Der Alter Goniff

A Simpler Explanation

2009-01-26T21:46:00.004-05:00

On further review, the shortcoming that prevents my further improvement is that I'm a moron:

I didn't want to post about this one, but my friend Tim saw the result on the Marshall website. He emailed me demanding the game, and I was reluctant to disappoint half my readership, so here it is.

Do I have a theory about why I play moves like 6...Bf5? (Aside from the above obvious explanation.) Of course I do--my brain produces theories like rotting meat produces maggots; nor do the similarities end there.

But there's no reason anyone should be even slightly interested in my latest theory, since I clearly know nothing whatever about Chess. So to hell with it.

The Long Answer

2009-01-08T12:51:00.003-05:00

In the comments to my last post, Tempo asked me what my shortcomings are that prevent further improvement, and I replied: "The short answer is that it probably poor selection of candidates and/or limited ability to visualize positions 5 or 6 ply down a forcing sequence. That's why I'm trying the Hertan and Dvoretsky books. The long answer will be a blog post in a day or two." I guess this is that post.

The long answer is that every part of my game seems weak, to the extent that everything I've done to improve has resulted in finding new ways to lose.

In a post last March that I've referred to recently, I listed all the things I did in the last couple of years. I concluded, "a hundred point difference could be chance", and I have begun to think that it was. Also, you could argue that it wasn't a hundred points, either--my rating only moved 50 points, the other 50 was a combination of bad performance when my rating was crashing down and good performance when it was recovering.

I worked my opening repertoire, partly because I'd noticed that in games where I used a lot of time in the first 10 moves, I did poorly even when I got a good position. That "worked"--I rarely get out of book early now, and when I do it's just as likely that it's because I'm refuting bad play by my opponent as forgetting my lines, and so my score in those games is just as good as my score in games where I don't use up a lot of time in the opening. But my rating overall doesn't move.

I did a lot of work on tactics, and I can see that I make fewer outright blunders than I did. By my rating doesn't move--I miss tactics several moves down a variation instead in the first couple of moves.

I worked on visualizing positions, and I can play through games blindfold pretty well--but I don't seem to see the possible continuations in the positions I visualize.

And so on. I do things to improve certain perceived problems, and those problems get a but better--and something else causes me to lose anyway, so my rating doesn't move.

Maybe I'm just grumpy. Maybe having a rating 50 points higher than a couple of years back indicates a real (but slow) improvement.

Anyway. I'll be working on visualization and especially on candidate selection, because those seem like obvious problems. I can point at places in my games where I didn't consider the strongest move at all, especially a few moves down the tree of variations. We'll see how that works.

2008 In Review

2009-01-02T00:32:00.003-05:00

Warning: I'm the kind of geek who keeps detailed lists and statistics. Here come some now:

I played 56 tournament games in 2008. That's a lot for me--the most since 1988, when I played 57. (I also played 57 in 1976; 68 in 1987; and 90 in 1977). I had five wins against players rated 2200 or over, the most I've ever had in a year.

Almost all those games were played at 30 moves in 90 minutes (followed by one hour smash clock); 5 games from the Marshall Championship were 40/120, and 4 from the Marshall Amateur Team were Game/120. I never played much at fast time controls, and don't think I ever will.

Total score for the year was +28 =17 -11, a performance about 2172; +16 =6 -6 with White (2175) and +12 =11 -5 with Black (2168). That's a very small difference between White and Black performance; +80 Elo is more typical, and it probably means my White openings could stand a little work.

Looking at individual openings, as White, I had a lot of games with the Symmetrical English with d4, and did not do great (2140); I also did poorly with the Reti opening ("London" lines where Black plays ...d5 and ...Bf5 or ...Bg4) (2100), and was +0 =1 -1 against the Dutch. I did very will with the Catalan and Tarrasch QGD (close to 2400), and my Larsen Variation King's Indian was OK (2240). So maybe I need to start playing 1.d4 instead of 1.Nf3.

As Black, my Caro-Kann continued invincible (+7 =9 -0, 2190), with a performance over 2350 against players rated 2000 or above. I've lost only one game with the Caro since I took it up, against GM Charbonneau. I draw a little too much with it against weaker players, but that's the last thing I'm going to worry about at the moment.

Against closed openings, not so successful, although my Queen's Gambit Declined started doing OK (almost 2300, in fact) after being around 2000 the last couple of years). But I've already looked over Vigus' _Play The Slav_ and will start using that. Maybe playing 1...c6 against the English and ...d5/...c6 against the Reti will help with my sub-2000 performance against those.

Anyway, I hope not to study openings too much this year. My wife--who indulges my hobby terribly--got me three books for Christmas: Hertan's Forcing Chess Moves, Lars Bo Hansen's How Chess Games Are Won And Lost, and Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual. I'm working on the Hertan book now, and a bit on the Hansen; later I'll move on to the Analytical Manual. I also need to buckle down to analyzing my own games.

I suspect it's all futile in terms of improvement, but I won't know unless I try.

One To Forget

2008-12-27T22:27:00.003-05:00

Here's a game I'd like to forget--I'm posting it to make sure I don't. My opponent is about 12 years old, and his name may be familiar to those of you who read the Marshall Chess Club blog.

Very nice execution.

And that concludes my chessplaying year. At the very least.

Stocking Stuffer

2008-12-24T15:14:00.005-05:00

Lev Alburt's Chess Pocket Training Book II, like his first pocket training book, is a nice little collection of positions--many tactics, but also endgames and positional problems--in a handy little book suitable for sticking in the pocket of your jacket or overcoat.

Here's a nice little problem from it--not hard, but pretty:

White to play

Solution will appear in the comments after Christmas (or when Tempo sees it).

Forcing Chess Move

2008-12-22T15:55:00.005-05:00

I've been reading Charles Hertan's Forcing Chess Moves. It looks pretty good so far (I just finished the first chapter; I'll write a review when I've finished the book). It may be pitched just a bit low for me, but it has some very nice positions in it. Here's one:

White to play

Solution in the comments.

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

2008-12-22T13:19:00.003-05:00

Illness, work deadlines, Seasonal Affective Disorder. No Chess playing this last month, and so no blogging.

Normal service to resume shortly. Happy Solstice to all, and best wishes for the holidays of your choice.

One To Remember

2008-11-24T16:34:00.004-05:00

I'm very pleased with the game I played last Thursday night against IM Renato Naranja. There are plenty of mistakes by both sides, but it was a good fighting game. And I got to offer sacrifices of both Rooks. And sac a Bishop at the end. And it's not another member of the "almost a good game except I screwed it up at the end" club.

As I said, lots of mistakes, but it's a game I'll remember.

A Good Draw

2008-11-18T23:26:00.003-05:00

Here's another nice game of mine from the Marshall Championship. My opponent is a strong young master who--I'm told--is something of a theoretical expert on the opening variation in this game.

I was pretty happy to have held the draw, but it was the kind of game where losing wouldn't bother me unless it was because of some gross blunder. I found the middlegame fascinating.

In the comments to this post by Temposchlucker, I've been discussing pawn-up endgames where the superior side should avoid trading certain pieces. There's an example at move 30 of this game; White would be much better off if Black couldn't force the Queens off.

My Best Game From The Marshall Championship

2008-11-10T22:39:00.013-05:00

To start clearing my backlog, here's my most fun game from the Marshall Championship. My opponent was a pleasant young fellow who recently wrote an engaging article for Chess Life about his struggle to get his rating over 2200. (Here's a popup javascript viewer of the game.)

White: NM Evan Rosenberg
Black: NM Ed Gaillard

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 Be7 5.g4?!

after 5. g4?!

Surprise!

I think this is advocated in one of those books on surprise lines- _Secrets of Opening Stupidity_ or _Dangerous Boomerangs: 1.d4 d5_ or something of that ilk.

5...c5

9 minutes. It seemed right to play a Semi-Tarrasch with g4 in for White.

6.g5 Ne4 7.cxd5 Nxc3 8.bxc3 Qxd5 9.Rg1?!

Despite the airyness of the Kingside, White should probably play 9.Bg2 and O-O. Then Black is only slightly better.

9...cxd4

16 minutes. Decided I wanted as many open lines as possible with his King permanently in the center; 9...Nc6 10.Bg2 cxd4 11.Nxd4! is not exactly "good" for White, but seems less awful. However, there may have been a slight flaw in my reasoning.

10.cxd4

10.Qxd4 was probably an improvement (though still -/+); this is why 9...Nc6 was possibly more accurate.

10...Nc6 11.Bg2 O-O 12.h4?

He spent 12 minutes, and was only 5 minutes ahead of me on the clock. This is "pseudo-agressive"; what is White going to do, deliver mate on the g-file? Developing some pieces might be a good idea.

12...Rd8 13.e3 Qf5

10 minutes. 13...Qc4 14.Bf1 didn't seem to lead anywhere special.

14.Qe2

after 14.Qe2

Wait a second...

14...Nb4

9 minutes, leaving 58. I had a sudden turn--I realized I hadn't considered 15.Ne5 in response (only e4 and Bd2), so I had to work that out (decided on 15...Qc2 in that case)

15.e4 (15 minutes, leaving 1 hr 5 minutes.) 15...Qa5 16.Bd2 b6

only 3 minutes on this move. 16...Nc2+ is also very strong, perhaps better than this.

17.Rc1 (24 minutes, leaving 41.) 17...Ba6 (6 minutes. I think I was, ah, away from the board.) 18.Qe3 Qxa2

11 minutes, ...Rac8 being the main alternative.

19.Bf1 (7 minutes, 34 left.) 19...Rac8 (4 minutes, 34 left.) 20.Rxc8 Rxc8

Played quickly; Crafty really likes ...Bxc8., which never crossed my mind.

21.Bxa6

after 21.Bxa6

Time to work it out

Ah, I had forgotten that the Rook was going to be loose if I won the Queen. I took 18 minutes, leaving 16, and worked out what I thought was a clearer win. Gratifyingly, Crafty seems to agree with my analysis.

