We have beautiful winter weather, almost too good to play or follow chess. The lake on the first picture is quite large, from one end to the other it’s more than 1.4km (0.9 miles). The other is smaller but closer to the place where I live and they don’t charge for skating.

In round 2 of the city championship I faced a young woman rated 215 points below me so chances for a win were good. Somehow I thought to remember that her sister plays the Alapin variation (2. c3) against the Sicilian and as I haven’t played it in ages I better prepared for it. Of course it came completely different, we played an Open Sicilian and I had the chance to try out my hedgehog:

The hedgehog setup looks quite unchallenging but once the position opens it gets pretty dangerous. Here, however, I had a tactical shot and played 13…Bxe4. I thought 20 minutes about it to make sure that the counter attacks don’t work. What I didn’t want to do was the allow some crazy sac that blows the position around my king apart.

White had the chance to cause some trouble after move 19:

20. Rxe5! looks very interesting because after 20…Qxe5 21. Bf4 the queen is trapped and only the brave counter attack 21…Bxb4 will save the day for Black. Very dangerous! In the endgame I had the advantage and was able to convert it into the full point. You can replay the game here.

Next week I will meet an opponent from last year - last time he had a rating of 1664, today it’s 1819. I will have White and after looking at the games from the other players I came to the conclusion that

• players of 16yrs or younger prefer 1.e4 and 1…e5
• players between 16 and 30, well, anything is possible, from Pirc to Reti.
• older players most of the time play 1.d4

I will spend some time this week to study the Ruy-Lopez. I am well prepared but I want to study some model games to understand the typical plans better, especially how to counter the attack on the queen side.

I don’t have to tell you how unique Tal was so let’s head over to his fascinating game against GM Hans-Joachim Hecht, which you can replay here. What would you do in the following position?

Definitely not 19. exf6!, a queen sacrifice à la Tal. The story goes that Najdorf kissed Tal for this move and people were feeling the echos of the game Lilienthal – Capablanca, 1935 where the following happened:

Lilienthal played the forcing 20. exf6 and Capablanca resigned 6 moves later. It’s not a real sacrifice, Black’s king is trapped in the center and White will capture at least one more minor piece. With a potential doubling of the rooks on the e-file and a pawn on g7 White is clearly better here. In the game Black played the queen to the e-file and White ended with 2 minor pieces for a rook and a huge advantage in activity.

In the Tal game it wasn’t so clear although the computer evaluates the position as equal. This is a clear reminder that you have to look at all candidates even if they look completely crazy at first sight. Chess is a creative game and playing unconventional moves is great fun. Look at the position after move 21:

Would you like to play Black? Hecht mentioned that he was a bit shocked by this move and that it took him minutes until he was able to calculate the variations. Under this pressure he was able to find the best defensive move 21…Nxh4. He later made positional inaccuracies that lost the game.

There are two interesting conclusions:

• If you have the choice between a solid move or a positional sacrifice, chose the latter. Humans don’t like pressure and often collapse if they have to find many only moves in a row. Not to mention that the defensive capabilites on club level are not the best.
• Always look for a defense, no matter how lost the position may look. It’s amazing what you can do to stay in the game and stubborn resistance is an important skill to get better in chess.

Tal’s games are great for motivation. Right now it’s not really necessary because you can enjoy good chess in the Wijk an Zee tournament. And if you still wonder why learning to make with bishop + knight is good for your chess, look at Carlsen’s win against Aronian. That’s piece coordination!

In the first long of this year (2 hours for 40 moves, 1 hour to finish the game) I had the white pieces and my 1963 rated opponent played the Caro-Kann. I mixed up the opening moves a bit but reached a very interesting position where I had  enough pressure to make life difficult for Black. There was even the chance to win a pawn with a very simple tactic:

Alas, I missed my chance and after 3.5 hours of playing I went for an unsound knight sacrifice and overlooked a backrank mate. Game over. You can replay the whole game here.

My opponent takes chess serious and we had a long post-mortem analysis session. This was actually the first time that it happened that deeply, usually my young opponents are too shy and the older ones only play for fun.

The next game is on Friday and I will play against a young woman rated 1435. Her whole family plays chess so I definitely need to watch out. I remember that her sister uses 2. c3 to counter the Sicilian and I will have to spend some time to prepare accordingly.

