Back in the Day

In preparation for my upcoming Montreal tournament (the Montreal International), I was looking at some of the games of my prospective opponents. Part of the field includes two of my old competitors in World Youth competition – Etienne Bacrot (of France) and Arkadij Naiditsch (of Germany).

I played Naiditsch twice, the first game being in 1994 at the Under-10 World Youth Championship in Szeged, Hungary. Since wordpress.com doesn’t allow for the insertion of chess games, here’s a link to the full game: Bhat – Naiditsch, U10 WCh 1994.

Here’s the position after 21…Qxa2:

I finished him off with 22.Bxc6 dxc6 23.Qh4! (threatening Qf6 and Qf7+, with mate to follow). He resigned in a couple more moves.

Two years later, at the Under-12 World Youth Championships in Menorca, Spain, I got the black pieces against him. Here’s a link to that game: Naiditsch – Bhat, U12 WCh 1996.

Here’s the position after 33…Ra8:

While 34.Bb2 would lose to 34…Ra2, 34.Na5 would hold the balance. Black would capture on b4 and material equality would be restored. A sample line is 34.Na5 Nxb4 35.Rb1! Rxa5 36.Bxb4 Bxb4 with equality. However, Naiditsch blundered with 34.Ra1, when 34…Ne3+ 35.Kf3 Nc2 picked a piece.

The first game was decent from my end, but the second can’t really be called an epic struggle. Luckily, I played some better chess in the rest of that tournament in 1996 and went on to win the bronze medal.

In 1995, at the Under-12 World Youth Championships in Sao Lorenzo, Brazil, I got the black pieces against Bacrot. I was demolished in short order, in what might be one of the more embarrassing games of my chess career. Here’s the link to that game: Bacrot – Bhat, U12 WCh 1995.

Here’s the key position after 16.Nxd5:

Do you see what’s wrong with 16…Nxd5? Well, at the time of the game, I guess I didn’t, as I played it and promptly lost to 17.Qh7#! Don’t try that at home kids! Mate in one … on h7. As some chessplayers have told me, that is one of the most basic mating patterns in chess. And I missed it. Oh well. Bacrot ran away with the tournament as the top seed (he was already 2400 FIDE at the time), while I went on to tie for 2^nd place.

Bacrot is now about 2730 FIDE, and he’s the top seed in Montreal. Let’s hope I can avoid a similar fate my second time around (and that my record against Naiditsch stays perfect!).

Crash Landing

Oops, this post is a long time coming. I simply forgot to add this one after I got back from Brazil.

Well, that was a bad tournament. Last I updated this blog, I had 4 points from 6 games after losing with black to GM Vescovi. With 5 rounds to go, there was plenty of time for me to get back on track and vie for a World Cup spot.

Unfortunately, things went downhill pretty quickly for me, starting with the 7^th round. As Black against FM Ivan Nogueira, I beat my head against the wall as black in an Exchange French before acquiescing to a draw. Strangely enough, I avoided playing 1…e5 because against that, he played the Exchange Ruy Lopez (rather drawish), but against 1…e6, he had never played the Exchange French (instead opting for the more popular 3.Nc3. Thus, it was a bit of a cold shower to get the Exchange French.

Against the Exchange French, I’ve played the same basic system for years: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 exd5 4.Nf3 Nc6, and now the main line runs 5.Bb5 Bd6 6.c4 dxc4 7.d5 a6 8.Ba4 b5 9.dxc6 bxa4.

I’ve played this for about 10 years now, and I have plenty of games in the database in this line. Generally, I’ve scored quite well here, as the position is reasonably unbalanced given that it once was a “boring” Exchange French. Black has the bishop pair and chances to stir up counterplay all over the board. However, on that day, I essentially ran into Nogueira playing Advanced Chess. After 19 moves, we were still in his preparation with Rybka, and I felt I had no choice but to accept a 3-fold repetition. Actually, I could have continued with some chances to outplay him an equal position, but at that point in the game, I wasn’t thinking clearly and didn’t want to risk anything.

