Der Alter Goniff

I played a game-in-60 tournament yesterday. Before I talk about it, here's a funny study I looked at today: White to play and draw. (C.M. Bent, "Tidskrift for Schack", 9/1964). Solution at the end.

I'm not crazy about sudden-death time controls, to put it mildly. I was very happy with the old repeating time limits (30/90 forllowed by 25/60 repeating was the most common one), and the switch to sudden-death controls at the start of the 1990s was a big reason I stopped playing for 12 years.

The use of time-delay clocks makes sudden-death a little less awful (at least the game doesn't degenerate into complete smash-the-clock). Since there are no slow time-control tournaments I can play in locally this summer, I decided to try a G/60. I had played some of the NY Masters G/30 tournaments when I was first coming back to tournament chess, but I find playing that fast too stressful.

Anyway, my result wasn't too bad--beat a C-player and an A-player, lost to a master. That last one knocked me out of prize contention, and since it came after a vicious time-scramble, I decided to pack it in. I didn't feel too bad afterwards, though, so I'll probably do it again.

Solution to study: 1.h8Q+! Nxh8 2.Bf8+ Kh5 3.Ng7+ Kh4 4.Be7+ Kg3 5.Bd6 Qxd6 6.Nxf5+ Bxf5 7.Ne4+ Bxe4 stalemate!

// posted by ed g. @ 9:32 PM