I have played my first 2 tournaments and greatly enjoyed them! Including league games I played 16 games over the board (OTB):

• 8 games with White, 4 won, 2 drawn, 2 lost
• 8 games with Black, 1 won, 2 drawn, 5 lost

I have analyzed the games deeply and it became clear that I didn’t lose any of the games in the opening. Most of my opponents were not booked up anyway and we ended in unknown variations very early. Getting familiar with the resulting positions will have the top priority.

Online I played more games:

• 24 games with White, 12 won, 8 drawn, 4 lost
• 25 games with Black, 13 won, 2 drawn, 10 lost

This is quite interesting. As Black I lost 2 Benko Gambit games  but won 4 games where the move order resulted in English games or in the Reti. With the Sicilian I won 6 games in my favourite Kan/Paulsen system and lost 4 so this is clearly something that can be used to win games. In addition I lost 2 closed Sicilians.

With White the top openings were 5 Caro-Kanns (1 win, 3 draws, 1 loss), 5 Ruy Lopez (3 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss), 4 Sicilians (1 win, 2 draws, 1 loss) and 3 French (1 win, 1 draw, 1 loss).

At the moment I need to play more games to see more middlegame positions and to learn the attacking plans. OTB games are especially useful because something is on stake and the mix of focus and high tension results in creative play from both players. I will get my chance this weekend when the first round of the city championship starts (7 rounds, 2h for 40 moves + 1h to finish the game). Considering my current rating of 1650 national ELO I will have to face a strong opponent in this round, probably someone around 1900-2000.

Wish me luck!

Some might remember that I have set myself goals for 2011. I have achieved the number of long games (65 instead of 50 planned) but failed to analyze 30 games (28 only). Regarding chess material I radically changed my plan in the middle of the year and I noticed that if you play a lot of games, you don’t have much time to study new topics. At my level it doesn’t matter that much. Being tactically alert and following the right thought process is more important than acquiring specific knowledge. The motivation is much higher if I go wrong in a game and look up the correct way post mortem. The knowledge will be connected to a particular experience and can be easier retrieved.

Goals for 2012

My goals for this year are:

• Playing 50 long games. The more the better and I particularly have to look for strong opponents.
• Focus on the implementation of the right thought process. No additional knowledge is required at the moment, it’s enough to deepen what I already know but forget to use in a game.
• Annotate 30 games.
• min. 10 puzzles on Chesstempo per week
• Play 1 long game per week + post mortem analysis or alternatively analyze 2 games. This will result in two long chess related sessions covering all aspects (opening, middlegame, endgame).
• Review the status in Summer 2012 and identify the main weaknesses. Create a trainings program for Sept-Dec to address these weaknesses.

That’s it, nothing sophisticated. It’s my 3rd year of serious chess study and there is no pressure yet. The goal is to collect enough material to make progress towards ELO 1800.

This week I will think about my chess goals for 2012 and come up with a new plan. After my vacation I am not really motivated but I am sure that this is going to change very soon.

After 29. Kf4 Black could capture the rook on f1 but endless hours on ChessTempo have prepared me for such situations. Queen and rook work together in a terrific way even when other pieces are around so I looked and found a quick mate.

I hope that I can spend some time on chess study after christmas. Two long games per week are enough to satisfy my appetite at the moment and I don’t look at anything else.

There would have been some time but I rather tried to “summon a disaster on the unbelievers” on the Shaman table in ZEN pinball on the PS3. It took me more than 3 hours until I finally managed to win this trophy. With the upcoming release of Vengeance and Virtue I am afraid I will spend even more time playing pinball. The trailer looks gorgeous:

When it comes to virtual pinball though, nothing beats the Williams Hall of Fame collection. Great ball physics makes the game a unique experience and Medieval Madness is a blast:

Let’s hope that my interest will slow down in the next weeks so that I can focus on chess again.

11.Qa7 was already not the best but now the queen is trapped! 13…Nc8 and Black gets the queen for a rook.

In round 3 I managed to bamboozle my opponent in the opening. He tried to avoid the Benko Gambit that I usually play and we reached a dangerous position where he accepted the offered pawns anyway. It was already difficult but the next move doesn’t work:

A nice try to force an exchange of queens but Black replied 20…Qxd2 and White resigned.

