CICL Playoffs Saturday!

Round 1 has already been played (results here).  Downers Grove Chess Club, Hedgehogs, Motorola Knights, and St. Charles Chess Club won their opening matches.

Rounds 2 & 3 will determine the 2011 Chicago Industrial Chess League Champion: if you're playing in Evanston, stop by the North Shore Chess Center afterwards to find out who wins!

Gelfand-Kamsky game 2 drawn

A very close call for Kamsky, and a very interesting fight!

Shipov annotates.  (Not a permalink.)

Kamsky-Gelfand game 1 drawn

I'm glad to see that Kamsky has decided to do battle in current theoretical positions: the line after 20.Qa5 has been played several times before at the GM level. Didn't work today; might work on Saturday!

In the other Candidates Grischuk was surprised by a Kramnik novelty

TWIC is back up

Grave of the greatest attacking genius (no, not Tal) ever?

Photo © Alex McFarlane.

More Candidates quarterfinals coverage at The Week in Chess.

Evanston CC Tri-Level this Saturday - only $5

Levy Senior Center
300 Dodge Ave
Evanston, IL 60202

Evanston Chess Presents:

Tri-Level

4SS G/45
Three Sections
USCF Dual Rated

May 14, 2011
9:00am-5:00pm

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 determins 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. 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.  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.

"Queen to Play"

I had a blog entry sixteen months or so ago about the French film Joueuse.  It's being released here as Queen to Play.  Roger Ebert reviews.

Kramnik-Radjabov press conference

As you may have read on ChessBase, at one point in the Kramnik-Radjabov tiebreaks, there was a moment when Radjabov was literally seconds away from winning the Candidates quarterfinal match: all he had to do was draw a tricky (but objectively drawn) rook plus opposite-color bishop ending.  After move sixty, there was a clock malfunction, and the arbiters took thirteen minutes (!!) to restart the blitz game.  Kramnik managed to win and force yet another two-game blitz tiebreaker, which he also won, and with it, the match.

Interview here: congratulations to Teimour Radjabov for acting in such a sporting fashion after such a heartbreaking turn of events.

Incidentally, interest in the match was so high (and English-language real-time coverage so wanting) that The Week in Chess crashed: the TWIC live site is still offline.

Candidates quarterfinals complete

Grischuk upsets top seed Aronian, and Kramnik somehow survives against Radjabov.  English-language coverage is spotty at best: I'll add links later today.  In the meantime, here's an English translation of Shipov's commentary on yesterday's Topalov-Kamsky game.

Semifinals pairings: Kamsky (USA) vs. Gelfand (Israel), and Kramnik (Russia) vs. Grischuk (Russia).  Play begins this Thursday.  The survivor will challenge Vishy Anand for the world title next year.

"Niles North teen is U.S. chess king"

From this morning's Sun-Times.  Don't take the headline too literally, as Kamsky and Nakamura might object.

"Frogs, Chessboards and Grids"

Victoria Livschitz, CEO of Grid Dynamics

Copyright The New York Times

An entrepreneuer explains how chess contributed to her success.

Daniel Wright JHS wins National Elementary Title

Good news from Dallas this weekend makes Illinois moms proud.  Congratulations to Daniel Wright Junior High School in Lincolnshire, which just won the National Elementary Title (K-6th grade) by two full points!

             BIAN, Alex (5.0,1839)             
             WEI, James (5.0,1856)             
             YU, Haoyang (5.0,1595)            
             HOLECEK, Zachary (4.5,1907)       
             OBERHAUS, Conrad (4.5,1888)

You can find the full results here.  More to follow, I'm sure. 

Unnaturally tough resistance brings Kamsky victory

In annotating the final game of the Kamsky-Topalov match for ChessBase, Alejandro Ramirez wisely writes, "In most cases in chess, the position is as natural as it seems."  In other words, most of the time, natural moves are sufficient to win a won game.  Only the strongest players have the fighting spirit to offer maximum resistance even when the game is objectively lost. 

Acccording to the computers, Gata Kamsky was hopelessly lost.  But Kamsky drew convincingly, without an obvious blunder by Topalov.

Veselin Topalov-Gata Kamsky

2011 Candidates Match, Kazan, Round 4

After 42...Ke8: White to play

What would you play as White?  How deeply would you calculate?

Veselin Topalov-Gata Kamsky

2011 Candidates Match, Kazan, Round 4

After 49.Qd8: Black to play

Black has several reasonable tries here (and perhaps more than one way not to lose), but only one move is clearly best.  Can you find it?

Congratulations to Gata Kamsky!  Later this week, he'll be facing Boris Gelfand, who has many friends in Chicago himself.

"How best to stimulate hair growth?"

At least that's what seems to be on the mind of the player in the foreground, who looks vaguely familiar.  Citadel offers one of the nicest playing sites in the city (check out the view!).

Matthias Pfau reports on Round 1 of Citadel's summer 2011 event on the Citadel Investment Group Chess League Blog.

My AMA Rogue Squadron teammate Jim Duffy may have missed some chances after pressing in the knight ending, but he won an objectively drawn pawn ending (the PGN appears to be wrong on the Citadel site):

The final two rounds of the CICL playoffs will be held next Saturday, May 14th, at the North Shore Chess Center. Details to follow.

