Tuesday, January 28, 2014

St Paul Winter Open 2014

The tournament had a good turnout despite the weather. I did well with 2.5 out of 4 (I withdrew before the last round, so I could drive home in the daylight through the blizzard)

There are important lessons for me in 3 of the games, including two Catalan's that I did not get enough out of the opening, one of which I held on to draw FM Wasiluk. My second round game was a bit of a blow out, as he missed a critical move. In the third round, I messed up tactics against P. Amarasinghe in a wild KID (much like our first game years ago), but was unable to swindle him this time. My last game was the second Catalan, and though he equalized, I was able to get to an endgame where only I had winning chances, and he made several errors.

Both Catalan's were not "mainline" and illustrated the problem with memorization of opening lines.

There was a wild card thrown into the tournament. After round 4, Charles Wynn, a class A player who had not played in the last two years, was the leader having beaten Wasiluk and Chakrasali, while the other masters had draws. Iwu beat him in the last round to win the tournament. He is one to watch.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

TCCL 2014 round 5

I played Zach Adams, again, and lost, again. The rest of the team did well, but the match turned on my game. We need to get at least a whole point out of the next two matches to stay in the Gold.

It was not a good night for Rochester, as the other teams lost, also.

I had a good idea that did not work tactically. I missed a pin that spoiled the combination. The combination was to open up the center while his king was stuck there.

I misjudged the team situation, and I should have played more solidly.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Following Kaufman - January 2014

The January 2014 issue of Following Kaufman is available for purchase on Smashwords for 99 cents.

There are a total of 199 games. I annotated two Gruenfeld games that I thought were interesting. I was going to do a third, but I got sick at the end of December.