A Correct Draw

To me, this game lends credence to the fairly credible rumors that Kasparov is coaching Nakamura.  The 3...Be7 and 5...h6 move order has been used by big boys in World Championship matches. Not very exciting for fans, but Nakamura with Black managed to completely shut down Carlsen.

Good coverage at Thw Week in Chess. Ivanchuk has won three games in a row; Nakamura is in 4th with an even score; he has a good chance to move up tomorrow with White against the off-form Vallejo.

Carlsen-Nakamura live

WhyChess has nice coverage: the game started at 1 p.m. Chicago time.

Hedgehog or hedge fund?

Dylan Loeb McClain explains. Hat tip to Maret Thorpe.

How many trading firms are in the Chicago Industrial Chess League?

Board 4: Karlow - Schmakel 0-1

How can a rook pawn help you undermine your opponent's control of the center? Whitney Young sophomore Sam Schmakel shows us how. 20...a4! trades the a-pawn for White's b3 pawn. b3 controls c4. And once Black controls c4....

Young 1 - Eckert 0

I've known Doug Eckert since he was in high school, and I owe my only win against Morris Giles to a book Doug wrote on the Keres Attack.

Angelo trots out one of his patented knuckleball openings. 5...Nh5!? (instead of Doug's 5...O-O, also the choice of most top players) has scored extremely well for Black, but obviously Angelo had something prepared against that. After 13.Qb4!, it becomes clear that Black responded a mite too actively to White's seemingly passive opening. The rest of the game, we see Angelo Young switch from Petrosian mode to Capablanca mode. It's hard to point to Black's decisive mistake (maybe 24...Rd8). Very nice game!

Friedel ½ - Finegold ½

Hmm. Ben Finegold guaranteed victory, then played the passive 4...Bd7 variation of the Rubinstein French. It's not necessarily bad match strategy, but one would think that it's not fair to one's teammates to say the Blaze "are going down next week" without trying to win one's own game as Black.

Friedel got an edge, Finegold defended correctly: the draw was logical.

Chicago beats St. Louis 3½-½

Catching up on Wednesday night's action, finally! Dmitry Gurevich was absolutely brutal on Board 2. White gets zilch against the Queen's Gambit Tartakower (12...Rd8 is Spassky's patent), declines a slightly inferior ending, makes an incorrect break on e4, and is totally busted. Dmitry showed no mercy.

FM Albert Chow analyzes Abrahamyan-Dean

Enjoy Albert's wonderful analysis of this wonderful game between WGM Tatev Abrahamyan and FM Jim Dean.

Chicago Industrial Chess League season underway

As always, check out the latest results at the fabulous CICL site.  I play for the AMA Rogue Squadron in the East Division: we won a tough match on Monday against Blue Cross / Blue Shield 4-2.  Our teammate Jim Duffy lost a very interesting game to Sonny Mata, and it took me a long time to figure out the computer evaluations in this very interesting ending.  Please take the following notes with a large grain of salt: I'm still not sure I understand what was going on, and computers are not to be trusted in rook endings!

 After 40.Kc2

Black to play: how to stop the e-pawn?

Analysis diagram

White to play and win: harder than it looks!

Nakamura-Anand in São Paulo

That was certainly a fun game at the Bilbao Masters this afternoon!  Kasparov thought that Nakamura missed one clearer try for advantage.

I'd heard this unconfirmed rumor some months ago: it certainly seems plausible....

November 5th in Peoria: All-Grade Championship!

If you're a scholastic player, parent, teacher, or coach, you should really make a road trip to Peoria to play in this great Illinois Chess Association event or to cheer on your kids.  The event determines the Illinois champion for each grade from 1st through 8th.  There's also a high school section.

The Greater Peoria Chess Federation is organizing this year's event on November 5th at the Peoria Grand Hotel.  Two of the top players in the state, Nikhil Kumar Kunche and Timur Aliyev, will be giving simultaneous exhibitions for the students.  Register by October 25th, and the entry fee is a very reasonable $25.

More info here!

Another look at Menon-Lu

Grandmaster Dmitry Gurevich explains the critical moments in Gopal Menon's win last week for the rest of us: learn and enjoy!

2012 U.S. Amateur Team Championship North in Northbrook!

Save the date (February 17-19), and get your four-player teams (with optional alternate) ready now!

The early bird entry fee is $140 per team: divide by four, and you'll see it's very affordable!  The site is the Crowne Plaza in Northbrook.

More info here.

Top 200 in Illinois

Check out the October list!

Playing blitz with Kasparov

Apparently Garry can still play chess, as France's top player, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, recently discovered.  Read his firsthand account on ChessVibes.

Aronian on Truffaut and Coltrane

Bad boy Vladislav Tkachiev just published a very entertaining interview with Levon Aronian at WhyChess.

Today's Bible verse

The Benoni has never had a reputation for being easy: its name was drawn from Genesis 35:18:

Rachel was about to die, but with her last breath she named the baby Ben-oni (which means "son of my sorrow"). The baby's father, however, called him Benjamin (which means "son of my right hand").

If you play the Modern Benoni against Mesgen Amanov, it's going to cost you Benjamins.  Mesgen annotates this incredibly entertaining game. 

As long as we're blogging etymology, Mesgen uses the word "tabiya" in his annotations to refer to the position after White's 9th move.  In chess's medieval ancestor shatranj, pawns could only move one square, and the fers (predecessor of the modern queen) could only move one square diagonally.  Consequently, the two armies in shatranj did not make much contact in the initial moves.  The Arabic word "tabbiyya" was used to describe the battle array chosen by each player. 

In modern chess, when the two armies are colliding from the initial moves, you can't ignore what the other player is doing when you choose your battle array.  A modern tabiya is a standard position known to both players before the beginning of the game from which they tacitly agree to begin the battle.

Tactics quiz for advanced beginners...and beyond

Dan Heisman's quiz may be too hard for true beginners. It's drawn from John Bain's Chess Tactics for Students (strangely out of print, but used copies can be found on the Intertubes).

Get out your stopwatches, read Dan Heisman's instructions before you begin, and play along! (Yes, I scored 12 out of 12, no, I wasn't as fast as I should have been, yes, I saw the dual solution. The easiest problem was the one that took me the longest.)

Here's an earlier Heisman quiz with the same format.

Thanks to Dan Heisman for pointing out that Chess Tactics for Students can be ordered directly from John Bain.

Board 4: Menon-Lu 1-0

Again, don't ask me how NM Gopal Menon won his Blaze debut. The game is a fairly logical Tarrasch French: Black broke White's attack by sacrificing the Exchange, and White gave the Exchange back at an appropriate time, and it seemed that Black was OK.

I suspect that Black got a little overexcited about having a passed center pawn on the 5th rank (in queen endings, having the pawn closest to the queening square is often more important than having more pawns), and match considerations may have made him overreach. Black's king had no pawn shelter: getting mated is not a big worry in this ending, but being forced to exchange queens into a lost pawn ending is a concern. Bringing the king from h1 to e2 worked out very well for Gopal!

Board 3: Dean-Abrahamyan ½-½

I have no idea what happened in this game. I watched part of it last night, and early on, I thought that Jim Dean would have good chances to win with Black. But Tatev Abrahamyan is very resourceful, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had a winning ending at a certain point. (Knight and bishop often have problems coordinating against an enemy rook, to the point that Reuben Fine considered rook and two pawns vs. knight and bishop to be a win in the general case.)

Restrain, blockade, destroy, draw.