Worst iPhone chess app ever?

It would be rather harsh to call ChessBase Online 1.1 (ChessBase GmbH, $4.95 in the iTunes Store) a bad application, because, strictly speaking, it achieves its modest and useful goal.

I can enter a position that I reached in a recent game...

..and discover the most popular replies and their performance...

...and load individual games to learn how top players handled the line.

Select one of the above games, and it loads painlessly.  So far, so good.  (Very handy for the bathroom stall at the Chicago Open, the cynic thinks.) 

But on the iPhone 4, the chess board interface is so buggy and annoying (compare the interfaces for iPhone engines such as tChess Pro, Shredder, and Stockfish, all of which are excellent), that I really can't recommend this app.

Perhaps this works better on the iPad (I don't own one), but if I'm at home, I'm going to be looking at ChessBase on a laptop with Rybka running.  That's not yet an option on the iPad..

The concept is great, and I love ChessBase products in general. But not this one: hold out for Version 2.0.

4th North American Amateur Open begins tonight

4th North American Amateur Open - 5R-SS G/90 + 30/sec increment. North Shore Chess Center, 5500 West Touhy Ave Suite A, Skokie, IL 60077. 847.423.8626.  Open to players with any established FIDE rating or an established USCF rating of 1600+. Max 50 players. All participants compete in a single section.  EF: $40 for non-members of the chess center, $30 for members of the chess center received by 5/5. All $10 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: Friday - 7:00pm, Saturday 12pm and 6pm, Sunday 11am and 5pm. Half-point byes available in any round. Prizes: 1st - $60 Best Buy Gift Card, 2nd - $30 Barnes & Noble Gift Card, 3rd - $15 Starbucks Gift Card.  Parking: Free self-parking. Mail entries with registration information to: North American Chess Association (make checks payable to), 4957 Oakton Street Suite 113, Skokie, IL 60077. Online registration preferred. Additional questions email to: sevan@nachess.org . USCF and FIDE rated. For online registration and list of more events please visit - http://www.nachess.org/events

Kamsky blows Topalov off board with Black

Topalov's Exchange sac on move 23 looked scary, but Kamsky counterattacked quickly and accurately.  Gata leads, 1½-½.

Candidates Matches underway

Eight players play knockout matches this month: the survivor will challenge Vishy Anand for the World Championship next year.

Follow the action live at http://kazan2011.fide.com/live-games.html

"Rosen Tops High School Nationals"

 Story (but no games as of 1:30 p.m. - coming soon?) at Chess Life Online.

Catching up with the ICA website

Lots of good stuff on the ICA website just in the past week!

• Leo Vilker on NM Ken Wallach's win in Highland Park and the amazing Awonder Liang
• Jon Burgess on Sam Schmakel (hey, Maret, please add HTML permalinks as a feature!)
• Jeff Wiewel on Yury Shulman at the US Championship
• Jon Burgess on the Scott Silverman Memorial and NM William Aramil's draw against GM Mesgen Amanov

If you go to the main ICA page and scroll down to "Chess in Philly," you'll be able to play through Aramil-Amanov in Chess Flash (sorry, no permalink available).  Mesgen showed me the game afterward: he explained that William blundered a pawn in the opening (the right idea is to play Nh4 before Qb3, as in the game continuation, 8...Bc2! just wins a button).  But after that inaccuracy, Aramil defended flawlessly (when pawns are on one side of the board, R+N are much stronger than R+B).  33.Re5! is a particularly good defensive move.  

Eric Rosen wins National High School Championship!!

Stolen from proud father Brad Rosen's Facebook post:

It's official--- Eric won the 2011 National High School Chess Championship this weekend in Nashville scoring 7.0/7.0, including a final round victory over IM Marc Arnold. Pretty amazing....thanx to Deren Getz for the photo and keeping Andi and I posted during the final.

The crosstable has already been posted: there were 1134 players in six sections, including 294 players in the Championship Section.  Eric's rating went from 2274 to 2333. Performance ratings involving perfect scores are very misleading, but I'm calculating a 2700 performance rating for Eric in this event!

Two Illinois teams finished in the top ten in the nation (click on "Team Standings:" to see details).  Led by Rosen, Niles North finished fourth.  But all four players had outstanding events: based on pre-event ratings, Rafeh Qazi's 4½ points was a phenomenal performance.

ROSEN, Eric S (7.0,2278)
QAZI, Rafeh (4.5,1621)
SPIEGEL, Evan (4.0,1767)
GUPTA, Saagar (3.5,1809)

Whitney Young finished tenth, led by Sam Schmakel and National High School Blitz champion Michael Auger, each with an excellent 5-2 score.

SCHMAKEL, Sam A (5.0,2099)
AUGER, Michael W (5.0,2111)
SWAN, Charles (3.5,1930)
WAECHTER, Mark Woodbury (3.0,1617)
MEI, Brian (3.0,1309)
CHAN, Kessidy (3.0,1617)
PENA, Cristian (3.0,1431)