That wasn’t a particularly interesting game from my point of view, so the next day, I was out for blood. I was playing the young Brazilian FM, Evandro Barbosa. He’s normally a King’s Indian player, but this game turned out to be a Fianchetto Benoni, something I was ill-prepared to play, and something, as it turned out, he had been studying before this tournament. We followed the real heavyweight fight, Korchnoi-Kasparov, Lucerne (Olympiad) 1982 to reach the following position:

This was my first time playing the Fianchetto Benoni as white, and I hadn’t prepared it for this game. In fact, the last time I looked at it was back in March when I could have faced it against IM Miodrag Perunovic in Iceland! Thus, all the lines were hazy in my head, and the main thing I remember about the Korchnoi game was that what he did was fine, but that in the extremely messy complications that followed, the young Kasparov tactically outplayed him.

Unfortunately, generalizations like that weren’t going to tell me what to actually play at the board, so I came up with the interesting 16.g4!?. I was expecting 16…Nf6, when I wasn’t totally sure I was really better, but he blitzed out 16…Qh4!?, which is the most common move in this position. After a long think where I convinced myself that all my following moves were forced (they weren’t), I played 17.gxh5 Bxh3 18.Ne2?! f5 19.Bf4? Bxg2? (19…fxe4 is the only way to win!) 20.Kxg2 Qg4+ 21.Bg3 Qf3+ 22.Kg1 f4 23.Nxf4 Rxf4 24.Qxf3 Rxf3, we reached the following endgame:

I was kicking myself at this point, since now I’m stuck defending a worse endgame. Comparing minor pieces, my knight on a3 is pretty stupid and my bishop on g3 isn’t doing much. Meanwhile, his knight on e5 is sitting pretty on a central outpost while his bishop is unopposed on the long diagonal (and eyeing my b2-pawn). As I compared the situation of the rooks, my opinion of the position further decreased – his rook on f3 is quite active and can swing to b3 to target my weak queenside pawns, while his rook on b8 supports the …b5 push. Uh oh.

In full damage control mode, I started to play pretty well and continued 25.hxg6 hxg6 26.Bxe5 (Black’s knight is better than my bishop, and I need the c4-square badly) Bxe5 27.Nc4 Bf4 28.Ra3!? (28.a5 is probably a bit better) Rxa3 29.bxa3 Re8 30.e5! Bxe5 31.Rb1 Re7 32.Rb6.

I’m down a pawn here, but my pieces are no active while Black’s are relatively passive, and his extra c-pawn is securely blockaded for the time being. In the end, I managed to hold a draw here.

So after two draws in which I didn’t generate any real winning chances, I was really ticked off and the following morning, played an absolutely horrible game against another young Brazilian FM, Yago de Moura Santiago.

To his credit, he played a pretty solid positional game against my 3.Nc3 Nc6!? French (I wanted to avoid any preparation for once, and so I decided against my normal 3…Bb4 Winawer French), but I certainly missed some chances.

By this point, I was down in the dumps. I had 4/5, and then managed a whopping 1 out of 4, with 3 opponents being clearly lower rated. With one more round that evening and then the final round the next day, I decided I could do something other than prepare and I sat down and watched about 4 hours of Season 1 of Lost.

I guess it worked, as I won my 10^th round game pretty easily in a Trompowsky (I decided to return to my 1.d4 roots by playing the Trompowsky, and in so doing, pushed my score with it up to 25/27, a nearly 2700 FIDE performance).