21...Qa1+ 22.Ke2 Qxa6+ 23.Kd1 Qa4+ 24.Ke2 Qb5+ 25.Kd1 Nc2 26.Qf4 Qb1+ 27.Ke2 (6 minutes for him, leaving 19.) 27...Qb5+ 28.Kd1 Qb1+ 29.Ke2 Nxd4+ 30.Nxd4 Qxg1

after 30...Qxg1

Aftermath

And there we are. (I calculated this before 21...Qa1+.)

31.Nf3 Qa1 32.Ne5 Rf8

32....f6 is simpler.

33.Nd7 Rd8 (3 minutes, leaving 7.) 34.Ne5 Rf8 35.Nd7 e5

This pretty much ends White's counterplay.

36.Qg3 Rd8 37.Nxe5 Bd6 38.Bc3

I was actually rocked by this, but it appears it only took me a minute (of my 4 remaining) to work it out. (If the mating line weren't there, 38...Qa4 is also easily winning.)

38...Bxe5 39.Qxe5 Qd1+ 40.Ke3 Rd3+ 0-1

Winning Out-Of-Repertoire

2008-11-03T20:02:00.003-05:00

Just got back from a few days in Montreal. I have a bunch of games to post--I made an even score in the Marshall Chess Club Championship, with a nice win against a Master; two of my three losses were against IMs.

First, a game from a couple of weeks back, my last-round win in the Marshall Thursday Night tournament. It's a positive example of going out of my usual repertoire.

I've posted several negative examples of deliberately going out of repertoire in the past and had another one in the Championship, but this time it worked. The differences this time: I had White, and White can get away with more, and I chose something rather solid.

Running In Place

2008-10-27T17:40:00.004-04:00

I have a backlog of bunch of games--my last Thursday night game from two weeks back, and seven games from the just-completed Marshall Chess Club Championship. I'll get to them shortly. Stop snickering, you skeptics.

Before I start posting games, I want to point out something I noticed. My USCF rating after the tournament is 2163. My rating after last year's Championship was 2163.

I've played 48 slow tournament games in the interim. What I haven't done is any studying. In 2006 and 2007, I did a lot of work, and my rating went up 50 points (after crashing down with seemingly no end in sight for the two years prior).

Time to get off my lazy butt and do something about that. OK, since we're talking about studying chess, time to sit on my lazy butt and do something about that. Whatever. You get the idea.

Good Things From Old Books

2008-10-18T09:37:00.007-04:00

I'll have a lot to write about soon--my game last Thursday and this weekend's games from the Marshall Championship--but first I want to show you a game from last weekend's Sarker-Lenderman match, won by Sarkar 3-0 with one draw. The games are on the Marshall's blog: game one is in this post, game two in this one, and games three and four in this one.

I was in attendance for the third game, featuring a Ruy Lopez side line that is a specialty of Lenderman's, and which Sarkar had obviously prepared for. I was thinking during the game that I had seen this in the old book How To Open A Chess Game (Excellent book--articles on how to approach the opening by seven GMs; if you ever see a copy at a decent price, grab it). I looked it up, and so I am able to present:

Sarker-Lenderman, Third Match Game 2008, annotations by GM Bent Larsen

White: IM Justin Sarkar
Black: Alex Lenderman

Larsen:

"...it should not be significant if a variation is only 95 percent correct. The vital question is: Will the opponent be able to find the refutation over the board? Here is an example, an ambitious line for Black against the Ruy. (Alekhine once played it, so it must be good, right? Wrong!"

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Bc5 4. c3 Qf6?!

Larsen:

"I like it, as you will understand when you have seen some of my strange Queen moves for White in the Vienna. Some of these positions look like a Ruy with colors reversed. There is just the difference of one tempo, but it is a decisive difference! Sometimes a tempo means only the difference between good and merely playable, but here it means teh difference between good and unplayable. Alekhine's opponent did not play 5. d4! But what White should do is think: If I cannot play d4, my c3 was a stupid move--but c3 is a good book move, and Qf6 is not even mentioned! If it stopped d4 it would be the main line. Then White has to see one simple trick: 5.d4 exd4 6. e5 Nxe5? 7. Qe2! winning a piece. Maybe he sees no more than this: he plays d4 and feels good; he is refuting an unsound opening and building a strong center. Black does not lose a piece but plays:"

None of Lenderman's previous opponents played 5.d4, either, including some Grandmasters, one of whom faced it twice. "Nobody had the balls to play 5.d4 until now", said Lenderman.

5. d4 exd4 6. e5 Qg6 7. cxd4 Nxd4?!

Larsen:

"White had not seen this, but if he keeps his head he will still feel he is on the right track, because if Black's play were correct this would be a well-known and popular variation."

8. Nxd4 Qb6

Larsen:

"This is Black's third Queen move, and he still cannot castle, and what about his Queenside development? White looks at 9. e6 and 9.Nf5, but both are unclear. What about some more development? He finds:

9. Be3 Bxd4 10. Qxd4 Qxb5 11. Nc3

Larsen:

"Black is a pawn up, but he's in trouble. If you think Black's position is tenable, play it and you'll learn something! It is not necessary for White to be a genius to reach this position after 4...Qf6."

The rest of the game consists of Lenderman learning something. "The variation is just losing", he said afterwards.

11...Qb6 12. Qd2 Qg6 13. Nd5 Kd8 14. Qc3 c6 15. Qa5+ b6 16. Nxb6 axb6 17. Bxb6+ Ke7 18. Qxa8 Qe4+ 19. Be3 Qb4+ 20. Kf1 Qb5+ 21. Kg1 Qxb2 22. Rd1 Nh6 23. Bc5+ Ke6 24. Qa4 Kf5 25. h3 Re8 26. g4+ Kg6 27. Qe4+ f5 28. gxf5+ Kf7 29. Qc4+ d5 30. exd6+ Kf8 31. d7+ Re7 32. dxc8=R# 1-0

Larsen's comments were in the context of amateur play, but they seem applicable even at the level of these players. And I probably should have posted this on the Marshall's blog, but there the moment seems to have passed. Over here, time moves much more slowly.

A Little Preparation

2008-10-04T12:57:00.007-04:00

I play regularly in the Marshall Chess Club's Thursday-night open. Once of the nice things about it is that, although the pairings aren't done in advance, you usually have a fairly good idea of what they'll be.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky to draw a game against the Exchange Caro-Kann. Knowing that I'd probably be facing the same opponent this week, I spent a half-hour looking over the variation I wanted to play. It paid off, though the main factor was that my opponent was in unrecognizably bad form.

Here's the game:

I'd fire the manager if only I could figure out how

2008-09-29T22:44:00.003-04:00

I've hardly played a decent game since mid-July. It's like I've turned into the New York Mets.

Herewith my latest horror story, from last Thursday's round.

Forcing?

2008-09-24T16:02:00.003-04:00

I was looking through Charles Hertan's new book Forcing Chess Moves in a bookstore last weekend. It looks pretty good, though I haven't bought it yet. But here's something from the introduction that I don't understand.

On page 12, Hertan gives us a definition:

A forcing move is a move which limits the opponent's options. Nothing more or less.

OK, I'll buy that. On page 15, he gives this example, from Hertan-Kelleher, Cambridge 1994:

Black to play

What's a forcing move?

Hertan explains that Black played 1...Ke4 and lost, and also gives a White win against the "waiting move" 1...Kd4. Finally, he shows that Black has a draw after 1...Kd6! I didn't copy his analysis, but it seemed convincing enough.

Hertan tells us that Kelleher said that he never considered ...Kd6 because it seemed "too passive", and says that this is an example of the "human bias" we need to overcome:

While a computer would have used brute force caclulation to find the draw, a failed to even consider the strongest forcing move due to human bias!

(emphasis in the original; I've used bold where the book uses small caps).

What what what?! How is ...Kd6 a forcing move? What options of White's does it limit? None I can see.

I think this position is more an exampe of using "process of elimination" to find te right move. The forcing ...Ke4 doesn't work, ....Kd4 loses as well, moving the Bishop is useless--try dropping the King back. But if I'm supposed to look at ...Kd6 because it's "forcing", then is there any move in any position that isn't "forcing"?

More Spluttering Rage

2008-09-21T00:53:00.004-04:00

Here's the loss that took me out of last weekend's tournament. There's somewhat less swearing in the annotations this time--but that's because my supply of insults is still a little low from the last post, and I'd need Congressional authorization to tap the Strategic Vitriol Reserve.

I Am A Worthless Moron

2008-09-15T13:47:00.010-04:00

I played a lovely little game on Thursday night, proving once and for all that I'm a stupid piece of shit who shouldn't be allowed near a chess board.

White: Some damn fool (2161)
Black: Jerry Monaco (1670)

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.g3 g6 5.Bg2 Bg7 6.d4 d6?

This seems to be just bad.

7.dxc5

For some reason--probably senile decay--this took me 10 minutes.

7...dxc5 8.Qxd8+ Nxd8 9.Be3

But this only took 3.

9...Ne6 10.O-O

And this took 6, leaving 65. I was thinking--if I can dignify it with that word--about h3 or Rd1.

10...Ng4 11.Bd2 Rb8 12.Rad1

4 minutes here, figuring out where the Rooks go.

12...b5?!

Well, that's interesting. I used 5 minutes on my reply. Be nice if I could play 13.Nxg5, but instead of 13...Bxb2?? 14.Rab1 Bg7 15.Nd6+ winning the Exchange, Black can just play 13...a6 14.Nc3 Rxb2 =.

13.cxb5 a6

11 minutes, leaving 44. I considered the murky--to a fool like me--consequences of 14.bxa6 Rxb2, and of 14...Bxa6 (with pretty good compensation, I felt).

14.h3 Nh6 15.Ne5!

after 15.Ne5!

Look! I found an acorn!

9 more minutes here, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since this is what I planned when I played my previous move. Well, what can you expect from an idiot?

15...Nf5 16.Bc6+

4 minutes, 31 left. 4 minutes??

