Changing Tracks

The solution to the position given in the previous post (ECM position #441) was to annihilate White's key defending piece. 1. ... Qxc1 2. Rxc1 R8a2+ 3. Kc3 Rxc1+ 4. Kd3 Bb5# (or 4. Rc2 and Black remains a piece ahead).

Reinfeld position #454
White to move

This position represents the inflexibility I often seem to exhibit in interrupting my train of thought and finding one last idea having already discovered 95% of the solution. Clearly White has mating ideas involving Re8+ Bf8, Bd4#, if only the Queen could be deflected from defending e8. And should the Queen block Bd4+, Rxf8 will be mate.

I became fixated on the idea that 1. Qxd6 must be the solution, forcing 1. ... Qa4, but then what? Queen and Rook barrage on e8 by 2. Qe7? Even if nothing better, 2. ... h5 defends that threat. 2. Re7 looks threatening, but what is the actual threat? My problem was that 1. Qxd6 looked so good, I was reluctant to abandon it and look for a different solution.

In fact, it's not the solution per se that's different. The idea was quite correct, just completely useless without the ability for the idea to 'jump tracks' and find the right key move. After 1. Qxa7 it all works; 1. ... Rc7 2. Qxc7 Qxc7 3. Re8+ and we're in 3. ... Bf8 4. Bd4+ Qg7 5. Rxf8#

Chess isn't about just finding the right idea, without finding the most accurate way to exploit it you still don't get to win.

What Are You Thinking?

We were able to schedule a playing time for today despite a busy weekend for my opponent (happy birthday, DarthDaver!), unfortunately however it appears the FICS server is down so it again looks like a postponement until next weeks' adjournment session.

I had logged in a couple of hours ago to watch our esteemed dictator's game (when the server went down Plebusan was in a good position against bobhill), and do my warm-up excercises with 1001 and ECM. So right now I'm all wound up for battle, but nowhere to fight.

I've been coaching myself to concentrate on my internal dialogue during this game and be mindful that I think about a few things at every move.

Which pieces are unprotected?
Which pieces are immobilised?
What are the targets?
Can something be pinned?
Which tactical motifs might be possible?
Barrage, Fork, Decoy, Interfere, Overload, Annihilate!

Simple, obvious stuff, the elementary Chess thought process that should be so second nature that I shouldn't need to remind myself. So I'll have to keep doing it until I don't have to keep doing it!

Make a list of 'pool' moves from general positional considerations, then at my move find the candidate moves before starting to analyse variations. Missing candidate moves from rushing headlong into analysis of the first move that pops into my head has been a big problem in my long time-control games. Probably one of those bad habits that forms from playing too much blitz.

I dive into 'The Encylcopaedia of Chess Middlegames' at random to find unfamiliar positions to practice searching for tactics, I'll probably start using it more systematically soon. Here's a position from it for no better reason than just for fun.

ECM position #441
Black to move

Teamleague 37 - Round 4 Preview

Our round 4 opponents TeamFuego are the current U2000b section leaders, having won all 3 of their previous matches. Our line-up this round will be 1. bash 2. SimianChatter 3. Plebusan 4. Mejdanblues.

It's looking like my game will be postponed a week to the adjournment session, so this weekend should be an ideal opportunity for me to play some 45 45 practice games with no pressure on.

Although, as you have seen, my results have yet to show signs of improving, I can feel some benefit of my '100 Days to Chess Improvement' excercise. When I see problems posted on various blogs, I can usually solve them now, instead of just staring blankly and wondering what the pretty move will be when I look at the answer. I see the side variations in Fred's book as well as the main solution. I feel more 'solid' in my appreciation of what is happening on the board.

I've gone down fighting against +200 rated opponents in this Teamleague, seeing tactical possibilities that someone would only have pointed out to me after the game in the previous tournament. This leads me to wonder if I should consider an opening repertoire of gambits at this stage, and come out fighting instead of just losing that way! It is true that most games below master level (ie. even 2000-2300 rated 'expert' players) are won and lost through fairly simple tactics. I think I need to 'mix it up' from the start rather than wait to get squeezed by these higher rated opponents.

Kings Are Always X-Rayed And Can Never Be Pinned

This is inferred from our definitions of X-Ray Attack and Pinning but while I'm preparing a more comprehensive discussion of pinning for a future post I thought I'd make this simple and obvious point here. Where x-ray attacks generally force the directly attacked piece to move (tempo-winning), a pin is usually exploited by compounding an additional motif.

Reinfeld position #489
White to move

If the Black King in the diagram were a different piece, say a Bishop, it would merely be the 'blocker' in a pin after 1. Ra7. Black would have a move in hand to use keeping his pieces defended. As it is, after 1. Ra7+, the King is compelled to move removing a defender of the Rook. Annihilating it's other defender by 2. Rxh7, White wins a piece.

I realise that what I'm saying in this post is almost so trivial as to be not worth mentioning, but that's a part of the point too. If all the mechanics of Chess were so automatically apparent to us, we wouldn't still be patzers.

