Back Home … and Musings on Strange American Tournaments

We all got to have, a place where we come from
This place that we come from is called home
We set out on our travels, we do the best we can
We travel this big earth as we roam

We all got to have, a place where we come from
This place that we come from is called home
And even though we may love, this place on the map
Said it ain’t where ya from, it’s where ya at

-          Mos Def in Habitat

I’m back in the Bay Area after my two tournament trip to Montreal and Philadelphia. I wasn’t able to get online much in Philadelphia, especially once the schedule shifted to include two games a day.

In the end, I finished with 5 points from 9 games – not a particularly inspiring performance – but I did play a lot of good players and some interesting games. In the first round of the 7-day schedule, I played up against GM Vladimir Potkin. The last time I played up in the first round of a swiss was in 2002 in China when I was much lower rated! Actually, I played up in the first 3 rounds, which was quite a surprise. The rest of my field was over 2400 FIDE on average, so it was a pretty strong tournament. I squandered a couple opportunities in rounds 5 and 9 that would probably have improved my final position. I did get quite lucky, though, in round 4 against FM Thomas Bartell (I should have taken the draw he offered when I was worse!).

Thanks to that save, I only lost one game, to IM Ray Robson (the most recent Samford Fellow). If this were Shakespeare, the moment would have been rife with imagery and symbolism, but for now, I’ll just say that on the first day of his Fellowship, he beat the 2008 recipient. Then on the following day, he beat the 2007 recipient, GM Josh Friedel!

I’ll post more details about my games in the coming week, but for now, I’ll make a few comments about the tournament in general. First, Mark Crowther’s comment at TWIC:

“I’ve always found the World Open a bit odd. Multiple schedules, re-entries allowed and so forth. So what to make of Hikaru Nakamura’s tournament? Turns up one day plays 5 g/45 minute games to get in contention, plays two proper games the following day (quick draw and a win), then takes two half point byes in the final two rounds to share first place and is already flying to [San Sebastian, Spain] before the tournament ends. I guess my main reaction is ‘What kind of tournament is this?’”

This is no knock against Nakamura, who played quite well and took advantage of both his strengths and the scheduling quirks. However, it is kind of silly in my view to have a tournament that gives you the opportunity to win like this. The 4-day Open Section schedule was a farce, with only 3 players showing up, so everybody got a full-point bye. The 3-day schedule Open Section only had 2 GMs, and with 5 rounds amongst themselves at G/45, it was almost like a different tournament than the more popular 5- and 7-day schedules. The 7-day and 5-day schedules, by comparison to the 3-day, were much stronger – the 7-day featured a GM-GM pairing in round 1! Najer played 8 GMs, and as some consolation for a more brutal schedule, he won the tournament title on tie-break as Nakamura wasn’t there to contest the blitz playoff.

Of course, Goichberg runs his tournaments in the purest capitalist sense, so he probably won’t change his ways. Multiple schedules allow for more re-entries and a few extra bucks in his pocket. For a few players, it also helps avoid taking time off from work and cutting down on hotel costs. But when there are such prizes at stake, it difficult to imagine another sporting event where this is possible – there are amazingly different schedules with different fields and time controls and a co-champion doesn’t even show up for the last two rounds and gets something more than a zero-point bye for those rounds. Foxwoods is a rather strong open tournament, but the Open Section there has only one schedule. I would think the World Open should adopt the same format.

As a side note, what happened with GM Leonid Yudasin in round 8? The wallchart at the time said he had withdrawn, but when I walked around, there he was playing Robert Lau around board 80 in round 8! Yes, the same Robert Lau who was not playing in the Open Section until that round! Yudasin won that game, and then won a marathon game against GM Kacheishvili in the last round to claim $2160 in prize money. How is this possible? He received a ridiculous pairing, much easier than his fellow 4.5 pointers in round 8, and it counted? I’m not sure how the pairings would have shaken out had Yudasin been paired correctly, but GM Josh Friedel, who is right around Yudasin’s rating, played GM Gata Kamsky in that round. I wonder which is an easier pairing: a 2200 with black (who isn’t even in the section), or Kamsky with black? I’m not sure if there was any debate at the tournament about this, but it seems rather odd to me. Here’s a link to the wallchart, and I’d appreciate if someone could explain this one to me.

The Roundup from Philly about Montreal

Last I blogged, I had 3.0/5 in the Quebec Invitational with 4 games to go. In round 6, I had the white pieces against Francois Leveille. As Dana Mackenzie noted in the comments to the previous post, Francois had won a game with quadrupled f-pawns against the American IM Jay Bonin in the 1990s!