The following day, I had the black pieces against FM Cesar Quinones. This was a certifiably weird opening line, but I was happy with what I got: 1.e4 e6 2.d3 d5 3.Nd2 (the King’s Indian Attack was my main weapon against the French for many, many years; I don’t usually get to face it as black!) Nf6 4.Ngf3 b6 5.g3 dxe4 6.dxe4 Bb7 7.Qe2 Nc6!? (threatening 8…Nb4 and 9…Ba6) 8.c3 a5 (insisting on getting the f1-a6 diagonal) 9.Bg2 Ba6 10.Nc4 e5! 11.0-0 Bc5:

Black has brought out all his minor pieces and has staked an about equal claim to the center. White’s structure is marginally better, as he his c3-pawn gives him nice control over the otherwise weak d4-square, while Black can’t do the same with his d5-square. However, the knight on c4 is rather awkward and this is what gives Black an ok position here in my view. He immediately went wrong with 12.h3 0-0 13.Re1 Ne8!, threatening to transfer the knight to d6, when White won’t be able to avoid a bad queenside structure with b3 and bxc4.

After many moves and lots of time, we reached the following endgame position:

Black’s plan is relatively simple – he needs to create some open lines for his rook as the d-file doesn’t have any good entry square on it at the moment. To that end, I wanted to probe on the kingside, hopefully creating (e.g., …f5xe4, creating an isolated e4-pawn) or fixing a weakness (e.g., …f5-f4, fixing the e3-pawn) while preparing to break on the queenside with …b5. After about 30 more moves (making this the last game of the tournament!), I managed to arrange all that and my opponent had to throw in the towel. I went for a plan with …f5-f4 and then arranged …b5. While my opponent’s rook got active behind my pawns, I managed to snag the f3-pawn and then my c- and f-pawns carried the day. I’m not totally convinced the endgame is winning despite all my maneuvers in the game, though, but it’ll take a long time to figure out the “truth” about this position.

So, my tournament was a bit of a disaster, but at least I managed to avoid a total crash and won my last couple games. My finish of 7/11 was good enough for a tie for 29^th place. GM Josh Friedel tied for one of the World Cup spots with 8.5/11, but in the rapid chess tiebreak, he wasn’t able to grab one of the 4 spots available. The tournament was won by GMs Shabalov and Corrales with 9/11.

Live from São Paulo

Right now, I’m in São Paulo, Brazil playing in the Pan-American Continental Championships. The tournament started about a week ago, on the 25th. The US has 6 players here (GMs Ehlvest, Shabalov, Kudrin, Friedel, Ivanov, myself, and FM Gregory Markzon). Last year, the Pan-American was held in Boca Raton, Florida, and there was only one spot up for grabs for the 2009 World Cup in Russia. This year, there are 6 spots open, and that fact, coupled with a better location (for most of the rest of the Americas), there are close to 270 players in the event.

Because of the large field, I played down in the first couple rounds. In round 1, I had the white pieces against Sergio Silva of Brazil (2072 FIDE). We reached the following position after my 16^th move:

Black was having some troubles untangling his pieces, but this move leads to a clearly worse endgame. He can’t capture on d4 because of 17.e5; meanwhile, if the pawns stays on e5, the knight can’t leave d7, leaving the bishop and rook stuck on c8 and a8. Meanwhile, putting the bishop on c7 guards the e5-pawn, but can run into Nc3-d5 tactics, as there are pins on both the c-file and h4-d8 diagonal. Thus, the computer recommends …Ba7-b8 as the best plan, which was surprisingly what I thought was best during the game as well!

However, my opponent played 16…Qd6 and went down quickly after: 17.dxe5 Qxd1 18.Rcxd1 Nxe5 19.Nxe5 Rxe5 20.f4 Re8 21.e5 Nh7 (if 21…Nh5, then 22.Rf1 leaves the knight stranded on h5) 22.Ne4 Bc7 23.Nd6 Bxd6 24.exd6, and White is simply winning. Black has no way to stop the d-pawn and an invasion of White’s rook to the e7-square.

In the second round, I faced Brazil’s representative in the World Youth Under-18 category, Vincius Tine Martins. The game was completely crazy from the get-go, as neither of us had really prepared the Moscow Gambit of the Semi-Slav, but we played into it anyways! After almost 5 hours of play, we agreed to a draw when I set up a fortress in an otherwise worse endgame.

