-1000-600-400, clear win or 1st on tiebreak $100, top U2400 $800-400. FIDE rated.

Expert Section (2000-2199): $1400-700-400-200.

Class A Section (1800-1999/Unr): $1400-700-400-200.  No unrated may win over $900.

Class B Section (1600-1799/Unr): $1400-700-400-200.  No unrated may win over $700.

Class C Section (1400-1599/Unr): $1200-600-400-200.   No unrated may win over $500.

Class D Section (1200-1399/Unr): $1000-500-300-200.  No unrated may win over $300.

Class E Section (Under 1200/Unr): $1000-500-300-200.  No unrated may win over $200.

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It's not easy making norms

Not only does the master have to win against 2400+ players, he or she also has to find a way to beat well-prepared experts who play active, solid chess.  (And all the young players today seem to be well-prepared...)  The stronger player needs to find winning chances, preferably without creating losing chances....

Adarsh proves up to the task, but the modestly-rated Sarah Chiang had chances of her own until late in the game.

Michael Adams annotates...

...his simul win against Steffen Klug of the Downers Grove Chess Club.

Daniel Parmet's report on the simul (with scores of all ten games) can be found here.  At the risk of repeating myself, I had a wonderful evening, as I'm sure that those who attended GM Adams's lecture and simul at the North Shore Chess Center also did.  He's a really nice guy!

...Nxc4??

How many people do you suppose have blundered with ...Nxc4??, dropping a piece to Qa4+? I'm thinking that the number is literally in the billions. Note, incidentally, that Black's 1.d4 d6, an opening without a name, can already be considered a little bit of a trap. The best responses are 2.e4 (with a possible transposition to a Pirc after 2...Nf6 3.Nc3 g6, although 2...e5!? and 2...Nf6 3.Nc3 e5!? are also reasonable) or 2.Nf3, as in this game. If White plays the natural 2.c4?!, 2...e5! already gives Black a plus score, especially if White trades queens with 3.dxe5?! dxe5 4.Qxd8+. Instead, 3.Nc3 is still OK for White, transposing to a line of the English that arises after 1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 d6 3.d4!? - as long as he doesn't follow Hübner-Kasparov, Hamburg 1985, a crushing win for Black.

GM Karsten Müller annotates endings from Chicago Open

Good stuff on ChessBase.  Don't miss the endgame between GMs Shabalov and Sargissian, beginning at move 75.  (It's hard to win clear first in the Chicago Open unless you win at least one drawn ending!)

I'd just happened to see GM Yermolinsky's instructive comments on the Shabalov-Sargissian game on ICC this past Sunday.  It's the June 3rd entry in Yermo's "Every Russian Schoolboy Knows" series, "Bishop vs. Knight - Part 1."

Adarsh Jayakumar wins second IM norm

The International Master title requires three norm performances: the 5th New York International Open is Adarsh's second.  He scored 6-3 in a strong field.  Congratulations to Adarsh!

FM Eric Rosen just missed a norm with 5½-3½.  Another veteran of the Illinois Chess Association's Warren Junior Program is IM Zhe Quan, who is now a Canadian citizen and who plays top board for New York University.  Zhe Quan scored 6-3 and was in contention for a Grandmaster norm.

All rook endings are drawn...

...except for the ones that aren't. The comments to Jim Duffy's game made me take another look:

Fabijonas-Duffy, CICL Individual Championship
After 33...Ke6
White to play and draw
(more than one solution, but there's a simple route)

After 46.g4
Find Black's best move

After 48...Rxa1
Find White's best move