Here’s a position from that crazy game:

I hadn’t noticed this game in my preparation for him, as I was playing him with the white pieces, but it’s pretty amazing to get quadrupled pawns in one game. I can’t remember ever having it, even in a casual game!

My own game with Leveille was less exciting – it finished in 17 moves when he realized he would be lucky to escape just down a piece. In the following position, he played 15…a6?:

There are a few tactical motifs to notice here. The first is that the queen on d7 is only guarded by the knight on f6, so if the knight leaves, then White’s queen will be pinning the knight on c6. The other is that the queen and bishop on h5 can potentially both be hit from the d5-square. This motivates the following combination starting with 16.Nxd5!. If now 16…Nxd5, 17.Nxc6 bxc6 18.Rxd5 hits queen and bishop; the pawn on c6 can’t capture the rook because the queen on d7 is now hanging, while the queen can’t find a square that is safe and guards the bishop on h5. Thus, Black loses a piece.

That bumped me up to 4.0/6 and in the next round, I had the black pieces against GM Anton Kovalyov. He was born in Ukraine, then grew up in Argentina, before moving to Montreal a couple years ago. At only 17 years and 2571 FIDE, he is clearly quite talented. I was a little bit worse after the opening, but thanks to some precise defense and tactical shots, I managed to equalize and accepted his peace offering. I now had 4.5/7.

In round 8, I had the white pieces against the lowest rated player in the tournament, Ling Feng Ye. He had won a qualifying tournament the day before the Quebec Invitational started to get the last spot in the event! I got some advantage after the opening, then threw it away and had to work hard to get an advantage back. I didn’t let the advantage go a second time, though, and the win pushed me up to 5.5/8. With Roussel-Roozmon’s win over Sambuev, this meant that I was guaranteed a top-4 finish and one of the qualification spots in the prestigious Montreal International. However, Roussel-Roozmon could still catch me with a win in the last round, so I definitely had something to play for.

In the last round, I had the black pieces against GM Mark Bluvshtein of Toronto. He was leading the tournament at that point, with a whopping 7.0 out of 8 games. As a credit to him, though, he wasn’t looking for a quick draw to finish the tournament. In fact, he had the option of repeating the position for a third time (with Nd4-f5/Re8-e6) and turned it down here:

White can double Black’s pawns on f6, but the problem then is what to do afterwards. There is no easy way to target the pawns, and Black can play against some of White’s weaknesses (the c4-square, the b4-pawn, the e4-pawn, etc). With a 22-minute to 2-minute advantage to reach move 40, Mark decided to push by playing 25.f4?!. However, after 25…Nc4, Black is already on his way to seizing the initiative. The game concluded quickly and brutally: 26.e5 Ra3 27.Qb1 Nd5 28.Nxd5 cxd5 29.Bf3 (on 29.Nxb5, Black has 29…Ra4 and the b4-pawn can’t be saved) h6 30.Bh4 Qa7 31.Kh1:

Now I dropped the hammer on him with 31…Rxf3!. After 32.Nxf3 d4!, the bishop on b7 is alive and kicking. Mark played 33.Rf1, but after 33…Qa3, he threw in the towel. There’s no good way to defend the knight on f3. For example, 34.Kg2 allows 34…Nd2, with a very strong fork.

That win brought me to 6.5/9 and clear third place in the event. Kovalyov won his last game to move up to 7.5, while Mark was in second with 7.0. Roussel-Roozmon got the last qualification spot with 5.5.

The Montreal International begins at the end of August and features an all-star cast headed by French super-GM Etienne Bacrot (2728 FIDE!). The average rating of the 8 seeded players (not those of us who qualified) is 2664 FIDE, which makes it a category 17 event! With us included, it drops to a category 15 event. The website for that event is at: http://www.echecsmontreal.ca/.

As for me, the chess continues with the World Open in Philadelphia. I’m in the 7-day schedule which started tonight – I drew against GM Vladimir Potkin (2621 FIDE, 2721 USCF). It’s been a long time since I played up in the first round of a swiss tournament!

The Midway Update in Montreal

We’re a little past the midway mark of the Quebec Invitational now, so I figured it was high time to say a few words about how the tournament is going.

I arrived in Montreal about a week ago, to get in some sightseeing and adjust to the time difference. The tournament began on Friday the 19th, and it continues with one game a day every day until the 27th. The games begin at 5:30 PM – rather late in the day, I’m not totally sure why that is, as even the “working” players are not working during the event. Maybe it’s for the spectators? The last round on the 27th, though, begins at 1 PM.

The tournament site is at: http://fqechecs.qc.ca/index.php?typ=actu&id=2487&categorie=1

After some trouble with the DGT boards the first few days, it looks like most of them are up and running now, so the games can be tracked live.