Yesterday I played against a very aggressive opening similar to the Schliemann. The computer identified it as the Latvian: Fraser defense but I must confess I have never heard this name before. For a good reason! Black is down a pawn if White plays precisely – or more if he goes wrong in this position:

10…Rxe2? and White will be up the exchange + one or two pawns. It still took time to convert the advantage into a win but it’s definitely easier if you have the better material and pawn structure. The best move was 10…Qe7 but even then it’s not easy.

This was long game #54 this year and there will be at least 3 more. First goal achieved.

Last Saturday was another test for my Ruy-Lopez as White. The rest of the family was at home baking cookies and I would have loved to join them but my chess club needed me. My opponent made some dubious moves and finally even lost a piece. He didn’t give up though, pushed his pawns and without any reason I blundered a piece back and finally lost. Unbelievable, you can replay the whole desaster here. When the chess heavy season is over I will take out all the endgames that I have lost and play them against a computer to understand them better. This will boost my confidence so that I am not scared anymore once someone is starting to move a pawn here and another there.

X-mas is getting close and I decided to upgrade my old Aquarium to the latest version 2011. A really neat feature is that you can store the evaluation of different engines in different trees now, so a possible configuration looks like this (the position is taken from the game above, a variation where Black plays 11…f5):

If the position was already played in other games, you will see a CAP entry as well, a database with millions of computer evaluations. IDEA is an Aquarium specific feature that allows interactive, computer-assisted exploration of variations. There are a couple of articles on the webpage if you want to know more.

c5 was the last try from Black to achieve something. In time scramble I completely missed that I had an easy win by pushing my g-pawn. Taking the pawn is bad, and not taking is bad either. After some more exchanges and a final mistake from my side the game was drawn. As a conclusion, I need to work on my time management and on my endgame skills, especially simple pawn  endings.

In the Team4545League I got a surprisingly easy win after an early mistake from my opponent. Last night I played another game and I must confess that this was one of the most boring games ever. Drawing with Black is okay but chess should also be fun and of course I play to win, not to draw. In the post-mortem analysis the computer came up with a nice idea: push the g-pawn and start a kingside assault. This is something I could try out next time but I will rather choose a different setup against the English opening where I have better winning chances.

Tomorrow is another OTB league game (I will have White) and on Tuesday the next TL game (I will have Black). Wish me luck.

In my game I missed a great chance for an attack:

Position after 13...Bb4

What would you play? 14. Be3 is a calm, positional move but with so many pieces pointing to Black’s king the correct move was 14. Nxf7. I looked at this move but obviously not deep enough. If I ever want to reach ELO 2000+ such moves must become second nature.

One day later I let my opponent escape with a draw in a league game. He played the Bird (1.f4) and I quickly got the better position in the middlegame. Being low on time I missed a mate and later forced a draw in a better position:

Position after 35. Qf3

I don’t know if I would have found the mate during the game. At least I should have tried to reach the 40th move safely to get another hour on the clock. After 35…Qd2+ 36. Kb3 b6?! the threat was gone and I quickly called it a day instead of playing another hour for a win.

After this hot streak I lost my first game in the U1800 division of the TL. A successful king side attack won me 2 pawns but then I played like a robot and finally lost. I already did a first analysis and my anger quickly vanished. This was a great lesson in chess strategy and time well spent. Some crucial points are clearer now and this will be helpful in my future chess career.

http://team4545league.org/pgnplayer/pgnplayer.php?ID=50024

Looking back at my league history, I’ve never lost the first game of a season so unfortunately this is no indicator for my performance in the future. You can replay the game here.

I missed a big chance at move 21:

Position after 20...Ng6

21. Nf5 would have been a great move with a big advantage for White. I was so concerned about my bishop that I didn’t even look at this move. There were further inaccuracies in the endgame from both sides and at one point Black had a great chance to win a pawn. I will have to analyze the game to learn more about the ideas.

There was a nasty stalemate trap in the end, which shows that it’s always worth playing on:

Promoting the pawn is now a bad idea. b7 leads to a mate in 3 but I played the ultra-safe Ba1 and my opponent resigned 2 moves later.