16...Kf8 17.Bf4

6 minutes here. Not sure why I rejected the immediate bxa6.

17...Nd6 18.bxa6

7 minutes, leaving 18. Whatever I calculated here, I surely forgot all about it immediately.

18...Rxb2 19.a7 Nc7

after 19...Nc7

A choice of brutal obvious wins

Now here, White could just win a piece with the brutally obvious 20.a8=Q. Or, he can win a whole Rook with the cute deflection 20.Nd5!, when Black can only prevent the Pawn from queening with 20...Rxa2 21.Ra1 Rxa7 22.Rxa7. But no, I had a clever notion in my--what's the word? mind? That can't be it, "mind" implies there's some mentation going on.

20.Nc4?!

This took me 10 minutes, leaving 7 to get to move 30. Oh, remember I mentioned Nd5 being a winning shot here? It never entered my mind for a second, not a single second of those ten minutes. Abysmal.

20...Bxc3 21.Nxb2

This took me 2 minutes. Why? I don't know. I believe I was considering taking on d6 in any of three ways. 21.Nxd6 and 21.Rxd6 are probably even good.

21...Bxb2

after 21...Bxb2

Now I prove to be cowardly as well as stupid

22.Rb1?

3 minutes, two left. Why didn't I play 22.Rxd6! as I had planned? Because I'm a pathetic coward who jumps at shadows: in this case, the shadow of 22.Rxd6 exd6 23.Bxd6+ Kg7 24.Bxc7 Bxh3, when I "saw" 25.a8=Q Rxa8 26.Bxa8 Bxf1 27.Kxf1 with an even ending. Uh, except White's a piece ahead. Oh, and 25.Rb1 wins on the spot. Dumbshit.

22...Bc3

after 22...Bc3

Dazed and confused

23.Bh6+?!

Probably not best. 23.Rfd1 is very strong, but I suppose I couldn't be expected to see a relatively quiet move at this point. 23.Rb8 also wins easily, and even 23.a8=Q puts White up the Exchange.

23...Bg7

after 23...Bg7

Remarkably, I haven't blown it. Yet.

24.Bxg7+?

Throws away most of White's advantage. 24.Bd2 is very strong (intending Ba5). But now I had only a minute left.

24...Kxg7

after 24...Kxg7

What now, Einstein?

25.a8=Q??

Throws away the rest of the advantage. White was still much better after 25.Rb8 or 25.Rfc1.

25...Nxa8 26.Bxa8 Bf5

Oh, crap.

27.Bg2 Bxb1 28.Rxb1 c4 29.a4 Rc8 30.a5 Rc7 31.a6

I spent 16 minutes on this first move after the time control, concluding there was nothing for me, and offered a draw. He ignored it. I can't blame him; I wouldn't take a draw against a fucking idiot like me, either.

31...c3 32.Bb7 c2 33.Rc1 Nxb7 34.axb7 Rxb7 35.Rxc2

But really, even I can hold this. I'll spare you the ensuing dreary 40 moves; if you're a real masochist, you can play it over on the usual javascript board.

It turns out that he had his headphones turned up loud, and didn't hear me offer the draw at move 31. Or at move 53. At move 73, the offer was accompanied by shouting and waving my arms, at which point he finally noticed and took the draw.

Oh, wait, I almost forgot! This occurred shortly after my second draw offer. I was playing quickly, figuring he must be hoping to run me out of time:

after 56...Kd6??

One more chance for me to fuck up

Why no, I didn't play 57. Rf7. That would require me to not be a goddamned cretin with no discernable chess skill.

Last Thursday Night's Game

2008-09-08T00:36:00.006-04:00

I've been playing in the Marshall's Thursday-night members' tournaments (one slow game a week) since April. I didn't play especially well in the most recent event (performance rating around 2130), but I did tie for second.

Here's my last round-game. I've been intending to play Larsen's variation against the King's Indian--the early Queen exchange suite me--but (a) almost nobody seems to be playing the King's Indian arond here lately and (b) when they do, they play 6...Nbd7 or (as here) 6...Nc6.

Next weekend I'll be in the slow 4-round Open at the club, which will be my main tuneup before the club championship in mid-late October.

Pragmatic Sacrifice

2008-09-03T12:41:00.007-04:00

A game I won a few weeks back made me happy. Not just because I won, but because finally--after two years of having the Queen's Gambit Declined as part of my repertoire--someone let me pay the Tartakower Defense. Exchange variations, lines where White answers ...h6 with Bxf6, 5.Bf4 lines, Catalans--these I got all the time, but no Tartakower. I didn't know it was so fearsome.

In the course of the game, I played an unclear piece sacrifice. I don't do that often, but here:

A practical choice

it was a pragmatic choice: it's possible retreating the Bishop was objectively better, but I was in time trouble, and the position seemed simpler to play after the sac.

Here's the whole game, with notes:

patzer (n.) -- A weak chess player. syn.: woodpusher, fish, duffer. (from German patzen, to bungle.)

2008-08-29T15:34:00.005-04:00

For example, Black in this game:

White to Play

What could possibly go wrong?

Something seems seriously wrong with my approach to the game lately.

insipid (adj.) -- Tasteless; wanting in flavour; lifeless, dull, uninteresting

2008-08-29T15:22:00.006-04:00

For example, White's play in this game: I seem to have a real problem with the Dutch. Also with playing chess in general.

That's Entertainment

2008-08-25T23:11:00.007-04:00

Here's another fairly recent game, from the May-June running of the Marshall Thursday Night tournament.

White: Leon Zukoff
Black: Ed Gaillard

1.e4 c6 2.f4 d5 3.Nf3 dxe4 4.Ng5 Nf6

So I've never seen this before. I figured that 4....Nf6 prevented 5. Bc4 because of 5...Bg4.

5.Bc4!

Oh. Now I realized that 5....Bg4 runs into 6. Qxg4! Nxg4 7.Bxf7+ Kd7 8.Be6+ Kc7 9.Bxg4

I love it when a plan comes together

Is this good for White? Good for Black? You're asking me? All I know is, this is not the cruise Black signed up for when he played the Caro-Kann.

5...e6 6.Nc3 Be7 7.Ncxe4 Nbd7

I didn't feel too bad here. I used up a little too much time on my first five moves, but I've been able to make the last couple of simple developing moves fairly quickly. I don't like that my QB is locked in, but the Pawn on f4 is pretty funny-looking. At least the position looks Caro-Kann-like:

A nice boring Caro-Kann position

8.Nxf7!

Oh. I probably should have seen that coming.

8...Kxf7 9.Ng5+ Ke8 10.Nxe6 Qa5 11.Nxg7+ Kf8 12.Ne6+ Ke8 13.Ng7+ 1/2-1/2

He took the perp. Yay, me.

Grandmaster draw

I suppose that trying for more could be dangerous, since White doesn't have much development. I looked at this with Asa Hoffman, and it looked decent enough for Black.

(Here's a javascript viewer for the game.)

Starting to catch up

2008-08-23T18:29:00.007-04:00

I've been playing a lot, but not taking any time to analyze or post my games. Let's see if I can get back in the swing of it.

I've only lost a couple of games in the last three months. Here's one of them. FM Ilye Figler is a guy who really has my number. It's not just that he's a much better player than I am--IM Jay Bonin is at least as good as Figler, for example, but I nick Jay for a draw one out of every three or four games--but something about Figler's style makes me feel defeated before I even push my first Pawn.

This game is a pretty good example of how not to play against the "problem" opponent.

What happened here is that I talked myself out of playing one of my normal openings, because I'd lost with them to Figler before. But it's not like I got horrendous positions; at least one of those games, I had a winning attack until I blundered.

So I played a bad variation of the Modern Defense, and then I went nuts trying to find a way to open the game up for an attack, and so I went down in flames.

I wish I could say that I've learned my lesson, but when I get to my other recent loss, you'll see the same sort of problem in the opening, though at least in that game I didn't flame out so badly.

Here's the earlier Figler game, which I don't seem to have posted before:

Another entry in my rather large collection of "almost my best game ever, but..." games.

Photos from the New York International

2008-06-26T13:14:00.007-04:00

I was a spectator at the New York International at the Marshall Chess Club this week, and I took a few pictures (click on the pictures for larger versions):

GM Alejandro Ramirez on his way to a share of first place

IM Eli Vovsha has a toothache, or maybe just a weak pawn

IM Justin Sarker considers his options

GM Sergey Kudrin remains impassive

FM Mackenzie Molner scored an IM norm

IM Renato Naranja watching the play

NM Bem Tyehimba and FM John Jacobs battling it out

More photos are available at the Marshall's website.

Games

2008-05-18T22:32:00.006-04:00

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.

What I've been up to

2008-05-16T15:55:00.005-04:00

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.

Not bad

2008-03-20T12:21:00.004-04:00

Here's a game I played recently that I quite enjoyed. Nothing spectacular happens; it's just chess. The players maneuvered for a while, and gradually I got an advantage. A temporary Pawn sacrifice helped turn things even more in my favor, and I finished off by transposing to a won King-and-Pawn endgame that I recognized from working my way through Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual a few years ago. It was one of my best games, and quite a pleasure to play.

That was fun to annotate, too, but I really need to do some work on some of my losses now.

My Favorite Move

2008-03-13T23:47:00.005-04:00

I was browsing the excellent blog of the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club the other day. They have an occasional feature called "My Favourite Moves", and it made me think about my own favorites.

My favorite move that I've played myself was from a game almost twenty years ago (although 32. Bg4 from two years ago is close). I was playing in the Under-2200 section of the New York Open, in the middle of my drive to finally get my rating over 2200. After a tense struggle, we reached this position:

Gaillard - Harvey Ross, NY Open 1987.
Position after 35...Ra1xa2.

White has an obvious advantage, but I was frustrated by Black's seemingly unbreakable blockade on g7. Also, I was worried that Black's new passed a-pawn might just run down the board if I didn't do something quickly. So:

36. Rh8!!

And away we go. The rook can't be taken because of 36...Kxh8 37. Kh6, threatening g7 mate; and if Black moves his Bishop to give the King air, then g7+ followed by Bh7+ is still crushing.