(H/t to Tim Horton’s Knight Chess Blog for the pictures)

The tournament is a 10-player round-robin with an average FIDE rating of 2411 (category 7). It was originally supposed to be a stronger event, but a couple late withdrawals meant the category went down a little bit. As it is, for most of the players, it’s stiff competition.

After 5 rounds, GM Mark Bluvshtein is leading with a perfect 5-for-5. GM Anton Kovalyov, the top seed, was held to a draw in the 5^th round, so he “only” has 4.5/5. In 3^rd place you can find me with 3 points.

My tournament has been a little up and down – in the first couple games, I struggled to get any real winning chances against FM Lefong Hua and IM Renier Castellanos. In the 3^rd round, I was out-prepared by IM Thomas Roussel-Roozmon and emerged from the opening with a worse position. However, the position remained complicated, and when he lost his way, I managed to take advantage and win the game. But then, the following day, as white against GM Bator Sambuev, I managed to lose a long endgame that I really shouldn’t have lost. Yesterday, I bounced back with a win as black against FM Sylvain Barbeau.

There are money prizes in this event for the top 3 finishers, but one of the real special things about this event is that the top 4 finishers qualify for the Tournoi International de Montreal beginning at the end of August. The lineup for that event is filled with very strong players – the average rating of the 7 confirmed players so far is 2670 FIDE or category 17!

So with four rounds to go, I’m in decent position to qualify. I still have to play the two highest and two lowest rated players though – black against GMs Kovalyov and Bluvshtein and white against FM Francois Leveille and NM Ling Feng Ye (who qualified by winning an open tournament the weekend before the round-robin began). After the tournament is over, I’ll try and post some games or fragments.

Guess who’s back, back again …

After two months on the road – and traveling through Iceland, Spain, England, India, and the UAE – I returned to the States last week. I took a couple days off, but then it was back to studying at the GM House in Richmond.

I was more than happy to leave the chess scene behind for a couple weeks with family in India after my finish in Benidorm. Most of my trips to India have been planned around some special event, and this one was no exception. My younger cousin, Sushma, was getting married!

I had attended some Hindu weddings in the US, but this was my first Hindu wedding in India, and it was quite an experience. Between the wedding ceremony and various other religious rites, the wedding stretched over a few days. Here’s a picture of the bride and groom (Abhishek):

The wedding was massive, with about 700 people in attendance. Food was served in the traditional style: on a banana leaf while sitting on the floor. As I’m no expert in this, I ate with a plate instead.

Finally, a picture of me, my brother, and most of my cousins (the only one missing is Sushma):

Front row: (Left to right) Anoop and Chinmayi

2nd row: (Left to right) Stuthi, Yamini, Sphoorthi, Anusha, Sandeep, me

3rd row: (Left to right) Sharana, Amit, Varuna, Harish

Back row: Harikishan

Broken at the Finish

My spring chess tour is over, and I finished with 6.5/10 in Benidorm. I scored 2.5 from my final 4 games, but I had hoped to score a little more.

In round 7, I played a lower rated Dutch player and managed to win. One amusing thing about that game was that I was playing Jeroen Van den Bersselaar, but I prepared for Jeroen Van der Bersselaar. I somehow wrote his name down incorrectly when I looked at the pairing sheet on display in the hotel, and when I went to the database, I found a few games and didn’t think of double-checking his name. Wherever I got those games from, they made the same mistake I did! In any case, they were all old games, so I didn’t do much preparation. However, had I looked up the right name, I would have done more, as he had over 200 games in the database.

Here was the somewhat random position after 27.Nf7-d6+:

The game had been pretty wild up until now, and while he was better prepared in this Semi-Slav than I was, he burned up the clock in the middlegame. He should have played 27…Bxd6, and after 28.Rxd6, all 3 results are still possible. Instead, he played 27…Kd8, which let me play 28.Be5!. The bishop can’t be captured (either a discovered check on e4 or a fork on f7 will win the queen), and meanwhile, the queen doesn’t have any real safe squares. The best chance is to play 28…Qf8, but even that isn’t very pleasant. However, 28…Qg6 29.Rg1 is even worse, as now White’s rook joins the fun around Black’s king. Black lost his queen soon and immediately resigned.

In round 8, I had the white pieces against GM Stewart Haslinger of England. He played a solid Queen’s Gambit Declined, and while I had a small advantage, I wasn’t able to make anything of it. After one misstep in the middlegame, I let him exchange a pair of knights under favorable circumstances and then the position was quite equal. The game ended in a draw soon afterwards.