You can replay the game here. My next opponent is 22 and has a national rating of 1802, international 1940. With the white pieces more preparation is necessary. There isn’t much that can shock me in the Ruy Lopez,  Caro-Kann or in the Pirc but I need to look at some Sicilan lines and also at the French. Considering the age my guess is that I will have to face a Sicilian.

And now something completely different. Austria’s current number 1 in the Charts is the very popular Hubert von Goisern. Folk music goes pop and although I’ve been living here for 7 years I can hardly understand every 2nd word. Being a native speaker doesn’t help much when it comes to dialects.

The rest of the weekend I tried to buy a prepaid PSN (Playstation Network Card) for a US account. I liked the old japanese roleplaying games like Chrono Triggers a lot and was happy when I heard that it’s available for the PS3. Unfortunately it’s completely unclear when it will make its way to Europe so I created a US account. The big challenge was to put some money into it. I couldn’t use my credit card because I can’t change the country of the billing address. No problem, I thought, there are some dealers around who sell the codes for a small activation fee. For whatever reason these guys are rather paranoid. They need a photo id, or a picture with you holding your photo id, and they want to call you before doing business. The phone call turned out to be a big problem, I never got one and all orders were cancelled.

Finally it worked (here) and I can start playing. Maybe not this week as I need to prepare for my chess tournament but the long and cold winter nights are not far off…

What is so scary about the gambit?

In one word: piece activity. You immediately get open lines for the rooks and the queen with the simple plan to put pressure on the queen side. There are some manoeuvers that one should know but that’s about it – no myriads of theory, it’s all very concrete and Black needs to play actively with every move. Otherwise White will blockade the queenside and eventually promote a pawn. That’s not what you want.

I have looked at some games this week and the conclusion is that it will take some time to master the opening. It will surely help to improve my skill to play with pieces, especially the rooks, and I am ready for many losses.

You may wonder if it’s still played on the highest level (Kasparov, Topalov, Carlsen all played it) and to my big surprise the answer is yes! It arrived on the board in yesterday’s game between Iordachescu and Grischuk (see here). It ended in a draw and one can see some typical plans in the fianchetto variation.

Tonight I might have another chance to play the Benko. Stay tuned.

Game 1 was against a 50 year old player with a rating of 1942 (FIDE: 2029). My rating is 1601 so chances to win the game were rather slim but facing strong opposition is what brings you forward. I survived a dangerous kingside attack, equalized around move 24 and lost after bold pawn play by my opponent. You can replay the game here.

Game 2 was against a talented 10 year old boy who has already won the U10 county championship. He made no mistakes and when I got in serious time trouble I missed a great chance to win a rook. We played on, by far the longest game I’ve ever played (5 hours!) and reached the following position:

Position after 53...Qd6

Black is ready to play Ra3 to attack g3. It’s a dangerous idea but White has something better. I played 54. Qb5, rubbed my eyes and tried to look worn (no big deal after 5 hours). My opponent smiled, looked again and played 54…Ra3?? His face dropped after 55. Qe8+ with mate to follow soon. You can replay the whole game here.

Friday follows round 2 of my OTB tournament, I will have Black against another strong player (FIDE 1930, national ELO 1863).

If you have followed my blog recently you know about the never-ending search for the best balance. I had to made a decision regading ChessTempo. My silver membership has expired and I wasn’t sure if I should extend it. I focussed heavily on tactics this month and got my rating there back to 2000 (it has dropped to 1975 now), however, I had the strong feeling that I spend too much time with the site. A couple of chess teacher say that you should do it as warm-up, spend only 15-30 minutes but not more. Do it regularely, don’t miss a day and you will see progress.

A good reason for that, and I tend to agree, is that you burn out too much. Your brain will have a harder time to absorb the material from other sessions if you have already 2+ hours tactical drill behind you. A typical example that doing more isn’t really helpful.

Let’s see how it goes.

Knowledge is a dangerous sword; in a weak hand that does not know how to wield it, it gets in its master’s way and wounds him. (Montaigne)

When I read this quote I immediately had to think about the game of chess. The positions that can appear on the board are almost infinite (I spare you the math) and solving the game seems to be far in the future. Nevertheless, there is the strong impression that the knowledge that you need to possess to master the game can be obtained in a short amount of time. Many GMs make a living with books that tell you the Secrets of Chess, willing to reveal Everything about Chess, to make YOU a Grandmaster. Know the right opening variation and you have almost won. In addition you will hear about 50 endgame position you have to know, 300 middlegame positions etc.