36...Ra1

Or 36...Ra4 37. Rxg8+ Kxg8 38.e6 Kf8 39.Kf6 Rg4 40. Bf5 Rg1 41.e7+ Ke8 42. Be4 Rf1+ 43. Ke6 Re1 44. g7 Rxe4+ 45. Kf5 and a pawn goes on to glory.

37. Rxg8+ Kxg8 38.Kf6 Ra4

38...Rg1 39. e6 Kf8 40. e7+ Ke8 41. Be4 is similar to the last note.

39. e6 Rb4 40. e7 Black Resigns (1-0)

Been a long time since I rock 'n' rolled

2008-03-06T16:21:00.005-05:00

I didn't play for most of 2007 year for reasons I will not go into because this isn't a chess politics blog. I started up again in late in the year, and have been playing pretty regularly since.

I'll post a few games soon (promises, promises), but first I want to... muse for a bit about chess improvement.

I'm the kind of geek who constantly does spreadsheets and graphs of everything. Naturally, I do this for chess. I've just noticed something: my performance since December 2005 is much better -- about a hundred points better -- than it had been before then. So, I wonder if that's significant, and if so, what the reason is.

One thing it might be is that I changed my Black openings right at that time. And indeed, my score with the Caro-Kann has been pretty fierce. But, my performance with White has also improved, by only a little less than my Black performance. So that's probably not it.

I had been overdosing on CTS in the summer and fall of 2005, and stopped right around November. It seems counter-intuitive that doing fewer tactical problems would help my play, but (1) it probably helped to keep me from leaping at the first plausible move so much, and (2) it's possible that all the tactics work actually helped, and just took a while to filter into my actual play.

I had been working on Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual all though that year; on the other hand, I'd been working on that in 2003 and 2004, as well, with no visible results. And I'd done a lot of analytical work on my own games, as well, but I always did that, and in fact I did it less after Spring of 2005. Again, maybe those took some time to take hold.

Starting in mid-2005 and continuing through the whole streak, I did a lot of work on what I call "practical problems", like the ones in Silman's Reassess Your Chess Workbook. I certainly feel like my thought process has changed for the better because of that.

Finally, over most of 2005-06 I did quite a bit of "blindfold practice", playing over short games from a book and trying to visualize the accurately.

I'm not sure I have any definite conclusions. Heck, a hundred point difference could be chance, even over 50 games.

Going forward I'm going to continue with the practical problems, and go back to doing blindfold practice. I'll analyze my games, but not as obsessively as I was doing before. I might do some intensive tactical sessions, but I will stop well before a tournament.

We'll see how it goes. ~~Next stop, Foxwoods (March 19-23).~~ (Edit, March 17th:) Unfortunately, I won't be able to go to Foxwoods after all. And I can't play the April tourney at the Marshall, either. I don't know when I'm going to get to play again. Phooey.

Just for the record

2006-06-21T23:37:00.001-04:00

Here are the games from my June tournament. I'm afraid I still can't write coherently about them. I did notice that, with my win against Cencetti, I now have a lifetime even record against Experts.

FIDE Rating history

2006-06-15T15:00:00.000-04:00

While looking for something else entirely, I stumbled on a site with FIDE ratings going back to 1990, which is a lot further back than FIDE's own website gies. Warning: the site likes to open a lot of popup ads.

I played last weekend at the Marshall with, um, mixed results. I won a very nice game against an Expert, and had a winning position against a Master in the last round. I misplayed it horribly and topped it off by not only dropping the Exchange, but getting angry and resigning in a drawn position. What can I say? I'm an ill-tempered nitwit. I'll post the games when I can stand to put them in my database.

Lazy; Exchange for a Pawn; ChessUp

2006-05-21T19:37:00.001-04:00

Hey, there. Been a while. Three brief topics today:

Lazy

I played a tournament at the Marshall two weekends back, with thoroughly mediocre results. I've just been too lazy to post about it. Bad blogger! No traffic for you! Click here to see the games, with light notes.

Exchange for a Pawn

I found a cheap copy of _Lasker's Manual of Chess_ at a used bookstore last week, and started reading it. In discussing the relative values of the pieces, Lasker says:

We are not without a method to probe the above values and to discover others. All we have to do is to build simple positions, say Rook against Bishop and Pawn, with due regard to the ceteris paribus, are set to fight each other and carefully analyse the course of that fight.

This is a good idea, actually. It fits in with an observation of GM Nigel Davies I'm fond of, to the effect that you can tell who the potential strong players are--they're the ones who, in odd moments, like to push the pieces around the board and see what happens.

Here's Lasker's first example:

Rook versus Bishop and Pawn. The ceteris paribus condition is here fairly fulfilled, both sides having besides two blocked Pawns each. True, the White King has a very advantageous position, but such an advantage can be forced by methodical play as soon as the advantage of Rook versus Bishop and Pawn is conceded.

and then he shows the winning method: 1.Rh7+ Kd8 2. Ke6 followed by Rd7 and Rxd6; White gives the Exchange back but eats all the Pawns.

There's one problem: I don't think Black's King can be forced to the back rank this way if Black recognizes the danger beforehand. Let's look at a similar position: (Imagine, for example, that Black's last move in the Lasker diagram was ...Ke7-d7; here, instead, Black played ...Bc5-b4.)

The method Lasker gives doesn't work now: 1. Rh7+ Kf6 2.Rd7 Kg5! 3.Rxd6 Bxd6 4.Kxd6 Kh4 5.Kxe5 Kg3. Now if White could only play 6.Ke4! But his own Pawn blocks that square, and the passed-Pawn race is a draw.

I've spent an hour messing around with this position, and I don't see what else he can do to win. 1.Re6+ is met by 1...Kd7! (not 1...Kf7 2.Rxd6 winning). After 1...Kd7, White would win if Black's Bishop were on c5: Then 2.Rxe5! fxe5 3.Kxc5 and the King and Pawn ending is a win. But White can't force that position. There's no Zugzwang (with 1. Rg6, say), because the Bishop can shuttle between a3 and b4. Can anyone come up with a winning idea for White?

ChessUp

The diagrams above were made with a neat new diagram creator, ChessUp. Check it out!

Closer

2006-04-25T23:20:00.001-04:00

Last weekend at the Marshall, I drew with two Masters and beat a young C-player (who gained a hundred rating points in the tournament). One of the draws (click here to replay) was almost one of the best games I've ever played...except that I didn't finish it off:

Gaillard, Ed (2124) -- Maltese, Adam (2324)
Marshall CC April Open (2) New York
2006.04.22 1/2-1/2

1.c4 d6 2.g3 e5 3.Bg2 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.e4 Ne7 6.Nge2 O-O 7.O-O c6 8.d4 Bg4 9.f3 Be6 10.d5 cxd5 11.cxd5 Bd7 12.Be3 Na6

13 minutes here. I was thnking about things like Qb3 and Rfc1, and then I remembered: when the center is closed, you normally attack with Pawns on the wing. Thank you, Mr. Silman, I thought, and played a3.

13.a3 h6 14.b4 f5

The nice thing about the fianchetto variation of the King's Indian (which this basically is) is that ...f5-f4 can be met with Bf2, and White has a very strong defensive position on the Kingside.

15.Qb3 b6 16.a4 Kh7

This might be too slow. Black plans ...h5 and ...Bh6, after which Whitge can either exchange Black's bad Bishop, or play Bf2 and let c1 fall under Black's control. But meantime, White gets to continue his attack.

17.Nb5 Be8 18.Nec3 Nc7 19.Rfc1 Nxb5

Accompanied by a draw offer.

20.Nxb5 Bxb5 21.axb5 Qd7 22.Qd3

This cost me 10 minutes, mostly considering sacrificing the b5-Pawn.

22...f4 23.Bf2 h5 24.Rc2 Bh6 25.Rca2 Nc8 26.Qc4 fxg3 27.hxg3 Rb8 28.Qc6 Qf7 29.Bh3

I spent 10 of my last 12 minutes trying to work out the complications here. I would have liked to have prepared Bh3 with Ra3, but then Black gets in ...g5-g4.

29...h4

I had expected 29...Qxf3, when after 30.Qc7+ Kh8 31.Qxb8 White should emerge from the complications with a win on material.

30.Bxc8 Qxf3

Having made the time-control with less than a minute to spare, I spent 48 minutes on my next move, mostly on a defence he didn't play. I don't regret it--when you think there's a forced win, you have to try to work it out.

31.Qc7+ Kh8

He spent about five minutes on this, leaving him more than an hour ahead on the clock, but 31...Bg7 was a much better defence. I thought 32.Qxb8 was much too dangerous then--Crafty seems to disagree--, and was going to play 32.Be6. In that case, though, Black seems to hold after 32...hxg3 33.Bxg3 Qxg3+ 34.Rg2 Qe3+ 35.Kh1 Rf2! --I had considered only 35...Qf3 36.Ra3!! winning.

As disgusted as I am at how I finished this game, I will never forget the expression on my opponent's face when I played my next move.

White to play

32.Bg4!! Qf6

32...Qxg4 33.Rxa7 ends the game on the spot. I expected 32...Qxe4 33.Rxa7 g5 (covering h7), when Black still has swindling chances due to my time-trouble, though 34.Qxd6 should just win.

33.Qc2?!

Thought for three minutes, and somehow couldn't see that 33.Rxa7 still kills--33....Qxf2+ 34.Kh1 and there are no more checks.

33...Qg5 34.Qe2 Rxf2 35.Qxf2

I used two of my remaining 5 minutes on this. Of course, 35.Kxf2 is winning, but I felt that with so little time for the rest of the game, I was better off going for what looked like a winning endgame. I think that was actually a good practical decision.