With two whites in a row, I needed to get two blacks in the final two rounds to equalize my color distribution. In round 9, I played a Spanish IM, Mauricio Vallaso. He repeated a line that Granda used to beat me in Benasque in 2008 (see post here), but I decided to deviate pretty early and went for a Stonewall setup. After a long struggle, he blundered just when the endgame seemed pretty drawn to me:

In this position, he played 44.f4??. White shouldn’t be doing anything with his pawns here (he had already messed up slightly by playing 43.h2-h3 before), and this one is fatal. 44.Rg1 would have held the line. I quickly played 44…gxf4 45.exf4 Rg8 46.Kf3 Bh4!, and now White can’t keep Black’s rook out. My opponent resigned here actually (his position is lost, but maybe it’s a bit soon to resign). The c5-pawn is hanging, but can’t be safely captured: 47.Rxc5 Rg3+ 48.Ke2 (48.Kf2 walks into a discovered check with 48…Rc8+) Rg2+, winning the bishop on b2.

In the last round, I had the black pieces against IM Anatoly Bykhovsky of Israel. He had already made a GM norm after 9 rounds, so this was like a free game for him. The opening discussion had not gone in my favor as I unwittingly repeated an encounter between Radjabov and Aronian. As I wasn’t able to escape the positional pressure he exerted, I ended up sacrificing a pawn for some activity. I got my pawn back after a while, but I had to give back the initiative after which he executed perfectly. After 29.Rd7, we reached the following position:

I made my last serious mistake of the game here, with 29…Bb4?. I missed that after 30.Rd8+ Rxd8 31.Rxd8+ Bf8 32.Qc8 Ra1+ 33.Kg2 Qb4 34.Qc6!, I have no good way of escaping the pin on the 8^th rank. I played 34…Kh7, but after 35.Qa8! Kg8 36.Rc8! Qe7 37.Re8! (not 37.Bc5 Qxg5+ or 37.h4 Qb4!) Qb4 38.Qb8! Qa3 39.b4!, I have to give up the bishop and the game. He only had 1 minute left during this exchange, but he was confident enough to walk around a little bit while I was thinking!

Instead of 29…Bb4?, I should’ve played 29…Bf8. I considered it, but I thought it was too dangerous after 30.Qf3! (not 30.Qf4 f5! – White wants to meet …f5 with Qd5+ and R1d4) Qxb3 31.R1d5 a4!. A cold-blood pawn advance, as after 32.Qxf7+ Kh7, it’s not clear how White should continue with his attack. Black is probably a bit worse still, but the game is rather complicated. With only a couple minutes per player, I would have had fine chances of drawing or winning.

So I finished with 6.5/10, well off the lead. There was a 3-way tie for first on 8 points between GMs Iturrizaga, Kempinski, and Arizmendi, with Iturrizaga winning on mathematical tiebreaks. My next tournament should be the Continental Championship in July (planned for El Salvador). Until then, I will have to lick my wounds and see if I can regain some good chess form.

Treading Water

From rounds 3 to 6, I’ve only scored 2.0 points. I beat a lower-rated Romanian player quite easily in the 3rd round, and in the 4th round I faced GM Stelios Halkias of Greece with the black pieces.

For a little over a year, I’ve switched from playing the Semi-Slav to the Slav. However, against Halkias, I didn’t feel like playing into his preparation as he had faced the Slav a number of times with reasonably good results. Instead, I got a small surprise in first by playing into the Moscow Variation with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 e6 5.Bg5 h6.

I started playing the Moscow Variation back in 1997, but when I looked in my database, I noticed I had only managed to play it 15 times in rated play! This was a bit of a surprise for me as the Moscow was a cornerstone of my black opening repertoire for a long time. Meanwhile, Halkias had almost 25 games in MegaBase in this variation as White. With so many games, he had tried a few different approaches and so I had to work for a few hours in the morning to update all my lines. Over the board, however, he decided to see whether I knew the latest theory in this line and played something a little less usual for him.

The game continued 6.Bxf6 Qxf6 7.e3 (I had spent most of my time preparing for 7.Qc2, with which he had played the most games and had excellent results, but he didn’t want to see what I had prepared there) Nd7 8.Bd3 dxc4 9.Bxc4 g6 10.0-0 Bg7 11.Rc1 0-0 12.Bb3 Qe7 13.Na4!?.

This was Beliavsky’s strong novelty that had caused Black some problems. Before this move, White normally tried putting the knight on e4 in this setup in order to dissuade …c6-c5 and to target the d6-square, especially if Black tried to break in the center with …e6-e5. However, Black was able to solve the issue of his light-squared bishop by taking advantage of the unprotected knight on e4. With 13…b6, the c6-pawn would be taboo because of 14…Bb7, skewering rook and knight. By putting the knight on a4, White tries to keep Black’s light-squared bishop shut in while avoiding this tactic. However, in February 2009, Karjakin got Black started on the correct path and about a week before my game with Halkias, Gelfand finished the job. Although I didn’t specifically prepare for this continuation, I had seen the game replay on ICC and so I turned out to be well-prepared!