This second day of the event featured a double-round schedule (at 10 AM and 7 PM). However, the round was not at 7 PM, but at 6 PM! How did mix-up this happen? Well, the organizers had tournament pages in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The round times had been updated before the tournament started on the Spanish and Portuguese pages, but were left as is on the English page! Thus, my printout from the day before the event showed the round at 7 PM, as does the Google search cache, for example. The page info shows it was updated during the morning round, but they made no effort to inform the players of the change. The first round started 2 hours late, and I was there, waiting during that one, and I was about 10 minutes early for the 2^nd round the following morning.

The organizers and arbiters made no effort to apologize or make up for the situation by giving us our time back, even though it was quite clearly the organizers mistake. They just kept repeating the phrase “the website was wrong,” as though that somehow made it ok for us to start our games with 45 minutes to make 40 moves. To make things even better, they passed out brochures with the “correct” round times on it during that round, but of course it was too late to do us any good.

In any case, that round was not a good one for the Americans – Friedel and I drew our games quite quickly, Ehlvest lost his way close to the time control and went down, while Shabalov also drew.

In the fourth round, I had the black pieces against FM Alan Borda. After 16 moves, we reached the following theoretical position:

This is a very old line of the Giouco Piano where Black is up a pawn, but White has a somewhat dangerous pawn on e6 and better development. Essentially, if Black can make it to an endgame or get his king to a relatively safe place, he’s much better. But in the short-term, White’s initiative can be tricky to defuse.

He played the correct 17.Re3 c6 18.Rh3!, as White’s pawn structure doesn’t matter too much here. He needs a way into Black’s position, and so he targets the h5-square. After 18…Rxh3 19.gxh3 g6, he played 20.Qd2, aiming for 21.h4 and 22.Qh6. I played 20…Kf8, and after 21.h4 gxh4 22.Qh6+ Kg8 23.Re4 Qa5!, threatening to head over to g5 to force a queen trade, the game was essentially in the bag for me. Since White can’t stop …Qg5, he’s pretty much already lost. He struggled on for a little while, but once we made time control, he gave up the ghost.

In round 5, I had the white pieces against FM Duvan Martin Castano, who won the Colombian Championships with a perfect 9/9 score! I doubt they had the $64,000 Fischer bonus prize for a perfect score though.

In mutual time pressure, he blundered with 36…Kg5? in the following position:

What would you play here as White? I played 37.Qa3!, when White is clearly on top. Black’s best would now be to give up the g3-pawn as a lost cause and hope for a miracle draw, but he pushed on with 37…Kh4, but after 38.Qf3, his king is feeling a bit short of air. After 38…Qg5, I played 39.Qf1 (39.Qf7 was even simpler), threatening a mate on h1. The only move is 39…Qe5, as Black needs to stay in touch with the f4- and f6-squares while making luft. Then I played 40.Qf8, when the threats on d8 and h6 are too much. He played 40…Kg5 41.Qd8+ Kf4 42.Qxd7, but he has no hope in this position. The game ended 42…Ke3 43.Qg4 Kf2 44.Qf5+! Kxg2 45.Qf1+! Kh2 46.Bf3, and mate on g2 is unavoidable.

In the sixth round, I played up for the first time in the event, against the #2 seed GM Giovanni Vescovi of Brazil (2631 FIDE). Vescovi has been Brazil’s best player for a number of years, and had regularly been a member of the top 100 players in the world.

The game was quite interesting as in the opening, I steered things from a Semi-Slav to a Stonewall Dutch structure and had good chances to equalize. However, at those critical junctures, I seem to have played a couple second-best moves which left him with nagging pressure. My last real chance was after 26.Bb2-c3, when we had the following position:

I was short on time here, having only about 10 minutes for the next 15 moves. I played 26…f4?, wrongly thinking that I had to stir something up on the kingside to compensate for my weakened queenside. Unfortunately, after 27.exf4 Rxf4 28.Nf3!, White secures the d4-pawn and now Black is in real trouble. I pushed the a-pawn up to avoid its capture on a6, but after 28…a5 29.Qd2, Black’s rook is offsides and the a5-pawn falls. I resigned in a few more moves.