35...Qxg4 36.Qf6+ Kg8 37.Qe6+ Qxe6 38.dxe6 Be3+ 39.Kg2 hxg3 40.Rxa7 Re8 41.Ra8

Objectively, 41.Rd7 Kf8 42.Ra3! is an easier win, but by trading Rooks I get rid of all the losing chances.

41...Kf8 42.Rxe8+ Kxe8 43.Ra7 Bf2 44.Rg7 g5 45.Rxg5 Ke7 46.Rg6 Be1 47. Kf3 Bf2 48.Kg2

First of all, after 48.Kg2 Black is in Zugzwang: 48...Bd4--what else?--49.Kd3 (intending Kc4-d5) 49...g2 50.Rxg2 Kxe6 51.Rg6+ Ke7 52.Kc4 and White wins easily. Even if Black somehow could pick up the b4-Pawn (as I hallucinated he could), The position Kg5, Rg6, Ps b5, e4 vs Kd7, Bc5, Ps b6, d6, e5 is also an obvious win--White can sac the exchange back on d6 and kill both the d6 and e5 pawns.

Instead, I repeated moves and offered a draw. Why? Yes, I only had a minute and a half left, but I should be able to play every move within the 5-seond delay! Sheer cowardice. I am so ashamed.

1/2-1/2

This was a sin against the goddess Caissa. I'm looking for a suitable penance.

Another Goniff Weekend

2006-04-15T15:23:00.001-04:00

I did rather better at last weekend's slow open at the Marshall: beat a young A-player when he self-destructed in a drawn endgame, and had two draws and one loss against Masters. I spoiled great positions in the loss and in one of the draws; on the other hand, the other draw was a comedy of errors beyond even my usual good fortune. Here's the games without notes, and here are a few positions from the games. Enjoy!

White to play and draw. (If this works right, the solution is on the next line after this, but in white-on-white text. Select the area below to see it.)

41. Ke2! Kxf4 42. Kxf1 Ke3 43. c5 draws by a hair. White found the right start, but played 43.b5? and lost

Black to play: Find the wrong move. Solution, again, should be visible by selecting the text on the lines below this one.

11...Ne4? 12.Nxc4 wins a Pawn.

Black just played 19...Ng4xf2, and awaits the sockdolager.

20.Rc2! Qxc2 21.Bxf7+ ends all of Black's swindling attempts. White played 20.Bd6, which is also winning, but lets Black play on.

I had heard of the idea that if a player doesn't see the crusher immediately, he never will, but I had never seen it happen before. I sat very quietly until he played...well, a different strong move.

White has only two legal moves. Which one is wrong?

21.gxh3? Qxe3+ forces perpetual check. White was worried about 21.Kh1 Nf2+ 22.Rxf2 Qxc1+, but there's nothing there for Black. I was going to try 21.Kh1 Qxe3, hoping for a big mess after 22.Rxf7 Be6, but 23.Rxg7+ just forces mate.

White to play: don't get clever, part 1.

White has a substantial edge after either the straightforward 15.Rb1 b5 16.Qf4 or 15.Qb3 b5 16.a4. White chose 15.Ba3?! O-O 16.Rab1 b5 17.Qd4?, having hallucinated that after 17...Qxd4 18.cxd4, b4 was still impossible. No it isn't, and after that White may not have much advantage any more.

White to play: don't get clever, part 2.

Black is obviously better, but I--still hoping to win somehow and finish in the prize money--made things worse by going after the f-pawn with 31.Kg2?! which puts the King out of play after 31... Kf7 32.Kh3 h5 33.Kh4 Kg6. Then 34.Rc5 Re8 35.Rxd5 Rxe2 36.Rd6+ Kf5 37.Rd5+ Kf6 38.Rd6+ Re6 39.Rd8 Rb6 brings us to the next diagram.

White to play: don't get clever, part 3.

After 40.Ra8 b3 41.axb3 axb3 42. Ra1 b2 43.Rb1 Rb5 44.d5, White would still have good drawing chances. But I chose 40.Rh8? Hoping to gain a tempo by forcing the Black King to the second rank. Unfortunately, after 40...Rb5! 41.Ra8 b3 etc., White was a tempo behind the 40.Ra8 line...and lost the game by one tempo.

Questions and comments welcome, as always. Let me know if you like the hidden-text gimmick.

Indeed, I am a miserable patzer

2006-03-26T12:01:00.001-05:00

I've been avoiding blogging about my last tournament. I went +1 -2 =1 against opposition averaging under 1800; my worst performance rating in more than 25 years. I haven't been able to bring myself to look at the games. As I said in comments, Rule #1 for improving at chess is not, "learn from your losses", as important as that is; Rule #1 is, "don't do anything that diminishes your desire to play or study". So I've left these atrocities alone for the moment while I go on with Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual (about which I will presently say more) and Silman's Reassess Your Chess Workbook.

February Open games

2006-02-26T21:47:00.001-05:00

The Almeida game (my other loss from December) is turning out to be hard to finish annotating. In the meantime Here's my games from the February Open, with very light notes.

Here, playing Black, I missed an important idea for White. Black to play: Find the wrong move!

Finally, I post a game!

2006-02-25T18:47:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned before, I'm trying to do my first analysis of my games without a computer now, and it's been taking a while. I have analysis for my two losses in the Marshall Championship in my notebook, and today I put my loss to IM Jay Bonin into my database and checked it with Crafty.

The results were pretty dismaying--I missed a lot of tactics even in my analysis. On the other hand, Crafty confirmed some of my intuitive impressions (which I thought my analysis had proven wrong).

Anyway, here's the Bonin game for your viewing pleasure. Comments welcome, as always.

I hope to have analysis of my other loss from the Championship up by the end of the weekend, and at least light notes for the games from my last tournament sometime this week. I'm playing again next weekend, deus volent, so I'll be falling further behind after that.

Construction Tasks

2006-02-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

Ever try to construct a position that met some extreme set of criereria? Last week, a poster on one of the Usenet chess groups asked about the rule that a position where no sequence of legal moves can result in checkmate.

One question was what the smallest amount of material is, such that the position is not stalemate and there is enough material to mate, but no mate is possible by legal moves.

I came up with two types of position. Here's one where six pawns are enough to block the King's each on his own side of the board.

The next one has one fewer piece, but the presence of a minor piece makes it "more material" in some sense.

The next question was, what's the biggest material imbalance for which no mate is possible? In this one, the whole army is bottled up by four pawns! But unfortunately it's illegal, since the White h-pawn was transported somewhere by authorial fiat.

This one, however is legal, although Black has one more pawn.

I've spent a little time this weekend trying to do the next logical task--the most total material with no possible mate. Here's the best I've done so far.

These are the kinds of things I see in troubled dreams.

If anyone can come up with better solutions for these construction tasks, let me know.

Still no games?!

As usual, things are going more slowly than I anticipated. I have finished annotating my losses from the Marshall Championship, but I still have to type them into SCID and then blunder-check the analysis. The games from last week's tournament aren't even in SCID yet.

Goniff on the Loose

2006-02-17T17:31:00.000-05:00

Busy, busy! I played the monthly slow open at the Marshall last weekend, with a really good result, two wins and two draws for a 2300 performance. One of the draws was against IM Jay Bonin. I'll put some stuff up this weekend.

I'm not ready to give any credit to my new training methods. For one thing, it's way too early; for another, I didn't play as well as the score indicates. I missed some important tactics, and could easily have had an even score instead of +2.

Still, any tournament where I don't lose to Jay is a good tournament, and I was in fine Goniff form, hanging on after the mistakes and dragging wins out of even endgames.

Where I've been, and a review of Chess For Zebras

2006-02-10T12:29:00.000-05:00

Since the start of the year, I've been working long hours again. When I'm doing that, I don't like turning on a computer when I'm at home. Also, I decided that analyzing games with the help of a computer engine was not helping me that much, and that when analyzing on the computer, there's too much temptation to turn on an engine "just to check for blunders".

For these reasons, I'm doing my chess work with a board and pieces, and pen and paper. But not having the computer on at home means no blogging. I will try to post a little more often, though.

I had forgotten how much slower it is to analyze using a real board, and having to write down all the lines. I have pages of analysis on just one game from the Marshall Championship. Eventually, I'll put it all into SCID and then pare it down to post it here.

Chess For Zebras

At Christmas I got a copy of Jonathan Rowson's Chess For Zebras, which has been getting a bunch of interesting reviews, each of which seems to concentrate on different aspects of the book from the others. Here's my short take, based on my own specific concerns.

Rowson is a very entertaining writer, and some of the things he says about the advantages (and disadvantages) of having White are quite thought-provoking. However, I'm mostly interested in books that can improve my play, and Rowson says some important things about improvement as well.

I now have the impression that after your rating stabilizes at a certain level it is rare for this level to change significantly regardless of the amount of effort you put in. However, I think it is possible to improve with a different kind of effort.

I've often heard it suggested that it's basically impossible for an adult player to improve much, especially if he's already a strong player. I always thought this was nonsense: I'm still getting better at other things; I'm a better programmer now than I was five years ago, and was better ten than I was ten years ago, for example. Why should improving at chess be different then anything else? Rowson continues:

The core idea is that aspiring players should place much more emphasis on developing their skill than increasing their knowledge. This means that chess work should be less focused on 'learning' and more about 'training' and 'practicing' whereby you force yourself to think.

This makes sense to me; after all, improvement in other areas is mostly about improving skills: learning the basics of a new programming language, for example, is mostly about writing small test programs, and imitating examples found in books or on the web, until the new languages way of doing things becomes your natural way. In other words, a little learning and a lot of practice.

In a footnote, Rowson adds:

I believe this advice applies at all levels of play, but the kinds of positions you think about, and what you think about them, will vary according to your level of play. Chess is a concrete game, but the stronger you become the more strategic considerations predominate.

However he agrees with Ken Smith's advice about the predominant importance of tactics at lower levels:

For players below 1800 who desperately want to improve (and are willing to suffer for it!) I recommend Michael de la Maza's thoughtful and honest book _Rapid Chess Improvement_.

which should be good news to the Knights Errant. I think the 1800 cut-off is probably well chosen; based on my experience, I don't expect that players much above that level will get as much out of intensive tactical training.