I played 13…e5! 14.d5 e4! 15.Nd4 cxd5 16.Nc3 Nf6! (in February, Karjakin played 16…Ne5, but Halkias had prepared the correct 17.Bxd5, after which White has some advantage) 17.Nxd5 Nxd5 18.Bxd5 Bh3!:

This is Gelfand’s new move and it equalizes comfortably. If White plays 19.gxh3, then 19…Qg5+ picks up White’s bishop with a better pawn structure. He decided that I passed the test and offered a draw after 19.Bxe4 Qxe4 20.gxh3 Rad8 21.Qg4 Qxg4 22.hxg4 Bxd4 23.exd4 Rxd4 24.f3. A rather strange game, as neither of realized the other knew about the Gelfand game.

The following round, with 3.5/4, I had the white pieces against GM Felix Levin. I had played him twice before – once in Benasque in 2007 and another time in Benasque in 2008. The game was rather complicated for a while but the evaluation was always about equal. However, being a little over-optimistic about my position and my chances in a time scramble, I decided to push the issue. In the following position, I had just sacrificed an exchange on f6 and planted a knight on d5:

I now played 24.Nef4 exd4 25.Nxb6?!. 25.Bd3 was probably better, as the light-squared bishop on h3 is more threatening in the long-term than its dark-squared colleague on b6, but I had a specific continuation in mind. After 25.Nxb6?! Qxb6 26.Nd5, I thought I was doing quite well – if 26…Qd6, then either 27.Qxd4 or 27.Bf4 is pleasant for white; if 26…Qd8, then 27.Qxd4 is good; and if 26…Qe6, then again, 27.Qxd4 or 27.Nc7 is good. He played 26…Qc5 and I replied with 27.Bd3. In my quick calculations, I figured that he would have to guard the f6-pawn here. For example, on 27…Nd7 28.Qh5! threatens both the bishop on h3 and to take on f6, as the knight is overloaded on d7.

Unfortunately, while he was thinking here, I realized that he had a strong response that pretty much takes the h5-square away from my pieces forever. He finally found it as well, playing the strong 27…Re5!, simply sacrificing the f6-pawn in order to keep White’s queen from joining the attack. Now White is just lost – his king is more exposed than Black’s.

Levin continued to play well in the time scramble, as even with 14 seconds on the clock, he found the brutally efficient 35…Qe3+! in the following position (even with the 44 seconds I had left here, I’m not sure I would have seen 35…Qe3+ if I was on the other side):

On 36.Rxe3, he played 36…Ra1+ 37.Kf2 Rf1+ 38.Ke2 Rxf4, and if White takes the rook, he loses his own. I played 39.Re7 Bf1+ 40.Ke1 Rf5, but the endgame is totally lost and so I resigned. In any case, I didn’t feel so bad about this loss, as it was a tough fight and I thought he played quite well. I rolled the dice and I came up short.

The following day, though, was a bit of a disaster. In the following position as Black against a Portuguese master, 14.Kf1-f2, I blundered big time:

I wanted to bring a knight to e4 and so after 15 minutes of thought, I came up with the brilliant idea of 14…Nb8?! (the knight is headed for e4, via d7 and f6 – but do you see the problem with this?). After 15.Rhe1, I happily continued on my way with 15…Nd7?. After making my move, I noticed that the f5-pawn is just hanging now. He naturally played 16.Bxf5, after which I wondered what was going on in my head. It’s pretty rare that I manage to miss a one-move capture like that. Black’s position is pretty much lost now, as although Black is only down a pawn, he faces a bigger problem as White will take on g6 to double Black’s pawns. After that, the e5-square can never be properly defended and Black’s light-squared bishop has no real future. Luckily I managed to put up some resistance and in the end, managed to salvage half a point from this horrible position.

Like Déjà vu All Over Again

The final tournament of this tour for me began a couple days ago. So far I’m on track with 2 wins in 2 games, both against much lower rated players. Benidorm is a pretty big swiss tournament, which creates some serious mismatches in the first round.

I had the white pieces against Jose Joaquin Bas Mas (1962 FIDE) in the first round. Here’s how the game went: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 e6 3.Nd2!? (3.e4 is the main move) c5 4.Ne4!??!. This is the first time I’ve played this strange move in a slow game, although I had played it twice in rapid games. In one, against IM Sandor Kustar of Hungary, he didn’t react very well and played the insipid 4…cxd4 5.Qxd4 Be7. This doesn’t test White’s opening experiment at all, and I quickly gained an advantage and later won the game.

