TCCL round 5

The team did well to draw the match, as I was unable to hold against National Master David Heurung. The annotated game in a viewer is at the end of the post.

My preparation in the Neo-Grunfeld worked well for me. I still made a few wasted moves and my position eventually fell apart. I made him use up most of his time, though. I did not do too badly, considering it was the first Grunfeld of any kind I have played in my life (against a human, I did some sparring against Fritz, but I will talk about that in a post soon)

The Neo-Grunfeld splits into three lines, and the annotated games I could find were in one we did not play: the "solid" variation after 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.g3 Bg7 4.Bg2 O-O 5.O-O c5 6.d4 d5

Neo Grunfeld solid variation

If Black does not support his d-pawn with c6, White can allow Black the option to take on c4, or can play as I did end up in the last variation. Once again, I ended up outside my opening book by move 10, but it was entirely my fault. (or the fault of not enough time learning this new opening for me.) My 10th move allowed him to easily equalize, and though he later made an inaccuracy that would have allowed me to regain a slight edge, I missed something important on my 21st move.


1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 g6 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. g3 Bg7 6. Bg2 O-O 7. O-O Nc6 8. Nc3 Nb6

Here white has two main ideas. 9.d5 is aggressive and pushes black around, and my choice this time 9.e3 which solidifies d4 and tries to preserve the center pawns. The drawback is that the dark square bishop is blocked in for a while, but as is often the case with the queenside bishop, it is not yet clear where it should go.


 9. e3 a5 10. Na4?! White's knight on c3 is better than Black's on b6. I should not have used tempo to trade a better piece for a worse piece. Also, here is where I leave my "book". Black played what I expected up to move 9, and I forgot what I should have played 10. b3 here. e5 (10... a4 11. Nxa4 Nxa4 12. bxa4 Be6 13. Rb1 Ra7 14. Qc2 Qc8 15. Ba3) 11. Ba3 Re8 12. dxe5 Nxe5 13. Nd4 c6 14. Qc2 Nd5 15. Nxd5 cxd5 16. Bb2 Be6 17. Rac1 Rc8 18. Qd2 $14) (10.Qe2 Bg4 11. h3 Be6 12. Rd1 Nb4 13. Nd2 Qc8 14. Kh2 Rd8 15. Nde4 c6 16. b3 N4d5 17. Bb2 a4 18. Nxd5 Bxd5 19. Nc5 Bxg2 20. Kxg2 a3 21. Bc3 Nd5 22. Be1 b6 23.Na4 Qb7 24. Rac1) (10. Re1 a4 11. d5 Nb4 12. e4 a3 13. Qe2 c6 14. Rd1 cxd5 15.Rb1 d4 16. Nb5 e5 17. bxa3 Nc6 18. Bg5 f6 19. Bd2 Be6 20. Bb4 Rf7 21. Bc5 Na4 22. Bb4 Rd7 23. Qd2 Nb6 24. Bf1 Nxb4 {Juhasz,K (2268)-Nanu,C (2535) Val Thorens 2009 0-1 (53)})

10... Nxa4 11. Qxa4 Bd7 Black kicks my queen around for the next few moves. 12. Qc4 Be6 13. Qe2 Qc8 a very nice multipurpose move. The queen and bishop battery sets up to trade off light square bishops and the queen clears d8 for a rook to control the d-file. 14. Ng5 hinders Black's Q+B battery with the idea of repositioning the knight to c5 or c3. Bg4 15. f3 Bd7 leaves all of his options open 16. Bd2 I thought I had a spare move, but...

after 16.Bd2

16...e5! which is the thematic pawn break in the Neo-Grunfeld when Black has a Nc6. 17. d5 Ne7 18. Qc4 c6 19. d6 Nf5 20. Ne4 Rd8?!  (Keeping the balance was 20... Qb8 21. Qd3 c5 =)

after 20...Rd8

21. g4? throws the chance away. Black does not really want to leave his knight on f5, so there is no need to push it off. White needs the tempo to support the d-pawn with 21. Qc5 Be6 22. Bxa5 and a modest advantage for white.