In the chapter "What to do when you think there is a hole in your bucket" (and how can you not love a book with chapter titles like that!), he quotes GM Nigel Davies:

It really doesn't matter what you study, the important thing is to use this as a training ground for thinking rather than trying to assimilate ... information. ... The reality is you've got to move the pieces around the board and play with the position. Who does this? Amateurs don't, GMs do."

What it all adds up to is to structure your study time to concentrate on problem-solving: doing exercises from books and playing over games "solitaire-chess" style (analyzing each position) being the obvious approaches.

A worthwhile book.

Training plan

So, I'm currently working my way through Silman's _Reassess Your Chess Workbook_, which I picked up at a library book sale. I'm also finishing up _Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual_, which is structures so encourage treating each diagram as a problem. After that, I also found one of the Dvoretsky "School of Chess Excellence" books at a used-book store, and I'll work through that. I still have my own games to analyze, and if that doesn't fill up all my study time, I'll do the "solitaire-chess" thing on one of the annotated games collections I own.

Marshall Chess Club Championship

2005-12-26T20:00:00.002-05:00

Much to my surprise and pleasure, I was invited to play in the Marshall Chess Club's Championship tounament (the Edward Lasker Memorial). It was originally supposed to be open only to players rated 2200 and above, but they decided to invite Club members who were National Masters but currently rated below 2200.

Aand so I found myself rated 28th in a field of 35, with 5 GMs and a like number of IMs. I had a plan: I was going to play some new and more solid openings with Black. I figured with opposition of this strength, I'd be doing well to make an even score with White and finish only -2 with Black.

I did a bit better: 1 win, 2 draws, 1 loss with White, 0 wins, 2 draws, and only 1 loss with Black. My losses were against IMs Almeida and Bonin, and I drew IM Naranja, plus I had my first win against a master in a couple of years.

I had losing positions in four or five of my eight games, and was worse in one or two others, but I displayed some good fighting qualities. My tactics remain poor, with a couple of massive hallucinations.

I'm going to try a little experiment here. If this works right, you can click here to see some of my games with very light notes in a new window. If nobody seems to have huge problems with this, I may start making all the javascript boards pop up in their own windows; That will cut down the loading time of the blog.

Remember it's a game

2005-12-08T11:31:00.000-05:00

My company just hired a contract programmer from North Carolina to do some work on our mobile device application, and he came up to New York to get started learning the code.

Turns out Ralph's a chessplayer, and I took him to the Marshall Chess Club last night. He watched some of the tournament games in progress, took some photos of the Great Hall, played a little blitz; had a fine time.

I wound up playing a couple of untimed casual games against a gentleman named John. He's a club member, but I don't recall meeting him before. I don't go to the club much except when I'm playing a tournament. Our last game was a battle royal, a seesaw affair that went down to the last Pawn. It was a Rook's Pawn, and so it was a draw--a fitting conclusion to a hard-fought game.

I forgot how much fun casual chess can be. Without the pressure of the clock, without ratings or money on the line, the game becomes part of a conversation. A little friendly banter over the moves, a pretty quick pace (I reconstructed the game scores at home later, and we played about 90 moves in perhaps an hour and a half) but you can take a few minutes over a move when you feel the need, a battle fought keenly but not grimly.

I forgot how much fun chess can be. Thank you, John, for helping to remind me.

Experimental Accidents

2005-11-28T11:11:00.000-05:00

The tournament didn't go so well. I got ground down by Bonin as usual, and lost a game to expert Jon Jacobs when I stupidly took myself out of my repertoire and into a Benoni position I didn't know how to play. I drew with an A player when I played meself into time trouble in a better heavy-piec ending and fell into a repetition, and I drew with a C player (!) when I kept on looking for tactical solutions instead of just consolidating my extra Pawn.

My three wins were against two A players and an expert--a blunder, a nice endgame grind, and a win after holding on for dear life against a strong attack.

Overall, it was a mediocre result. My play was not notably sharp. I would say that doing thousands of tactical problems over the last couple of months...did nothing at all for my game. Maybe it just doesn't work on players already over 2000 or so.

I have noticed that when I get taken out of my repertoire early, my results are pretty bad, even if I get out of the opening with a good position. So it may be time to buckle down and book up a little.

I'm going to keep on doing some problems at CTS just because it's fun, but I no longer expect anything from it.

Accidental Experiment

2005-11-11T11:06:00.001-05:00

Between my continuing advetures at work--we're releasing a cool new product the week after Thanksgiving--and my complete hypnosis by The Chess Tactics Server (CTS), I haven't done much analysis of my games, or any other chess work, in about two months.

What I have done, is about seven thousand problems at CTS. I can get in 50 to 100 at lunch time, and every time I sit down at the computer in the evening intending to analyse games or work on openings, I start by "warming up" with a few problems--and 200 problems later, it's time for bed.

This weekend and next is the Marshall Chess Club Fall Futurity. I'm intending to play 7 of the 9 rounds (taking byes Sunday evenings). Considering I've done no preparation at all, I've stumbled into an experiment about the use of tactical problems as training: if I play well it will be evidence that tactical training is very helpful even for a relatively high-rated player--de la Maza fans rejoice! If I play badly, it will be evidence of, er, something else.

Here's a game I played back in August, where I got positionally crushed by IM Jay Bonin. It's the last game I did any work on before CTS ate my brain.

So much for tuning up

2005-10-12T18:33:00.000-04:00

So I played only one game at the Marshall's tournament last weekend, lost, and gave up in disgust. I do that about once a year. It's a psychological problem rooted in an excessive fear of losing. Makes me wonder if I should take up some other hobby. Well, I've got a month to psyche myself up for the Futurity.

I'll have a game posted Soon, but not that one.

Return of the lazy man

2005-09-14T23:12:00.001-04:00

Here, finally, is a game from the tournament I mentioned in the last post. This is a draw against a fairly strong master, after a poorly-played opening on my part. I'm happy that I was able to hold on and play decently, since often after misplaying the opening I get discontented and lash out in an attempt at getting counterplay.

After this tournament, I played another two weeks later, with indifferent results. I should post a game or two more before my next tournament (early October). In November is the Marshall Fall Futurity, which is my favorite tournmant of the year.

Still alive

2005-08-14T23:33:00.000-04:00

I'm still alive. We're finishing a major project at work, which is mostly why I've been silent the last couple of months.

I did play in a tournament at the Marshall this weekend; beat a very young B-player and salvaged bad positions agaginst two masters. For me, this is a good tournament.

I'll try to have something to say about the games in the next week.

Salt Peanuts

2005-06-27T22:23:00.000-04:00

A post by Nezha tipped me off to the existence of the Chess Tactics Server, and I've been popping problems one after another the past few nights. It's free, it's fun, it doesn't require Windows. Highly recommended!

Anyway, that's what I've been doing instead of analysing my games as I should.

Ugh

2005-06-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

I played in another G/60 at the Marshall Chess Club on Saturday. First, I drew with a B player. Next round, I drew with a C player. Then I drew with an A player, and then I finally gave up and went home.

I don't think I made any particular tactical bluders, and my opponents really did play pretty well; but my play lacked all energy. And not only was my play dull, it was slow. I could have played out any of the endgames (not that they were better for me, but they weren't dead draws), but I was already down to 5 minutes on the clock in each game, and we hadn't gotten to move 30 in any of them.

Maybe I just need to take a break.

A loss

2005-06-15T21:48:00.001-04:00

Hi! Been a while. I've actually been doing a fair bit of chess work the last few weeks, but not as much as I'd like. I suspect that a principal advantage of the de la Maza method is that it gives the student a strict schedule to follow.

Anyway, according to my logbook, I've spent more than 12 hours analysing the following game, my third-round loss in the May Open at the Marshall. It was a hard game to analyse, because it wasn't very tactical, so there were a lot of reasonable alternatives for each side.

A word about my opponent. IM Renato Naranja was for years one of the Philippines' best players. In 1970, he played in the 1970 Palma de Majorca Interzonal, where he drew with Fischer and beat a number of strong GMs. The tournament book of that event was the first chess book I bought with my own money, and I remember his games well. Naranja has returned to chess this year after a long absence from the game. I am thrilled to have had a chance to play him.

So, what did I learn from this game? Well, I evaluate potential endgames too superficially; I just assumed that the Bishop ending was tenable. I still haven't conquered my tendency to simplify even when complex alternatives are better. And I re-learned something about Black's move-order in the Stonewall (I used to know that 8...Ne4 was the right move; I played it several times). There was something wrong with the way I evaluated positions in the middle game, as well, but I haven't quite worked out what it was.

Comments on, and corrections of, my analysis are welcome, as always.

G/60 tournament report, and a study

2005-05-29T21:32:00.000-04:00

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!

Quick update

2005-05-25T14:59:00.000-04:00

I played last weekend in the monthly open at the Marshall Chess Club with indifferent results; drew one Class A player, beat another, lost to an IM.

The draw was my first Sicilian with Black in twenty or so years (over the board, anyway), and my lack of experience with the line showed. Under pressure, I deliberately went in for unfavorable complications, and was lucky that he didn't find a winning path.

The win came when my young opponent, who had played well to neutralize pressure on his queenside in an English, decided that he could get more than an even endgame.

The loss was as Black in a Dutch Stonewall. I had a slightly inferior position and mis-evaluated the endgame resulting from a forced tactical sequence.

No huge tactical errors, but I found other ways to suffer. 8) I'll post analysis over the coming weeks.

Round 3: Win (Self-Criticism)

2005-05-17T23:20:00.001-04:00

Here's my third-round game from last month's tournament. (Just in time for me to play again this weekend, work permitting.) This was hard to annotate, because superficially it seems to be a fairly easy win. It wasn't. In particular, avoiding Black's attempts at a perpetual check was draining.