My young opponent played the correct 4…Qa5+, and the game continued 5.Bd2 Qb6 6.dxc5 Bxc5 7.Nxc5 Qxc5 8.c3 (so as to meet 8…Ne4 with 9.Be3, when Black now doesn’t have 9…Qb4+ at his disposal). He played 8…d5 9.g3 b6?! 10.Bg2 to get to the following position:

Now he played the lemon, 10…Ng4??. This is the logical continuation of the idea with 9…b6 – Black wants to provoke e2-e3, after which Ng4-e5 and Bc8-a6 will cause White some serious headaches. However, White can make us of the whole board with 11.Qa4+, winning the knight on g4 for free. My opponent resigned here, making this the 2^nd shortest decisive game I’ve had (when my opponent showed up to play) since at least 1994.

What’s the shortest game? Well, it started out exactly the same way as the Bas Mas game up until 9.g3. My opponent, Frank Haas (2185 FIDE, Germany), now dashed out 9…Ng4??, allowing the same motif with 10.Qa4+. He resigned on the spot as well. At least he had the excuse that it was a rapid game and he was blitzing out all his moves.

In the second round, I had to work much longer, playing a game that lasted about 4 hours. I had the black pieces against Rafael Del Valle Domenech (2137 FIDE, Spain). For most of the game, my opponent got up after every single move he made, and this cost him quite a bit of time. I tend to walk around quite a bit, but this was too much for me to even consider. He lost quite a bit of time on the clock when he was just walking around.

The game was a Semi-Slav and after 12 moves, we reached the following position:

Last summer, I had this exact same position against GM Delchev in Balaguer. He played the most testing move, 13.Nc3-e2 here. With Black’s queen on e7, White reroutes the knight to g3 to provoke a kingside weakness with …g6. That game quickly became very complicated and each of us had chances to win.

In this game, my opponent played 13.dxe5?!, and only after 13…Nxe5 14.Nxe5 Bxe5 did he play 15.Ne2. However, the situation has changed now, and I played 15…c5!, a resource I didn’t have in the Delchev game. If White takes the pawn on b5, he loses the pawn on e4. He played 16.f4, but after 16…c4 17.fxe5 Ng4! White’s position is already tough. The bishop on d3 is lost, and meanwhile White’s pawn structure is worse. He was nominally up a pawn after 18.Bxc4, but 18…Rac8 19.Nc3 Rxc4 20.Qe2 Nxe5 recovered the pawn with a better position. White’s pawn structure is clearly worse. The b5-pawn is taboo because of …Qc5+, picking up the knight.

After gradually improving my position, we reached the following position after 30.Qb6:

I played 30…b4 31.axb4 axb4 (31…Qxb4 will transpose) 32.Na2 Bxe4 33.Qxb4 (33.Nxb4 fails to the same tactical idea) Qxb4 34.Nxb4 Bxg2!. The bishop is hanging, but so is White’s rook on e1. After 35.Rxe5 dxe5, the bishop is still hanging, but now the other White rook on f4 is hanging! The h3-pawn is also en prise, so he has to further misplace the rook with 36.Rh4. I duly won the endgame.

There are 10 rounds here in Benidorm and I’m the 21^st seed. With 8 rounds to go, I should have some chances to play some strong players in the remaining rounds.

Travels with Vinay: In Search of Spain

Between my tournament in San Sebastian (which ended on the 12th) and the next one in Benidorm (which begins on the 24th), I’m taking a little tour of Spain, specifically Andalucía. With my poor picture editing tools, I have created a small map of where I’ve generally been in Spain this trip:

The first leg was from Reykjavik to Bilbao (via London) and then San Sebastian, for the tournament there. The next leg was for Andalucía, although I stopped in Madrid to relax for a few days. In Andalucía, I’ve concentrated on Sevilla and Granada. After Granada, the next tournament leg begins in Benidorm. And after that, it’s off to Banaglore, India via London.

During the summer of 2006, before I began working at Cornerstone Research, I played one tournament in Balaguer and one in Barcelona. Between those two, I spent some time sightseeing as well – 5 days in Madrid and 3 days in Barcelona. With some time in Andorra and Benasque, I’ll have covered a good chunk of the the Iberian peninsula. Maybe there is a strong tournament in Portugal?