It’s the human nature to give in to such calls. Miracle healers exist since centuries, exploiting the wish for simple answers. Take this pill and you will become smarter. (The movie is worth watching.) In the same way, weak but motivated amateur players look for the easy road to chess mastery – but there is none. You have to work hard and nobody will take it away from you.

There will be enough chances in the next weeks. I will participate in a nearby city championship (5 rounds, one game per week, time control is 90min + 30 seconds increment from move one) and in November the next Team4545League will start. After that it will be time to check if I got closer to my goal to reach ELO 1800 or what I have to change in my training.

Another nice find this week was the new website from Igor Khmelnitsky, the author of the Chess Exam books. He has put some material online and you can even take the test if you want (I prefer the books though). I don’t know if it’s worth paying for something like that but I liked the following statement from the FAQ:

You can only take 2-3 exercises each day. The main reason is to encourage you to spend quality time (5-20 minutes) on each position. Solving problems is best when done regularly, yet it should only be a part of your chess training.

There is even a timer so that you must wait at least 3 minutes until you are allowed to check the solution. That’s a nice approach to force students to think long enough. It also made me think about the hours I have spent with ChessTempo. It’s a good site, no question, but what is the right amount of puzzles you should solve? 5? 10? 100?

It’s all about finding the right balance.

Finally, a new version of Fritz has been released this month.

Usually I am not so excited to see a new Fritz. It has a lot of features but often there is nothing that is really groundbreaking. This time it’s different. There is a cool feature called Let’s Check. Engine evaluations are stored online and shared with the community. In Aquarium storing the evaluations has been part of the product right from the beginning but only of your own analyses. Now imagine a large community sharing their results and making them available! Grand Masters will probably not use this feature to hide their ideas from others but I am sure that motivated amateurs or players with big egos will quickly jump on the train and start contributing. An evaluation by itself is nothing, as we all know, but it would be a good method to suggest candidates that you otherwise might have missed.

Nowadays there are a lot of opportunities to play games against humans. Nevertheless I decided to play some games against the computer to get more practice with my opening repertoire. The silicon machine is a ruthless fellow and will exploit mistakes at once. This helps a lot to understand move orders and tactical threats.

A big disadvantage is that it’s hard to stay focussed. It’s something completely different when you sit at a real board and make your moves, or when you play in an online league where the result matters. For me it works if I first make up my mind with what I want to achieve in the trainings session. It will have an impact on the strength of the computer as well. To train an opening I don’t limit the computer much, it should play pretty strong to catch mistakes as soon as possible. When I want to train my general play I adjust the ELO level, for now 1800 is strong enough to kick my ass.

Most modern programs have a feature to adjust the strength. Delfi is a good one, it doesn’t play like Kasparov for the first 15 moves and then blunders a piece or a pawn. It really seems to play like a decent amateur – or a strong one if you set the ELO to 2300. Other people prefer Chessmaster or Fritz.

If winning is really important to you, I suggest to use one of the fun programs:

May the force be with you. (Click on the picture to go see the old DOS game in action on YouTube.)

Innovative Chess

What about a game of chess?

Every 6 month one gets doubts about how to study chess, whether one is on the right track or if it’s necessary to change something. For such periods a trainer would be good because you can rely on his/her guidance to reach your goal. Without a trainer you must believe in yourself and in the power of your program and just keep going. And that’s what I am doing.

I am back at Chesstempo with tactics training. In the last months I have only used it to practice simple tactics but I felt that this wasn’t enough. Simple tactics help you to get ideas and it’s important to increase your arsenal. In addition it’s necessary to practice calculation, to learn to visualize longer variations. Both is necessary so I decided to add solving tougher puzzles to my daily training. After the inevitable drop after such a long break my rating is now rising again and has reached 1930. Let’s see when I reach 2000 again.

Regarding simple tactics and patterns, the big question is if it’s better to solve thousands of puzzles or learn by heart a carefully selected collection like Lev Alburt’s Pocket Training Book. This is #102 from the book:

White to move

I will let you find the solution on your own this time. The first 2 moves should be obvious, the third is a nice rook move. This one example tells you everything there is to know about deflection, it’s practical and with the suprising third move it will keep in your mind for a while.