I had a couple of real tactical blind-spots. Missing 28...f3 and 44.Qxf8+ were especially bad; it was just luck that my position was so strong they didn't matter. I also missed several opportunities to win by a direct attack on the King, being hypnotized by the prospect of strangling all of his Queenside pieces in their beds.

Once interesting thing is that I feel much better about my play overall now, looking at the game after several weeks, than I did right after the game. I think my realization of those tactical flaws colored my perceptions, and made me think that all my middle-game play was too slow, when in fact it was mostly fine. Another part of the problem is that I don't feel I'm good at exploiting certain kinds of advantage, such as the extra space and better development I had in this game. So I criticised myself for not acting faster, when in fact my simple development and strengthening of my position was appropriate.

I study my games in two phases. First, right after the game, I jot down my immediate thoughts about what I was thinking about during play, what things I missed, and so on. Later, I do a slow pass over the game, usually starting from the end, looking for improvements and verifying--or debunking--my initial impressions.

In this game, to point out the differences between my initial and later impressions of my play, I've put my first round of notes in quotes.

Stopping the slide

2005-05-06T11:57:00.001-04:00

One of the hardest things to do in chess is to realize that your position is becoming bad.

Tell me this hasn't happend to you: at some point in the game, you feel that you have a small advantage, or at least comfortable equality, and you try to improve your position. Your attempts don't lead anywhere, and you start to feel that you're under a little pressure. But you haven't made any mistakes that you can see, so you just keep playing normal chess. You still don't get anywhere, and suddenly you realize that you're worse. Your opponent has all the play, and you can only sit there and defend. Eventualy you crack, and rack up another loss.

Sometimes, you don't ever realize that you were adrift, and you blame the loss on the final tactical mistake, the one you made when you cracked. The only way you're going to realize what really happened is by carefully analysing the game afterward.

I can't give you any advice about how to spot when you're starting such a slide. If I knew that, I'd be a much stronger player than I am. I can, however, make a suggestion about stopping the slide if you notice it in time: consider disrupting the material balance. A well-timed positional sacrifice can take the pressure off, and give your opponent the problem of trying to use the extra material.

Here's a correspondence game I recently finished against a very experienced Belgian master. I realized while thinking about my 28th move that I was in danger of slipping into a passive, prospectless position, so I sacrificed a Pawn to weaken my opponent's Pawn structure and give my minor pieces--especially my Knight--squares to occupy and targets to attack. I could see that in some cases, I could force my opponent to either give back the Pawn or exchange pieces in a way that let me block all his ways of making progress. And that's how it worked out!

Now, if I can start doing this in over-the-board games, I'll be getting somewhere.

Round 2: Win

2005-05-01T21:09:00.002-04:00

I've mostly finished analysing my second game in my April tournament:

It's amazing how much two pretty decent players can miss during the game. I think the main thing I learned from this game is that I have to be more careful about how loose my Kingside can get in this type of Dutch position.

Chess is Hard

2005-04-29T00:17:00.000-04:00

So my two wins from this month's tournament turn out to be more complicated than I thought, and I haven't finished analysing them yet. Games _usually_ turn out to be more complicated than I first thought.

In the meantime, here's one more Henri Rinck composition from the little book I've been carrying around. White to play and win (from "O'pinio" 1934). Solution is a couple of paragraphs down.

What, are you kidding? Of course I didn't solve it. Chess is hard!

Solution: 1.Qb6+ Kb4 2.Qa5+! Kc5 (if 2...Kxa5 3.Nc6#) 3.Qc3+ Kd5 4.Qc6+ Ke5 (4...Kxd4 5.Qd6#) 5.Qe6+ Kf4 6.Qf6+ Kg3 7.Qh4+! Kxh4 8.Nf5#. Notice the really nifty echo of the mate in the note to Black's second move.

I'll try to get a game posted on the weekend.

The Quick&Dirty Guide to Using LT-PGN-Viewer

2005-04-20T11:46:00.000-04:00

Nezha asked how the embedded boards work. I gave a short explanation in a comment to the last post. Here's the long explanation.

The game boards are on a website outside of blogspot, since you can't upload files to blogspot. I use the LT-Pgn_Viewer package. Get the pgnviewer.zip file from that link, upload it to your website, and unzip it into a directory of your choice.

Then you upload your pgn files to your website; give them a .txt extension rather than .pgn, because if your browser doesn't know what to do with a pgn file, it will download it instead of displaying.

Now you can display the games with the live board in your browser by using a url like: http://www.panix.com/~gaillard/chess/ltpgnviewer.html?games/ali.pgn.txt&ParsePgn=1 My website is "http://www.panix.com/~gaillard"; "chess" is the directory I unpacked the pgnviewer.zip in; "ltpgnviewer.html is from the LT-PGN-Viewer package; "games" is a subdirectory of "chess", and "ali.pgn.txt" is the pgn file to display. The "ParsePgn=1" tells the ltpgnviewer that it needs to parse the PGN into clickable JavaScript commands.

You should be able play though the game on most browsers (I've used Firefox and IE) if you have JavaScript enabled. However, some, like Opera, will not work.

To get it to work in Opera, you now do this: load that url in IE (or Firefox), right-click on the game area, view the source, and save it as an html file. Upload that html file to your website.

Now a URL like http://www.panix.com/~gaillard/chess/ltpgnviewer.html?games/ali.html should let you play over the game in any JavaScript-enabled browser. Notice that the "ParsePgn" argument is gone from the URL in this case; that's because when you saved the html file, you saved the already-parsed game.

Finally, to put that game board into your blogspot blog, you put an iframe in your post. The HTML looks like this: <iframe name="ali" scrolling="no" src="http://www.panix.com/~gaillard/chess/ltpgnviewer.html?games/ali.html" height="380" width="100%"></iframe> You need to give the iframe a unique name if you have more than one in your blog, and you need to specify the height and width. LT-PGN-Viewer has a lot of other options, like being able tyo have more than one game in a PGN file with, with a list you can select individual game from. It comes with documentation.

Many thanks to Lutz Tautenhahn, author of LT-PGN-Viewer, both for providing this excellent free tool for chess websites, and for his great help in getting this to work on this blog.

Round 1: Loss

2005-04-17T22:17:00.002-04:00

Here's my first-round game from last weekend, a loss to IM Jay Bonin, I've played Jay...13 times, says my database, since 1978. Once in a while I nick him for a draw.

Normally, I'd clean up a game before posting it, but this time I wanted to give an idea of what my post-game analysis looks like, in case anyone cares. This is about 5 hours worth of work; I'll try to go back and do another couple of hours on it after I finish with the other games.

There's a couple of things to notice about this game. First, I had plenty of chances to get an equal or superior position, and missed them. Bonin just hung in there, kept playing decent moves, and waited for his chances to come--and they did. This is the same thing I did to Ali in my first post. In short, he outplayed me.

The other thing is that the main reasons for my loss were _not_ tactical. Yes, I missed a simple tactic (the decoy-and-fork at moves 30-31), and a tactic I probably wouldn't have spotted in Black's best line at move 29 means that I would have been struggling for the draw even without that one, but more important were psychological errors (I wanted to simplify the game, so I offered the exchange of Queens with 24...Qxe5, instead of the superior 24...Bxe5; exchanged on d4 before playing e5--thus freeing his QB--instead of playing ...e5 immediately; and avoided the complicated line starting with 18...Bxf2) and dogmatism (trying immediate action in the center with 6...Ne4 when I should have been developing instead, because acting in the center is "what you do" when the opponent starts a wing advance).

Analysing my two wins should take less time, and I expect to do them this week.

A study by Rinck

2005-04-15T13:41:00.000-04:00

White to play and win. (Henri Rinck, "Las Noticias" 1926).

I haven't had time yet to do the first pass at analyzing my games from last weekend. In the meantime, here's a simple but funny study from the little book of Rinck's compositions I'm currently carrying around.

Don't read the next paragraph if you want to try solving it yourself.

Solution: 1. Kb8 Bd7 (1...Ba6 hangs the Bishop; 1...Be6 loses it to 2. Nd4+) 2. Kc7 Be8 (Others lose the Bishop to a variety of discovered checks.) 3. Kd8 Bf7 (Again, other squares lose the Bishop to a Knight move discovering check.) 4. Ke7 (Inspector Javert continues his pursuit.) Bg8 5. Kf8 Bh7 6. Kg7 (Curtains. The King has outrun the Bishop on an open board.)

I have my doubts about opening preparation

2005-04-11T16:06:00.000-04:00

I played a tournament at the Marshall Chess Club this weekend and did OK (lost to IM Jay Bonin, beat an Expert and a A-player). If my visualization training is doing anything, the games don't show it. The discouraging thing about my play is not how badly I play when I lose, it's how badly I play when I _win_. Anyway, I'll post the games this week sometime.

The point I want to bring up here is: I decided at the board to play the Dutch Defense against Bonin in round one, and played it again in the next round against an Expert. I got decent positions out of the opening both times, and went 1-1 with a performance rating around 2250. That's better than I usually do with Black with my normal opening (Pirc and King's Indian). Yeah, it's only two games, but still.

This was first time in about 20 years I played the Dutch. I used to play it a lot that, so the types of position that arose were familiar to me, but my entire "preparation" for playing it now was glancing at a few variations of some anti-Dutch lines (2.Nc3, 2.Bg5, and 2.e4) in Williams' _Play the Classical Dutch_ and the new Everyman _Starting Out_ book on the Dutch while standing in a bookstore last week. Total "preparation" time: less than a half hour.

Study Plan

2005-04-07T15:55:00.000-04:00

So, I've been back playing in tournaments for about a year and a half. My USCF rating has dropped a little less than 100 points, which is not too bad considering that (1) I'm older now, and sometimes I can hear the synapses clicking when I think and (2) there's been 50 to 100 points of rating deflation since the early '90s.

Still, I'd like to get _better_. My FIDE rating is in the 2150s, and I'm aiming for the FM title, the requirement for which is a 2300 rating. So, how to gain 150 points?

As I wrote about below, I did Khmelnitsky's _Chess Exam_ a couple of months ago. It told me a few surprising things, but mostly confirmed what I knew already.