Teamleague 37 - Round 3 (part 2)

1 game point, 0 match points from this round. 'Nuff sed.

As to the World Championship Match currently being played... anyone else notice that Anand is bucking the conventional wisdom by trying (and succeeding!) to win with Black and draw with White?

Go Vishy!

Teamleague 37 - Round 3 (part 1)

With 3 of our games played so far in this round blackk has put in a workman-like win, while Mejdanblues was not so lucky this week. Mapleleaf plays FM Maras later today, and would have been needing only a draw to win the match for us if I had not made such a botch of my game against dzomba. As it is, Mapleleaf will now need to come out swinging to level up the match score.

So what went wrong? In short, I got the better of the complicated tactics only to make a mess of the simple things. But first to the pre-game preparation.

Our "team intelligence" indicated that dzomba plays the Moller / Arkangel defence to the Ruy Lopez (eco C78), and I spent some time researching that. My conclusion was that it's a very attractive variation for Black, with ... a6, ... b5, and ... Bc5 initiating early counter-attacking possibilities. I might even take it up myself. It's been played quite a bit at the top level over the last 15 years or so and I found games involving the likes of Shirov, Topalov, Short, Adams, even Kramnik. Anand has played it on both sides of the board, and had some good results with the White pieces, so I concentrated on those games.

Immediately before the game, I went through "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" for about an hour ('rehearsal'), and then about another hour looking at "The Encyclopaedia of Chess Middle Games". The objective of this was to practice finding tactics in unfamiliar positions, so having warmed up the 'pattern recognition circuits' with 1001, I used ECM to crank up the 'search and calculate algorithm'. This worked quite well, and I'll continue to do it for future games.



I got through the opening reasonably well thanks to Vishy, although I rather suspect I mixed up the myriad of sub-variations. Sometimes White plays h3 preventing ... Bg4 with d4, sometimes h3 is omitted in favour of the more conservative d3. At move 15. ... cxb6 is something of a concession by Black who would naturally rather play Rxb6 but then the discovered attack d5 will be strong. So White has invested a pawn for the two Bishops on an open board and a very active position.

My pawn on c3 is interesting, it looks like a straggler but has a blessed life. It can't be taken with unprotected knights at c3 and c7, and at move 18 Crafty momentarily considers snipping it off before more soberly looking at ... Qc7 and ... Qf6 with about -0.5 to -0.6 advantage to Black.

By move 23 the Black castle is all but unprotected by pieces, and I've forced the first weakening of it's wall. Then, oh dear! blinded by my own tactical geniusity I played 24. Qxe5??. The justification of this move is the game continuation, but I finally noticed I'd left Bb3 en prise about 10 seconds after playing it and nearly thumped at the 'resign' button there and then. Fortunately, it looks like Bxh6 might be a mating attack after ... Nxb3 (actually it isn't even close for so many reasons) and my opponent went for the 'safe' exchange win with ... Nd3 whereupon I breathed a huge sigh of relief and uncorked my combination. Crafty has Black still winning comfortably after 25. ... Kxf7 26. Qf5+ Qf6 (Rh4 is unprotected... oops!) but I got lucky again when he recaptured with the Rook. All-in-all I benefitted from playing some 'weak aggressive' style poker. 24. Bc2 maintains a small plus for White.

Finally, I had seen 37. Bd2 defending the mate-in-1 threat but didn't have the courage to play it. My reasoning was that the pin by say ... Qb2 would be ugly although obviously I can defend the Bishop as often as it's attacked with Queen and Rook. As it happens, Bd2 is wrong because of ... Qa7+ with ... b4 and ... Ba6+ and is actually no better than the move I played in the forlorn hope of making threats with my King-side pawns while rounding up the b-pawn. As you can see, dzomba had the necessary technique to force the pawn home.

It's not the most terrible game I've played, I made a fight of it. I at least found some tactical possibilities, even if they did mostly turn out to be furphys. It's still accuracy of analysis I need the most work on at the moment.

Good luck with the game tonight, Mapleleaf.

Teamleague 37 - Round 2

Go team!

~or~

"Your absence brings us great joy!"

While I was away on my intensive GM training weekend, Current_Affairs defeated Team_Tsubasa 2.5 - 1.5, with wins to Mapleleaf and blackk, and a draw by Plebusan in the last game to secure the match points.

With bash taking a break in round 3, Mapleleaf will play board 1, I'll be on board 2, blackk on board 3, and Mejdanblues board 4.

Teamleague 37 - Game 1

My first 'problem' came at move 12. The idea of the previous two moves had been to continue 12. ... Ne4 here but I became worried about the consequences of 13. Bd3 Nxd2 14. Bxh7 Kh8 - an illustration of the weakness in my analytical ability mentioned in the previous post.

The played move was alright (the position even slightly favours Black), but 12. ... Ne4 13. Bd3 Bxg5 14. hxg5 Qxg5 15. O-O-O h6 would have been better, and Crafty gives lines involving 13. Nf3 and 13. Nxe4 as optimal (-0.4 to -0.5 range).

