Der Alter Goniff

Here are the games from the Marshall Thursday-night tournament, in all their dubious glory. No comments yet; soon, really. The result of the fourth-round game is not a misprint; he really offered a draw. I'm usually on the wrong side of that transaction.

Here are a couple of positions from the last-round game against Naranja:

Here White missed a good chance to keep his whole advantage with 28.Rc5. If 28...Rxd7 29.Rxf5+, while 28...Ke7 is met by 29.Bc6. Instead, White played 28. Rbd5 and wound up in a Rook+4 Pawns vs Rook+3 Pawns endgame.

In the fullness of time, that simplified down to the next diagram: I'll have a lot to say about the resulting R+2P vs R+P endgame.

// posted by ed g. @ 10:32 PM 2 comments

April was mostly spent dealing with family issues. I got back to chess by playing in the Marshall Chess Club's Thursday night tournament. It's a nice monthly event--one game per week at a slow time control, members only. Annnnnd... I won!

Sole first prize. I haven't won a tournament outright since I was 13, I think. Along the way I beat two masters and drew a third. I'll put up some of the games soon--no, I promise, this time for sure--but I wanted to boast post about it immediately, since it's been so long since I've blogged.

My last game, last night, was a win against IM Renato Naranja, who I've mentioned before. It's only my third win against an IM, and since Naranja is sort of a legend to me (he held Fischer to a draw at the 1970 Interzonal just before Bobby went on the famous winning streak that lasted through the 6-0 matches against Taimanov and Larsen to the beginning of the match with Petrosian) it was a special thrill.

I'll try to get game scores at least up by the end of the weekend.

// posted by ed g. @ 3:55 PM 0 comments