_Chess Exam_ identified three areas where I'm strong: standard endgame positions (over 2450), which figures since I've been working my way through Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual for over a year; openings, which I've done a fair bit of systematic work on; and defense (both of those last two around 2250). "Defense" is a little surprising, since I've always considered myself a poor defensive player; I get nervous when my King is under pressure. But apparently I have the skills, it's just a problem of psychology.

In most areas, the exam pegged me between 2150 and 2200, which is pretty close to my actual strength. In three key areas, it puts me in the low 2000s. Those areas are tactics, identifying threats (which is really a species of tactics), and (weakest of all) calculation.

Well, that figures. It would have been nice if it had told me that I was a strong player except for, oh, strategic play or endgames or attack; the methods for improving those are pretty clear, and mostly involve study to increase my knowledge. But how to make aging brain visualize better? Not so clear.

I knew when I came back that tactics were going to be a weakness, so I did a ton of problems. I've been walking around for two years with Reinfeld's _1001 Winning Chess Combinations_ or Alburts _Chess Training Book_ in my pocket (..._and_ I'm happy to see you). It did help limit the damage. But what next?

One problem with doing a lot of fairly easy tactical exercises is that I stop looking for defenses (this is why 'recognizing threats' showed up as weak, I think). "Oh, a deflection and then a fork, very nice." I'd say, recognizing the pattern. That's fine for a problem but in a real game, it runs into "oops, he ignores the first move and plays a zwischenzug and I'm busted," or more frequently "so I get the fork and then he has a counter tactic," which I didn't see in time because I didn't visualize the end-position clearly enough.

So, as valuable as the repetitive-exercises method is, I need something different now. From the training guide in _Chess Exam_, and from a couple of other sources (like Tisdall's _Improve Your Chess Now_), I've come up with this:

1) Solving endgame studies. Studies are mostly tactics. In most there are both 'tries' that don't work and multiple defenses in the main line that have to be worked out. I'm now carrying around a little booklet of 100 studies by Henri Rinck that I picked up at Fred Wilson's chess book shop.

2) Blindfold practice. _Chess Exam_ says to play over short games or practice positions blindfold, and Tisdall suggests playing over miniatures blindfold, trying to fix intermediate positions in your mind and to visualize and 'solve' the game at the critical position.

3) Memorizing games, then playing them over and trying to analyze them blindfold. Ziyatdinov in _GM Ram_ recommends memorizing classic games, and gives a selection. It's rather fun, and replaying them blindfold is (like the studies and tactics books) something I can do on the subway to and from work.

I've also been playing correspondence chess (which takes a lot of time) and am continuing to work through Dvoretsky (and trying to find the solutions to the exercises without moving the pieces). In theory I should be thoroughly analyzing my tournament games, but this has fallen by the wayside because of time constraints. Analyzing my own games was a big part of how I made the push from Expert to Master in the first place. I will start doing it more again as my current correspondence tournament winds down.

Anyway, that's what I've been doing since mid-February. We'll see how it works out.

A nice endgame study and a nifty diagram tool

2005-04-02T13:42:00.000-05:00

A post on A Patzer's Quest pointed me to this nice tool for making PNG diagrams from FEN.

Here's an example, an endgame study by B. Gusev and K. Sambatyan (found in EG #150, available from the EG archive site). White to play and win.

I'll give the solution a couple of paragraphs down. That's a good-looking diagram, and the tool gives a number of style options. Hopefully all browsers understand PNG graphics by now? I may use this in the future instead of the tool I used for the diagram in the _Chess Exam_ review.

OK, Here's the solution:

1. b6 Ka3 (Otherwise the Knight escapes, and White can make Black give up his Rook for the b-pawn and mate with B+N) 2. b7 Rd8+ 3. Ka7 Kb2 (now the Knight is trapped, and the Rook controls the queening square. What ever can White do?) 4. Bg4! (Planning Bc8, interfering with the Rook's control of the 8th rank. If 4...Kxa1 5.Bc8 Rd3 6.b1Q Ra3+ 7.Ba6 and it's all over.) 4...Rd8 (Now if White blocks with Bc8, ...Re7 pins the pawn and draws.) 5.Bd7. The Rook has to move, but where? 5...Rd8, 6.Bc8 wins as seen before, so the Rook has to go somewhere else. Unfortunately for Black, 5...Rf8 6. Nb3 (run away!) 6...Kxb3 7.Bc8 Rf7 8.Be6+ wins the Rook, after which the Pawn queens; and the same fate awaits 5...Rh8 6.Nc2 Kxc2 7.Bc8 Rh7 8.Bg6+. (That's what composers call an "echo".) Nice!

This shared 1st and 2nd prize in the 1998 Moscow composing tournament, and _EG_ calls it the Study of the Year.

An Amazing Endgame Studies Resource

2005-03-30T18:07:00.000-05:00

I just Noticed that the Chess Reviews website reviewed _EG_, a wonderful magazine about endgame studies. The review mentioned that an archive of the first 150 issues of _EG_ is available on the web.

Wow. That's just amazing. I had no idea. Besides being beautiful, studies are often recommended as a way to improve your tactics. Der Alter Goniff says, check it out.

Book Review: _Chess Exam and Training Guide_ by IM Igor Khmelnitsky

2005-03-24T23:50:00.001-05:00

This is a great book. It presents a hundred problems of all sorts--tactics, positional play, openings, endgames, everything-- and it's very good just as a problem book, although the price would be steep for a 200-question puzzle book. (100 diagrams, 2 questions per diagram.)

But it's not just a puzzle book--it contains a complicated scoring key, where you enter your results for each problem, and it scores you in a dozen categories based on your answers (every problem counts for several categories).

Here's an example (from the introduction):

White to play.

1. Evaluate the position
A. White is winning
B. White is significantly better
C. White is slightly better
D. Nearly Equal

2. Where should the White King go?
A. 1. Kd6
B. 1. Kf6
C. 1. Kf4
D. No significant difference.

Stop here if you want to work out the answer. Coach K recommends taking up to 20 minutes on each problem.

OK, the answers are 1. A and 2. B. Those are worth 5 points. Also, 1. B. is worth 1 point; but 1. D. is so bad you lose a point. (You can have negative scores; this is part of a strategy to make guessing unprofitable.) According to Khmelnitsky, 60% of players below 1000 rating got part 1 correct; 75% of players from 1000 to 1800; 80% of A players and Experts; and all the masters. On part 2, 20% of novices were right; 29% of 1000 to 1400-rated players; 45% of the class C and B players; 62% of A players and Experts; 82% of 2200-2400 players, and all the players above 2400. Khlemnitsky also gives breakdowns for each of the wrong answers.

This problem would score in four categories: Endgame, Attack, Tactics, and Sacrifice. After the probloems are tables where you take your percentage score in each category and find your rating for that category. Now, doing ratings estimation in a puzzle book is nothing very new--Nunn does it, Emms does it, everybody's doing it--and I'm sure that trying to break the results down by position type has been done somewhere as well. The difference is that Khmelnitsky has tried the problems out on a variety of players of varying strengths over the past few years, so when he says that 82% of masters got this problem right, but less than half the players below class A, he's got _data_.

Now, I have no way of knowing for sure the quality of his data, but I've never seen a problem book give an estimate anywhere near my actual rating. _Chess Exam_, however, told me that I'm 2200. My current rating is in the 2150s (both USCF and FIDE) and my peak before my hiatus was about 2250, so I'd call that pretty much on the nose.

Between the detailed answers to the puzzles, the carefully-described methodology, and the very accurate overall estimate, I've got a great deal of confidence in K's other estimates. And in the final part of the book, Coah K gives advice: what books to study and what methods to use, for each categry, based on your score.

So you get a puzzle book, a rating estimator, an assessment of your weaknesses, and an improvment program, all for $24.95. That's a great value. Anyone from Class E to Master will get a lot out of this book, and there are not a lot of chess books you can say that about.

Highly recommended.

Annals of a Swindler

2005-03-19T00:08:00.001-05:00

This is the kind of game Nick was talking about in the story two posts back. My opponent thought we were playing a nice normal Scheviningen, and then...

The moral of the story is: when you're down in material, try to keep active and wait for a break.

How I got here, the short version

2005-03-16T15:56:00.000-05:00

I started playing chess seriously a year or so before the Fischer boom. I got my first rating, 1419, in scholastic tournaments run by Bill Goichberg. He was a local New York City organizer back then. I made Expert when I was 20, at the 1980 Pan American Collegiate Team tournament in Altanta. My rating bounced around 2100 for several years, until I finally started seriously analysing my own games at the end of 1986. I got my National Master title seven months later.

After I turned 30 in 1990 with my rating still stuck in the low 2200s, I stopped playing for a decade. Finally, I started again by playing email correspondence games. Then, it seemed a shame to have a tounament like the New York Masters nearby and not play in it, so I came back to over-the-board tournaments in 2003. My rating has only dropped a hundred points since then, and I'm even hoping to build it back up. How I'm going to do that, I'll write about later. So there I am.

Why I am "Der Alter Goniff"

2005-03-14T16:59:00.001-05:00

Back in the day, someone--probably Nick Conticello--called me that after watching me pull a win out of a hopeless position. Several times, in one weekend tournament. "Ah, der alter goniff hat wieder geschwindlet", he said after the last one; back then, if you were a New York chessplayer, you knew at least a few phrases of Yiddish, mostly insulting. "The old thief swindled one again."

Anyway, a lot of my games used to be like that--ugly wins from obscure (and usually bad) positions. I don't think anyone else has ever called me an alter goniff, but it's how I think of myself as a chessplayer.

I'm still a swindler at heart; although I'm older and slower and my tactics are not sharp, I've found other ways of winning ugly. Here's a game from just this weekend:

The morals of the story are: 1) Don't be afraid to play a simple balanced position against a lower-rated opponent. Chess is deep. 2) It's usually right to keep the tension in a position unless resolving it is obviously favorable.