White to play

Here I uncorked the stunning 25. Qa8?? and resigned immediately. An unbelievable blunder caused by excitement and a non existing mate-in-one.

In my game last night, which you can replay here, everything was pretty even until something went wrong for me. Usually White should attack but instead I found myself in the tough position to defend my IQP. Fortunately I survived the late middlegame stage and found myself in a superior endgame with bishop + 2 pawns against knight. Here I gave my opponent the chance for a draw:

Black to move after 75. Kf6

We were both in time trouble and Black missed the chance. Nxb7 Bxb7 and stalemate! Now it was up to me to find a way to win the game:

White to move after 80...Nb8

The knight simply jumps back and forth and is ready to capture the pawn.What I had to do was to reach the same position that I had now but with Black to move. 3 moves later Black resigned.

A sweet victory and much brain food about how to play with an IQP. Usually I try to avoid it but in this game I have seen its power if you manage to coordinate your pieces in the right way.

White to play after 26...Re2!!

I saw the computer evaluation rapidly going up in Black’s favour and thought by myself, how does Black win here, what’s wrong with 27. Qxe2?

It took me ages to see that 27…Qg3! will win in this case. What a pin and kudos to Svidler for finding this move. All attempts to save the game fail, e.g. Nc6 to block the diagonale loses a lot of material and still keeps up the mate threats. Qc3, as played in the game, allows Black to finish his mating attack and White is too slow with his counter.

Black to play and win

A nice combination from Anand.

On the other hand there were a couple of moves in this game that came out of the blue for me, e.g. in this position:

Black to play after 4...Qb6 5.b3

You have to recognize that the bishop on h4 is hanging so that the pawn on d4 is actually pinned. When it moves, Black has the strong move Qb4+ winning the bishop. If you can see all this then the next move would be less surprising. 6…e5. After 7. Nf3 e4 Black enjoys a space advantage that he later exploits in a king side attack.

What I found very interesting was the concept to look for double attacks. Simple threats can be easily defended. A combination of ideas can lead to material gain or at least, if your opponent defends well, to a positional advantage. If you collect enough of these small positional advantages you will soon have a winning position. Chess can be so simple.

The next months will be more chess intensive and to get in the right mood, Farbror has announced the goals of the Three Musketeers (among them yours truly). It’s nothing new but a nice way to keep up the motivation and to add some steadiness to our study.

Getting long games is no problem, there will be at least 4 of them as part of the Team4545League starting with two White games in round 4. I spent a lot of time with my new weapon 1. b3 so it might be worth trying it out. After my poor performance last season I am a little bit the underdog with no pressure whatsoever.

I am currently looking at old master games, the last two were played by Morphy. In the following position there was a nice forcing sequence that even leads to mate:

Position after 15. Qb1

It’s interesting to compare with which piece to capture the knight on e2. 15…Nxe2 would free the d4 square for the queen but after that the attack is stalled. 15…Bxe2 allows to bring in the second knight and Black’s advantage is overwhelming. The whole sequence leads to the following position where I looked hard but missed the mate in 3:

Black to move after 21. Kh4

Morphy as we know and love him! You can replay the whole game here.

The other sections aren’t much better. I didn’t like The Lifecycle of Software Objects, found the name dropping in The Emperor of the Mars annoying and stopped reading For want of a nail after a couple of awful pages.

Looking back at the last years, there were usually 2 out of 5 nominees that I enjoyed, and often they didn’t win. Some time ago I have started to read the best short stories of the genre and used best-of lists and awards as a guideline. Instead of focussing on the winners I should change my strategy and include the nominees as well. A great resource are the posts from Jo Walton on tor.com and the comments from the readers.

If you are interested, take a look at  my take on the SF stories until 1999. The page is still work-in-progress but feel free to leave your comments.

• analyze at least 10 master games (Guess-the-Move style)
• don’t play Blitz or 5min games, minimum time control is 15min

The last point was necessary to stop myself from wasting time by playing too much Blitz. It’s fun but you don’t learn anything new – and you get lazy. Instead of using your brain and doing some hard work you switch to auto-mode and just push wood.