Around this time, I had decided that playing ... h6 would only be useful to a) halt the march of White's h-pawn on h5, or b) to prevent the loss of my h-pawn to a barrage on b1-h7 (maybe with Ng5). At move 13 Mapleleaf suggested ... h6 to kick the Bishop and control g5, and we spent some time analysing 13. ... h6 14. O-O-O hxg5 15. hxg5 - White's h4 has little meaning if the Bishop intended to retreat!

squib (1978) vs SimianChatter (1831)
Position after 13. ... h6 14. O-O-O hxg5 15. hxg5 (analysis)

Black's defensive idea is to play ... g6, ... Kg7, ... Rg8 and take flight with the King, while White builds the attack with Bd3, Rh3, R1h1 constantly threatening an orgy of sacrifices in a mating attack. We concluded that White's pawn on g5 helps Black's defense more than White's attack (blocking access to g5 from his pieces) even though it is captured with tempo, and I think White's attack is certainly easier to play than finding the accurate defensive moves for Black, especially 'at the board'.

Crafty nuts the whole idea by simply playing (from the diagram) 15. ... Bxg5 16. Kb1 Bh6 (eval about -1.3) and giving 13. ... h6 14. Bxe7 Qxe7 etc. Damn machines.

Around move 15 it was probably a good idea to get my Queen off the central files and out of fire of the Rooks before commencing to roll my centre pawns. The position is looking like Black has played a successful French Defense; The d- and e-pawns are preparing to wreak havoc and the 'sleeping' Queen's Bishop is about to spring to life. I like playing the French when that happens.

At 17 simply ... Nxf6 would have saved a lot of headaches, but unfortunately I'd already hit on the idea of provoking b4 with ... Nc5 then open the a-file with ... a6 and not be concerned with pawn structure or their number if my major pieces could storm the bastions.

21. ... Rf4 is the losing move, 22. Ng5 threatening the fork at e6 leaving no time to exploit the weakened castled position while I was dreaming White would play Nd6. After 21. ... Rg6 Black's position is still favourable (around -0.3 to -0.4).

This game reinforces that it's time for me to learn the next basic Chess skill - the analysis of variations.

Teamleague 37 - Round 1

It's great to see 16 teams entered in the U2000 section of Teamleague 37, we've been split into 2 groups for a 7-round round-robin, to be followed by a play-off between the groups.

Team Current_Affairs final starting squad with fixed ratings is:

• bash 2139
• Mapleleaf (Deputy Captain) 1872
• SimianChatter 1802
• Plebusan (Captain) 1775
• blackk 1728
• mejdanblues 1661

The plan is to play about 5 rounds each to rotate players into the line-up.

I've only time for a quick wrap-up of round 1 (so no one thinks I'm shirking!), I'll publish some analysis of my game when I have a little more time.

With Monkey Club fielding 1900+ players on all boards it was a tough first round for everyone and I think the 0-4 result doesn't reflect the quality of the games. Mejdanblues especially played a terrific game, as always punching well above his weight against an opponent rated 250 points higher. He certainly had drawing opportunities in a tricky, highly technical endgame (N vs B, Pawn, then Q), and possibly even winning chances.

I wasn't altogether unhappy with my own game. I ran through '1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations' for 45 minutes or so before the game, and I can work through 150-200 positions in that time now. It's interesting to notice 'Chess Vision' starting up within the first 20 or so problems doing this. Rehearsing known positions (as opposed to solving them) seems to warm up the parts of the brain that do pattern recognition during the game.

So I was seeing the board quite well, but my ability to accurately analyse and assess variations is still sadly lacking. Now I feel my tactics are improving, it's time to begin the next phase of this excercise and start on my analysis skills. This is done by taking complcated middlegame positions, writing down all the variations you can see, and then comparing them to GM annotations, as described by Kotov in 'Think Like a Grandmaster'.

My time management, which is usually quite good, was also a bit off in this game - too long spent in the opening and early middle game left me playing on my increments for the last few moves.

Oh No! Not This One Again!

Here's one of those positions that I have some sort of psychological aversion to solving. I don't know why, but every time I come to it I think "Oh no! Not this one again!".

Reinfeld position #871
White to move

Maybe because the solution is an ugly little bush of variations. Maybe because the first time I attempted it my solution was... different from Fred's. Maybe because it's the sort of position that's likely to arise in practice but it looks like White doesn't deserve to be winning it.

Who knows? I have some prejudice about it. I just don't like it.

The solution is really quite straight forward, we just put a gun to the King's head and march him to an out-of-the-way place where we can bludgeon him to death. It involves visualising a few mate threats where Rooks and the Knight combine, probably this is my aversion, it's obviously something I'm not too good at.

1. b4+ Kxb4 (1. ... Kb6 2. Rb7+ Ka6 3. Ra1#) 2. Rb7+ Kc3 (2. ... Kc5 3. Rb5# Crafty prolongs the death-agony by playing 2. ... Rb6 3. Rxb6 Kc5) 3. Ne4+ Kc2 (3. ... Kc4 4. Rd4#) 4. Rbb1 and 5. Rdc1# will follow.