TCCL 2014 round 1

We lost the first round to a strong team. I managed to squeak out the only win.

My opponent played an early Bg5 against my King's Indian Defense, and I forgot not only the line against it (Spassky-Fisher 1992) but the general approach to the Averbakh.

I ended up with an unfavorable Benoni setup, and had to defend against a strong kingside attack. Short on time, my opponent missed the killer move, and allowed me to give up a piece for 3 center pawns and transition into an endgame, where my central pawn mass proved to be too much trouble for him in the time he had left.

Recently I picked up an ideas I am going to try to apply now. The old idea was simply to study an opening after as part of analyzing the game just played. The new idea is to look at an opening 3 times in a day, with an hour or two break between first and second look, then more than four hours between second and third.

Flash Cards as Study Book

Dan Heisman has many excellent articles in his Novice Nook series on chesscafe.com. The one that is pertinent to this post is "Getting The Edge". In this article he gives 14 things we should do to improve.

Number 12 is to create your own personalized study book in which you document mistakes you have made and how you think you can keep from repeating them. I think the flash card format is excellent for this, and it is my major use of flash cards. They compose the deck I review as warm up before tournament games.

As Heisman points out, removing negatives from our play is as important as adding positives (e.g. tactical patterns), and it can be harder.

Noel Skelton Open 2013

The good news is that I played Wesley So in the first round. He spent a lot of time in the opening. I think he was deciding the variation that would be the safest way to win. He appeared tired and jet lagged. I hope he had a good time. He won the tournament, of course.

 The bad news is that I played terrible the whole tournament. Lots of visualization errors. I think I need to analyze my vote chess games without an analysis board or notes, then write down the variations, then use a set.

I found a few holes in the opening repertoire file I am using to filter games of interest, including the mainline of the early open Catalan that Wesley So played.

Chess Study Tools: Status Report

I am writing some programs to help me study chess. In the last few months I have been working steadily on creating a program to write out an ebook based on an input pgn file. This was to allow the bulk of writing of chess books in a chess program by annotating moves and exporting the games to a pgn file, and also to create an means to easily review a set of games filtered from a chess database.

I have completed a prototype and have ironed out the most egregious bugs. The idea was to present each game as a chapter and each move as a position.  In an ebook a chess diagram using a chess font does not take up a lot of space, unlike a paper book. The font needs a lot of work.

I successfully used this on a recent vacation to review a bunch of games without using a chess set, just my tablet.

Here is a sample of Ruy Lopez games filtered on Kaufman's Repertoire for Black (2012) as I understand it.

US Open 2013

I did alright with a score of 5 out of 9 (3+2-4=). I basically played at my rated strength with a gain of 11 points. The field was very full of class A and Expert players. There were lots of young players. I ran into better opening preparation in two games. I did not take proper advantage of an inexact move order with one of my opponents, but gathered a better understanding of some King's Indian structures from that game.

I have a lot of material to go through. Two of my wins were against much lower rated players, and the other seven games were against experts. I think there is a lot of good learning material in those games.

As usual, I was head down in my games, and did not get too look at the top boards.

Tabiya: Italian Game for Black

Kaufman recommends the Giuoco Piano rather than the Two Knights gambit. His lines run deeper than the three tabiya I will present here, as these positions are for searching for master games from TWIC weekly set. Giuoco Piano is Italian for quiet game. It is quieter than the Two Knights, but I think it a bit of a misnomer.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 is the Giuoco Piano. Like most open games, black will try to preserve a pawn on e5 and inhibit white from playing d4. Black gets his dark square bishop out of the coming pawn chain immediately. Also, it allows black to castle short immediately after playing ...Nf6 to protect f7.

First is the Evan's Gambit. A solid gambit, but black should be able to equalize. The usual idea of taking the gambit and returning the pawn at the right moment works, but Kaufman recommends a line where black tries to hold onto the pawn. 4.b4 Bxb4 5.c3 Ba5 6.d4 d6 7.Qb3 Qd7 8.O-O Bb6

Black will support the e5 pawn with f7-f6, develop his Ng8-e7, and castle long after unwinding his queenside. The awkward placement of the Qd7 is necessary to guard f7 and to be able to retake on c6 with the queen rather than the pawn if white plays Bb5 and Bxc6. Unwinding ideas are Na5 to take the Bc4, Qc6, and Be6 or Bg4.

The mainline is 4.c3 to support a d4 push, but White can transpose to the Italian Four Knights or castle and play a risky gambit. This is difused by 4.O-O Nf6 5.d4 Bxd4 6.Nxd4 Nxd4 7.f4 d6 8.fxe5 dxe5 9.Bg5 Qe7.

There are two approaches white can take after 4.c3 Nf6. He can strike at the center with 5.d4 or play the Giuoco Pianissimo 5.d3 O-O 6.O-O d6.

This is the line played most by masters these days. Like the d3 Ruy lines, white still plans to play d4 later after some preparatory moves. Unlike the Ruy, black has not made the weakening/space gaining pawn moves on the queenside. Black can make use of these moves to develop, which white will use to guide his plans, which center around the possibility of a kingside attack with pieces.

The old mainline is still played, but it is heavily analyzed.. 5.d4 exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Bd2 Bxd2+ 8.Nbxd2 d5 9.exd5 Nxd5.

We have an isolani game with all the normal imbalances.

Columbus Open 2013

I did very well (2+1-2=) and gained another CM norm. I was even (1+1-1=) against masters again, but they were higher rated than last year. I beat a strong expert, and was lucky to draw against a class A player in the last round. The master I beat in the first round reentered and tied for first (8 way tie). The master I drew also tied for first.

Most important is that all of my games have lessons for me.

I have decided that I need to record my opponents clock as well as mine, especially against masters. I need to make note of when they think a long time and when they do not, and then to figure out why.