The correct move was 26…Qc7! (not 26…Qc6, which allows 27.Ba5! with a clear plus), when White has some trouble defending his bishop. The rook is tied to the a-pawn, and going back to b2 simply repeats the position after 27…Qb6. Thus, White would probably play 27.Nb1, but this is clearly some concession on his part, as the knight is not well placed on b1. After 27…a5 28.Qe1 Bb4!, White can’t simply take twice on b4 because of 30…Qc1+ and 31…Qxe3 (taking advantage of the fact that the knight on b1 shuts in the rook on a1). This tactical trick buys Black a valuable extra move or two to safeguard his queenside structure.

Closing out the World Open

Apologies for the long delay between posts, but things have been somewhat busy the past week. In my last post on the World Open, I summarized the first 5 rounds in Philly. After that relatively leisurely one-game-a-day pace, the last four rounds were a grueling stretch run with 2 games a day on each weekend day.

In round 6, I had the black pieces against the Canadian FM, Michael Dougherty. I had played him once before, back in the 2001 Chicago Open, where I beat him as white in a Sicilian Rossolimo. Maybe it was the relatively early start to the round, but I wasn’t fully focused at the start of the game. In the following position, I played 9…Qe7? 10.cxd5 exd5?, but I was rudely awakened by 11.e4!.

The problem is simple – with Black’s king and queen lined up on the e-file, White is either going to force Black to take twice on e4, or will pry open the e-file by pushing the pawn on to e5 himself, when Black has no choice but to remove it. Luckily my position wasn’t just lost like that (although 9…Qe7 was a pretty bad move; the simple 9…0-0 was better, when Black has a comfortable position), and I managed to regroup in time. I played a serious of only moves to escape the troubles on the e-file after which my position was ok, but nothing special. However, when he decided to launch an attack that had no real basis in the position, I managed to put him away pretty quickly.

In the evening round, I was paired “down” against GM Mesgen Amanov. His FIDE rating is higher than mine (at 2517 FIDE), but because of limited USCF tournament play, his USCF rating was barely over 2400. Goichberg probably should fix this silly rating loophole. We actually followed Game 3 of the World Championship match between Kramnik and Anand from 2008; unfortunately, we both sort of knew we were following it for a while, but thanks to the 2 game a day schedule, neither of us had prepared it. After some excitement, we reached the following position with Black to move:

Both GM Jesse Kraai and GM Josh Friedel weren’t very optimistic about my chances at this point, but it seems that White is just winning! Black’s problem is that he can’t get all of his pieces trained at White’s king as he could when the king was on g1. Amanov tried 22…Bg2+ 23.Ke1 Bh3 (23…Qb4+ is stopped by 24.Qd2, while 23…Bxf4 falls to 24.Qc4 Qe5+ 25.Ne2, when too many of Black’s pieces are hanging), but after 24.Qe3, he didn’t have anything productive to do. The game ended a few moves later.

The next morning, I played against IM Robert Hungaski, who splits his time between Argentina and the US. The middlegame was somewhat interesting, but in time pressure, we both made some mistakes to reach the following endgame after 40…Bd5:

Hungaski, having reached the time control, spent a few minutes and played 41.Kg3?. This allowed me to play 41…Bxf3! 42.Kxf3 a5! 43.h4 a4 44.h5+ Kh7 45.Rb4 Ra1, when White can’t avoid the exchange of queenside pawns following 45…a3. The resulting 3 vs 2 R + P endgame is a simple draw for Black.

Maybe the endgame is objectively drawn anyways, but to try and win it, White should have played either 41.Nd4 or 41.Nh4+, with some small advantage. Hungaski tried to squeeze the 3 vs 2 endgame, but to no avail and the game ended in a draw after 6 hours of play. Sadly, thanks to this marathon game, I missed the entire Federer-Roddick Wimbledon final!