Random Musings on Iceland

Before I forget, here were a few tidbits from Iceland that I didn’t work into a post about the tournament itself:

-          Reykjavik is the northernmost capital in the world, and certainly the farthest north I have ever been. The entire country of Iceland isn’t very big, though – it’s population is about 300,000 of which about 60% live in Reykjavik. That is pretty much the combined combination of Fremont and Berkeley, in the Bay Area.

-          The baggage handlers in SFO or JFK decided to search my check-in bag, but they forgot to put the lock back on. I had bought a TSA-approved lock some years back (so they can open the bag without breaking the lock). Sadly, it’s virtually impossible to reclaim that lock from them (they want to see the receipt, proof that it was on the bag in the first place, etc).

-          I should learn how to drive with a manual transmission if I plan on driving overseas. Yury and I drove around for a while the day before the event started, doing a tour of the Golden Circle in Iceland (Geysir, Gulfoss, and Thingvellier). Yury at least had driven stick-shift before, although it took him a little time to remember and he hadn’t quite rediscovered the touch before we got back in the evening.

-          Here’s a picture of Strokkur, the biggest geyser at the Geysir Park that erupts at regular intervals. Geysir itself, the namesake of the park, hasn’t erupted in many, many years. (Click to enlarge)

-          The recession in Iceland is noticeable, as prices have supposedly come down quite a bit. It is still relatively expensive though – even after the decline, it is probably on par with Manhattan.

-          The global economic woes also seemed to make its effect felt on the store shelves, where the only non-carbonated water I was able to find was from a brand called “Iceland Spring.” The strange thing was that the label meant it was clearly not intended for sale in Iceland. It reads: “Filtered over decades through basalt and lava, the water is imported from Iceland (emphasis in the original), a remote island near the Arctic Circle.”

I would assume that if Iceland Spring went under, they still would have sold off its inventory. I guess a company in the US that intended to buy these bottles must have gone under …

-          The tournament was won on tiebreaks by GM Hedinn Steingrimsson, a 34-year old Icelandic GM. There was one amusing story about him (not sure if it’s true, as I couldn’t find it on the web), related by some Slovakian players. It seems he was an IM for some time, hovering around 2400 FIDE without playing much when all of a sudden he shot up. He played a GM round-robin in the Czech Republic where he was then accused of cheating, ostensibly because he was playing well and going to the bathroom quite often. Well, what did he do? Next time he needed to go, he went right on the stage, in the planter box holding some flowers! Indeed. In any case, the cheating allegations didn’t seem to hold water.

It’s not clear whether that incident prompted the following sign outside the playing hall at Cappelle la Grande in France:

Victory! (sort of)

As I wrote in my last post, after 6 rounds in San Sebastian, I had 4.5 points. In round 7, I had the black pieces against a young Spanish FM (around 2380 FIDE), Angel Arribas Lopez. My opponent decided to play a French Exchange (technically a Winawer Exchange, since it went 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.exd5 exd5), and after the game, he lamented the fact that he forgot some of his analysis on this line. After about 10 moves, he already found himself in an awkward situation, as he was fighting for equality! Finally on move 18, he got a chance to castle and took it:

My queen had gone to a5 with check a few moves earlier, clearing the way for my knight to come to e4 (white’s bishop was on g5) and my rook come to e8 (from a8). Having completed the job, I played 18…Qd8 here, threatening both 19…Qh4 and something a bit more dangerous. My opponent didn’t sense the danger and played 19.Bf4? (19.Nf4 was necessary, but Black is still better), after which I played 19…Ng5!. White’s queen is short of breathing room, so he must play 20.Bxg5 Qxg5, but now Black threatens 21…f4 (gaining a tempo) and 22…Bg4 (trapping the queen yet again). White has no good way out of the threat. He tried 21.Bc2 f4 22.Qd3, but I calmly played 22…g6, and after 23.Nh1, finished him off with 23…Rxe2! 24.Qxe2 f3. White has to give up his queen or get checkmated, so he resigned.

The following round, I had the white pieces against Daniel Alsina Leal (a Spanish player, around 2503 FIDE). I had met him during one of my Spanish tournaments in the summer of 2006 when he was barely 2400 FIDE. Since then, he’s shot up to a peak of 2520 FIDE. This was probably my best game of the tournament. He played the Meran Variation of the Semi-Slav, which I was expecting, but he got in a new move first on move 15 with 15…Qb6. However, his new idea doesn’t seem to be so great, although it took me a while to figure out how to proceed. After 19…Qc6, we reached the following position:

Here I played 20.b4!, trying to fix the queenside pawn structure. If Black can activate his pawns with …b5-b4, then not only do White’s pieces get driven backwards, but the e4-pawn becomes quite weak. After 20.b4, though, if Black doesn’t take en passant, then the b5-pawn becomes a problem and Black’s “advantage” of the queenside majority becomes somewhat useless. White can then turn his attention to the center and the kingside with the bishop pair already pointed in that direction.