21... Be6 22. Qc5 Nxd6 23. Nxd6 Bf8 24. Bxa5 Rxd6 25. Bb4 (25. Qxe5 ?? drops the bishop to Rd5) 25... Qd7 26. Qxe5 Rd5

after 26...Rd5

27. Qc3? does not leave the Bb4 enough freedom. In particular c3 is likely to be the best square for the bishop. The last chance to make is a struggle was 27. Qe4 f5 28. gxf5 Bxf5 29. Qf4 Ra4 30. a3 c5 31. b3 Ra6 32. Bc3 with a small advantage to Black.


27... c5  and the white queenside pawns will fall in order to preserve the bishop 28. Ba5 Qb5  29. Bc7 Bg7 30. Qc2 Qxb2 31. Qxb2 Bxb2 32. Rab1 Rd2 33. Rf2 Rxf2 34. Kxf2 Rxa2 35. Kg3 Bb3 36. Bb6 (36. f4 c4 37. Bd5 b5) 36... c4 37. f4 c3 38. Bd4 Bc2 39. Rf1 39... Bd3 0-1

A Rich Tactical Position (plus Position Analysis Sheet)

Last night at the local chess club an interesting position arose with white to move:

Can you find a way out? A small crowd of us spent an hour looking at this position, and we could not find one.

FYI: Black's main threat is 1...f3

FEN for position: r4rk1/p5pp/2Nb4/3b4/2R1pp1q/8/P2BQPPP/1R4K1 w - - 0 1

(select below to see some of what we looked at)
We fiddled with a null move first to examine how 1...f3 would work:
2.g3 fxe2 3.gxh4 Bxc4 and black is a clear rook up.
Key things to notice:

• Black f3 frees up the Bd6 attack on h2
• White recapture Qxc4 comes with check
• White Rc4 pins the supporting pawn if either ...e3 or ...f3 

First try: The natural 1.Rcc1 fails to both 1...e3 or 1...f3. We missed White's best reply to 1...e3 (2.f3 which still is losing after ...exd2)  and followed 2.fxe3 f3 3.g3 Bxg3


Second try: 1.f3 blocks the Black f-pawn from moving and unleashing the Bd6, but 1...exf3! 2.gxf3 Rae8 3.Qd3 Qg5+ 4.Kf1 Re3 looked devastating.


Third try 1.Rd4 saves the rook, threatens the undefended Black bishops, and maintains the potential pin on the e+f pawns, but 1...f3 still works, because the threat to h2 prevents 2.gxf3, so 2.g3 Qf6! 3.Qf1 Bxc6 4.Qc4+ Kh8 and the Bc6 is immune, because the Rd4 would be loose. Black is up a piece and maintains his initiative.

We tried some other things, that I have forgotten.

I wish I had brought one of my new position analysis sheets to keep track:
Position Analysis Sheet

Odds and Year-end

I am currently deep into the innards of the Neo-Grunfeld without much in the way of a guide. Avrukh vol II has two chapters of variations, but his book has no games. I am stuck with a bunch of "obviously white/black stands better" positions for which I have not a clue. I have unannotated games from the databases, but I do not know which are thematic and which are not. There are a few annotated complete games in RD Keene's Flank Openings, but the book is old. I was hoping the Neo-Grunfeld would have been in Wojo's Weapons II, but that book is only King's Indian. Neo-Grunfeld is one of the things that Wojo's Weapons III should cover according to a post by Hilton on the Chess Publishing  forums. It definitely looks like a line with which one would like years of experience.

I think, using Chess Tactics Server for finding new (to me) tactical patterns is working. My CTS rating is stuck around 1450, which keeps showing me the simple problems I need. My rating is kept down, by the many problems with  rich situations, where the obvious move is the solution (I take too much time fully understanding the postion). I will find out in the coming tournament cycle how much this is helping.