With 4.5/8, I played FM Michael Lee in the last round as white. There isn’t a whole lot going on in the following position after 26…Qe7, but White should be better somehow:

I couldn’t find anything particularly great, though, as Black has some simple ideas to try and improve his position (e.g. …Nf7-g5, …Bd7, …Ra8) while White doesn’t have such obvious building moves. I decided to play 27.b3, setting a small trap. The move b2-b3 helps fix the a5-pawn so it isn’t totally useless if Black sees the idea.

Lee played 27…Nf7?, when I uncorked 28.Qxf7+!! Qxf7 29.Rxf7 Kxf7 30.Nc7. The point is that the rook is essentially trapped on a6! It can’t go back to a8, and if it retreats to a7, then 31.Nc3-b5 wins it, while if 30…Rb6, then 31.Na4 traps it. On 30…b6, White can either play 31.Na4 or 31.Nxa6, in both cases with excellent winning chances. Thus, Black has to give up the rook on a6, letting his a-pawns get doubled and leaving the a5-pawn without any support.

The resulting endgame is winning for White, but I got a little nonchalant and didn’t sense that he could try and set up a fortress at one point. He, however, did not miss that chance and after that, I could only shuffle around and hope he blundered. When it was clear that he wasn’t going to do so, I offered a draw that was immediately accepted.

Now I’m in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for the Pan-American Continental Championship that begins tomorrow. It’s a pretty strong field, where I’m seeded around #35 in the 11-round event. The website is at: http://www.continental2009.com. The top 6 finishers at this tournament qualify for the World Cup in November! There are about 30 GMs signed up for the event, so it should be a tough event.

Recent Chess.com articles

I’ll post about the last 4 rounds in Philly in a couple days. In the meantime, here are links to my last 3 chess.com articles. All 3 articles are centered around games from the Montreal tournament:

The 3rd Rank Barrier

Materialism, Opposite Colored Bishops, and Kasparov’s Theorem

Unleashed

Taking a Ride on the Reading: The First Half in Philly

In the recently completed World Open in Philadelphia, I started out in the 7-day schedule. This gave me one travel day to get to Philly from Montreal, before starting the event with 1 game a day for 5 days.

In the first round, I had the white pieces against GM Vladimir Potkin. We reached the following position after 18.Ng5:

White has some small initiative thanks to the fact his minor pieces are more menacing than their black counterparts. After a long think, Potkin decided to play 18…g6. This allows a small tactic starting with 19.Bxf6. Do you see it? The game continued 19.Bxf6 Qxf6 20.Nxh7 Kxh7 21.Qh5+ Kg7 22.Qxc5, leaving White with an extra pawn. The only problem for me was that Black had more than enough compensation after 22…Rfc8 23.Qb5 Bc6 24.Qb6 Bd5. The White queen is oddly placed on b6, the b3-pawn is weak, and White has some back-rank issues. The game soon ended in a draw.

In round two, I had the white pieces against one of my study partners, GM Josh Friedel. It’s never pleasant to play someone you’re good friends with, but we’ve had the odd misfortune (or fortune for Josh, since he normally beats me!) of often playing whenever we show up at the same event. In the following position, after 7.Qb3-c3, Josh calmly uncorked the amazing move 7…Bxc4!??!:

While I was wondering what just happened, GM Evgeny Bareev (Kramnik’s former second) leaned over so far that I had to scoot back in my chair to give him room to see the position. Like Bareev, my first reaction was shock – how could he take my c4-pawn with such impunity when I have it guarded twice? However, I then realized that after 8.Nxc4 Nd5 9.Qc2 Nb4, White has trouble escaping the knight’s attacks while staying in touch with the knight on c4. I rejected the early draw by repetition and went for it with 10.Qc3 Nd5 11.Qc2 Nb4 12.Qa4. After 12…Nxc4 13.a3 b5 (the only move) 14.Qb3 Na5 (again, the only move) 15.Qd1 Nbc6 16.e4, White is actually better. Unfortunately for Josh, the computer misevaluates the capture on c4 because it thinks Black is just better here at first. However, after a few minutes of thought, it realizes White is better. Fortunately for Josh, though, he defended quite well and after 4 hours and a crazy middlegame, the game ended in a draw.