He decided that defending that position wasn’t very pleasant, and so he decided to play 20…cxb3 (en passant), and after 21.Bxb3 b4 22.Na2 a5, I played 23.f3. I could have played 23.Rac1 Qxe4 24.Bxe6+ Kh8, but the endgame after 25.Qxe4 Bxe4 isn’t very pleasant for White. He’s got two nice bishops, but the knight on a2 is horribly placed and the queenside pawn situation will make things quite tricky for White. After 23.f3, the knight is still poorly placed, but now Black has to figure out how to deal with the threat of 24.Rac1, when the queen doesn’t have any good squares and the e6-pawn is weakened.

He played 23…Ba6, and the game continued 24.Qe1! Rfe8 25.Rac1 Qb7 26.Qg3! – the point of 24.Qe1!. White hits Black’s position from all sides – the queen puts pressure on the g7-pawn while also threatening Rc1-c7 and Qg3-d6. He didn’t like his prospects after 26…Rac8 27.Rxc8 Qxc8 28.Rc1 Qd8 29.Rc6, so he played 26…Rad8. After 27.Rc7, his idea was to play 27…Nh5 28.Qd6 Nf8, but now I played 29.Qe5.

His position is totally lost now – pieces are hanging all across the board. The queen on b7, the knight on h5, the pawns on e6 and a5, and if the pawn on a5 is captured, the bishop on a6 will be en prise as well. He played 29…Ng6 here, which allowed me to finish the game with a flourish.

I played 30.Bxe6+ Kh8 (30…Rxe6 and 30…Kf8 don’t avoid mate either) 31.Qxg7+! Nxg7 32.Bxg7 checkmate! A nice finish to crown my effort.

In the final round, I had the black pieces against GM Arthur Kogan of Israel. I played and beat him once in Toronto with the white pieces in 2000 (I had a great performance there, about 2600 FIDE by GM norm performance rating calculations). I was thinking about playing 1.e4 e5, but I decided that with my relatively poorer tiebreaks (we were tied with LaFuente and Sebenik on 6.5/8), I should try for something more dynamic in the hope of winning the game. Thus, it was a French Winawer, a choice that surprised him since he said he hadn’t lost to the Winawer in about 10 years.

Kogan tends to have a lot of his own ideas in the opening and he played a line that was much more popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. After 15…f6, we reached the following position:

White has a choice of pawn structures and continuations here – he can exchange the f6/e5 pawns and put a piece or a pawn on e5 later; he can try and immediately activate his bishop on f1 with g2-g3; or he can try to attack Black’s kingside with a bishop sacrifice on h6. I think taking on f6 with 16.exf6 is the right approach to play for an advantage, but he decided to force the issue with 16.Bxh6.

After 16…gxh6 17.Qxh6, I played 17…Nf5, forcing 18.Qg6+ Kg8 (not 18…Ng7? 19.exf6), and here he played 19.Qh5+ and offered a draw. Black can escape the checks by playing 19…Kg7 20.Qg4+ Kf7 21.exf6, but the position is quite risky for him:

-          if 21…Rg8 22.Ng5+ Kxf6 23.Nh7+ Kf7 (not 23…Ke7? 24.Qxf5!, thanks to the pin on the e-file) 24.Qh5+ Rg6 25.Ng5+ and Black is not doing so well;

-          if 21…Rh8, White has to find 22.h4! Rag8 23.Ng5+ Kxf6 24.g3, when the position is far from clear and may even favor White! He has two solid pawns for the piece; the kingside is now secure (and he can bolster the knight with f2-f4 if he needs to); Black’s king is not going to feel safe because of problems escaping to the queenside; and the pawn on e6 is a constant headache for Black.

With only 20 minutes left on the clock (to my opponent’s 40), I decided to accept the draw. On the board next to use, LaFuente was still playing with Sebenik, and their game finished in a draw about 30 minutes later. Meanwhile, from the group on 6 points, GM Marc Narciso Dublan won as black to finish on 7 points as well. GM Alexander Delchev, the top seed at 2648 FIDE, was on 6 points as well, but was unable to win and even lost while overpressing against a Spanish GM.

Thus, five players ended up tying for first with 7.0/9 – GMs Arthur Kogan, Marc Narciso Dublan, Pablo LaFuente, myself, and IM Matej Sebenik. On some mathematical (a recursive-iterative formula I’ve never seen before) tiebreak, Sebenik finished ahead of the pack.

And now I move on to Madrid. As they say in Basque Country, agur!