I am travelling for the Holidays. I hope to analyze/memorize another game from Chernev's Most Instructive Games of Chess for January and post it as my next post on 1/6/2012. Another post on the Neo-Grunfeld should follow later in January.

Nakamura places 2nd in London Classic

Some Russian ex-world champion placed first.

Nakamura is definitely showing he belongs in world class tournaments, losing only to Magnus Carlsen and winning over Aronian and Anand.

I watched some of the games live via The Week In Chess including Nakamura's rather sloppy win as black against Anand in a mainline King's Indian Defense: Bayonet Attack Variation. in the 4th round on 12/6.

I have been annotating this game off and on over the last week. Chessgames.com has the game and kibitzing, while here my annotations.

Chess terms: Theory

<rant>

The term Opening Theory has always bugged me a bit. I guess I carry around a hard science prejudice that holds that a theory is a mathematical model that has been well tested by experiment. Once a hypothesis becomes theory it is rarely overturned, even when contrary evidence is found. The usual result is that the old theory becomes a special case or approximation of the new theory. Newtonian mechanics is still a very good approximation for most of our dealings with reality. Relativity only becomes relevant at high velocities or accelerations. Quantum mechanics only rears its tangled head when dealing with the very small. Both are much too complicated to prove why it is a good idea to keep a kid in a child seat rather than on your lap, but pointing out the equivalent weight of holding that child in an accident is their mass times the deceleration of the crash is much simpler (Newton rules! whoa!)

Opening Theory always seemed much mushier than that to me. More like trial and error, than each move a hypothesis, and each game a complex experiment providing evidence for or against those hypotheses. I doubt the validity of those experiments. I know the games I play are not well designed experiments. And if my fallibility is not enough, there is that dude (or dudette) across the table who I have no control over.

 The advent of computers only makes it worse: database statistics cluttered by widely varying skill levels of players and games decided by middlegame or endgame blunders, computer evaluations of positions based on deep analysis trees that no human could begin to memorize or understand, good novelties discarded because it was played once in a losing game by a patzer in 1987.

</rant>

Don't fret about it too much. Play openings that often result in positions you understand and are comfortable in. You most likely did not lose because of the opening, but because you made the last mistake. (Unless you are a grandmaster. In which case, why are you reading this patzer's blog anyway?)

Opening Theory Made Easy:

• Keep your king safe.
• Fight for control of the center.
• Develop your pieces.

OTOH, the term Endgame Theory is just silly. Exact endgames are fact. The details of such endgames are computable. 6-piece tablebases exist and memory continues to get cheaper. 7-piece tablebases are only 70 Tbytes so they are just around the corner. The growing cloud will make even more memory available.

TCCL round 4

The team lost the match. I made a horrible blunder. I thought I had a simple two move combination to win a pawn, and somehow did not see one of two recaptures my opponent had. I have no idea why I did not see it.

Boleslavsky vs Lisitsin 1956: The Most Instructive Games of Chess #3

1956 must have been a bad year for Mr. Lisitsin. Last month I looked at game #2 from Chernev's The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played: Tal v Lisitsin 1956. This month in game 3, Lisitsin loses another Sicilian Dragon, this time to Isaac Boleslavsky.

The amount of time I spent with Tal v Lisitsin was not enough to memorize that game. Though I remember many of the features of that game, I have lost track of all the moves. Memorizing another's game is a harder task than I thought. I will try again with Boleslavsky vs Lisitsin. OTOH, I do remember Wojtkiewicz v Binger from the Prepare Like a Grandmaster post.

Anyway, here is my analysis of Boleslavsky v Lisitsin checked by Houdini with opening variations added by Fritz.



The key feature of this game is Boleslavsky creating a secure outpost for his knight on d5.