I stumbled upon a new website: WhyChess.com. It has a lot of material although I am not sure how useful it will be to me. The coverage of the World Cup is great though. Houdini is used to provide evaluations and it’s fascinating to watch the games this way. You can quickly jump to a game with some action. Grischuk for instance spotted a nice shot in his game:

White to move after 20...Kh8

21. Bf6! wins immediately and IM Genba resigned two moves later. A pattern worth remembering!

Harry Potter 7.2

We started with the long awaited final part of the Harry Potter series. A satisfying end and I am motivated to pick up the books. So far I have only read the first part, which was okay but too much of a young adult novel and I didn’t feel the desire to read the other books until now.

Miss Saigon

Next we saw an absolutely amazing performance of Miss Saigon in our local theater. I had shivers running up and down my spine in this very dramatic and emotional musical. The singing and acting was brilliant! I listened to the CD with the original London cast afterwards on my mp3 player and was at first disappointed. In comparison to the theater experience it just felt flat, I couldn’t believe it. Back home I put the CD in my hifi system with good loudspeakers and wow, what a difference.

The 12 Tenors

Sunday night we watched the performance of The 12 Tenors. The ambience was beautiful, an open air concert with the stage near the lake. After 40min light rain started but fortunately it stopped some minutes later. There was something for everyone, from classical pieces to musical to pop and rock.

Super 8

Finally another movie, Super 8. It didn’t blow me away but I liked it although I had the feeling that its pieces didn’t fit together. A strange mix of family drama, first love, horror and science fiction. The retro feeling was nice and I wonder if my kids will ever know what a walkman is.

Original serial #1

Silver Edition #1

The serial started 1961 and is still alive today, this week #2607 (!) will be published. If you now think Perry who? you can read this wikipedia article or head over to the great German site perry-rhodan.net.

It’s best describes as fast paced SF action space opera. The silver edition has cool 3d covers and combines 5 to 8 issues in revised an abridged form. That’s the one I am currently reading and it will be interesting to see how good it stood the test of time. Part 1 brought back a lot of old memories and it looks like a great summer. Let’s see how much I can stand of it.

Next on the reading list:

Silver Edition #2

Levon Aronian, picture from Wikipedia

An interesting interview with Aronian can be found at crestbook (part 1, part 2).

I’m 18 and play at approximately a 1950-2000 level. Can I reach 2300 Elo?

2300 isn’t the kind of summit that’s hard to conquer. Even if you only devote 3-4 hours a week to chess you should be able to reach that level in a couple of years, as long as you have the chance to play in tournaments.

If these are not good news! As you know, I have set myself the goal to reach ELO 1800 first and then, well, FIDE master would be nice. Playing in tournaments is not so easy at the moment and I don’t know how much the internet counts. At least it gives me the chance to face stronger opposition and to lose a lot.

- How do you find them [unexpected moves] in advance? Is it really by an exhaustive search?

It’s not something you want to admit, but good and unexpected moves very often occur to you out of despair. When you think for a long time and simple continuations don’t work for some reason or other then you start getting angry and at that point you find the most unexpected solutions.

This takes away the common illusion that GMs calculate 20 moves in advance. Personally, when I look for a plan the most difficult part is to find all dangerous responses. It’s too easy to get carried away and to miss a surprising pawn move.

Playing White you usually have the right to make one mistake, and that’s a great plus.

Nice one.

If you really want to play for a win with Black then it’s better not to allow the Ruy Lopez or the Scotch. Perhaps it would make sense to avoid symmetry on the very first move.

This is in line with the statement that to get winning chances on the highest level you must seek imbalances (material, asymmetric pawn structures). Below master level it’s enough to play good moves, sooner or later the weaker player will make a mistake that can be exploited. This won’t happen between two masters and you must do more to play for a win.

In the game “Ganguly – Svidler” (round 9) White has set up deadly mating threats:

White to move

The final blow came with 22. Bg8 and Svidler resigned 2 moves later.

In Dortmund Kramnik is on a hot streak and in Biel Carlsen has the strongest nerves so far although he lost rather surprisingly against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The French manoeuvered for a long time in a position where he stood slightly better until Carlsen made a decisive mistake. Watching how the pieces are coordinated for attack and defense is very instructive.