In the third round, I had the black pieces against IM Ray Robson. The game was a crazy Winawer Poisoned Pawn, where he certainly outprepared me and squashed most of my counterplay in the early middlegame. However, once he reached an ideal position for White, he didn’t know what to do and let me back into the game. After some twists and turns, we reached the following position after 32…Nd7-f6!:

If White takes the knight, he loses his great bishop on d6, so Ray played 33.Bd3. This is where my time trouble problem reared its ugly head. With less than half a minute to reach move 40, and no increment to rely on (I repeatedly looked at the clock after I moved, hoping in vain that it would add 30 seconds to my time!), I lashed out with 33…d4 34.cxd4 Nd5 35.Qf3 Qxd4+ 36.Kg3. With the dust settling, and the clock ticking down, I realized I didn’t have any good continuation! Instead, I’ve just opened the c-file for White’s benefit, as now Rhc1 follows with ideas of Rxc6+ or Bxa6. Black would have been doing just fine with 33…Ne4+ 34.Bxe4 dxe4. The c-file remains closed and White doesn’t have the two bishops anymore. Meanwhile, the bishop on d6 can be undermined with …f6. After my mistake in the game, though, Ray managed to put me away with both of us getting into a big time scramble.

The next day featured one of my most interesting games of the tournament. Not interesting in itself, as the game was not particularly good, but interesting in the way a draw was declined and then finally agreed upon. In the following position, FM Thomas Bartell played 34.Ne3 and offered a draw:

Black’s position isn’t particularly great (I had achieved some advantage in the early middlegame but had slowly watched it disappear and turn into an advantage for White). I also only had 22 seconds for 7 moves before reaching time control. And I said “No, let’s play on” and played 34…Bd8. I suffered for my foolish pride for the next two hours, as Bartell slowly increased his advantage and reached the following winning position at about 12:10 AM after 53…c3:

At this point in the night, there was only one other game going on, between FM Raja Panjwani and NM Chris Williams. They were pretty far away, so I don’t know what the position on the board was, but Chris Williams flagged and lost on time. As he’s from Boston, I doubt he’s a Chicago Cubs fan, but he did a pretty good verbal impression of Big Z’s outburst, unleashing a torrent of expletives for the next 5 minutes or so. The TDs were unable (or unwilling) to shut him up and his protests continued for a little while. My opponent was down to about 5 minutes left here while I had about 7 minutes. (As a side note, one of the best ejections in baseball history has to be this one, of Phillip Wellman.)

With a couple accurate moves, he can put the game out of reach. One winning line, for example, is: 54.Rd7 Qc6 55.Rc7! Qxe6 56.b7! – not 56.Qxc3 Qxb6+, when Black is fine. My opponent also had some doubts about the rook endgame after something like 56.Rxc3 Rb8 57.Rc7 Qxb6 58.Rxg7+ Kh8 59.Qxb6 Rxb6 60.Rf7, but White should win this one. Maybe if everything was quiet in the tournament hall, Bartell would have found the correct continuation. As it was, with Williams’ long outburst, his clock wound down and he played 54.Rxf5?. After 54…c2, he found the only way to hold his position together with 55.Rc5 Qxb6 56.Kh2!, and the game ended in a draw about 15 moves later.

After this game, I had 1.5/4 and the 7-day schedule was going to merge with the 4- and 5-day schedules on Friday night. My 5^th round game, as white against Seth Homa, was not particularly interesting – it ended in a draw after some minor adventures. On this day, though, I met my brother’s wife’s brother (Lee Huang) and his two kids in the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. I played a good amount of Monopoly as a young kid, but I finally got to take a ride on the Reading! The farmer’s market they had going was pretty good too.

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