Once more unto the breach for the Schenectady Chess Club's representatives at
the US Amateur Team East over President's Day weekend! Of this tournament, one
could write almost the same script as last year. We, that is, the Schenectady Chess Club's 'A' team, traveled with mostly the
same team as the past couple of years--in fact, our roster was
precisely the same as it had been two years ago, just in a different board
order: this year we were Philip Sells (your scribe), Alan LeCours, Michael Mockler, and Bill
Townsend. I once again served as captain of the team, which got
the name "The Paul Morphy Re-animation Project". Schenectady's 'B' squad featured John Barnes (an alumnus of
the senior side), club president Richard Chu, and Cory Northrup and Matt Clough,
who've been putting up some promising results of late. Herein, I'm going to
concentrate on the higher-rated of the two teams, because I can give a
first-hand account and I have very little data on the other team's travails in
any case.
Round one was special for us, as we were on Board One! The opposing team was
obviously very strong, containing two 2300-level masters, but no titled players.
Bill was the first to fold, crashing out in a miniature. After some time had
passed, Mike also conceded. That left me and Alan soldiering on. My game had
actually been going fairly well, my opponent Martirosov having indulged in an
unsound pawn sacrifice. But alas, my time was running rather short (stop me if
you've heard this one before), and in a position with only major pieces on the
board and several open files, I neglected a couple of obvious chances to push a
pawn and secure myself against back-rank mates, whereas my opponent had been
much more prudent. I don't think you need me to tell you what happened next. I
will say that my opponent's particular method of, shall we say, "execution" of
the motif was indeed elegant. Alan seemed to have decent drawing chances for a
long time, but by the time I had resigned, things had begun to turn against
him--it was around that time that his opponent, Ilya Krasik, had attained a very
pleasant ending with same-colored bishops, which, after some moments of odd
hesitation and gestures toward a repetition, resolved into a textbook win for
the master. I had been a little impatient for Alan to resign so we could get
dinner, but on the other hand, there was that one moment when we thought Krasik
might miraculously fail to find the correct continuation. But in the end, the
match was lost 0-4, just like last year when we were on board ten.
Par for the course so far, I thought. Round two, on board 45, was somewhat
less demanding for us, though we made heavy going of it at times. Our opponents
in this case were a youth team whose strength on paper at least was well below
ours. I was encouraged by Bill's quickish win on the fourth board (I put it that
way only because my record shows that his game was the first to finish, but I
don't remember this match being particularly brief). After that, though, things
began to get a little wobbly. Mike had to take a draw to save what he assured me
had been a lost position, which I had no qualms about, since I had my own game
well in hand and Alan seemed to be a clean pawn up in another same-colored
bishop endgame. But then something odd happened--somehow, Alan let things slip
into draw-land (he had in fact declined a draw offer from his opponent at one
time), and then managed to lose the pawn ending! I was a little troubled by
this, but more for Alan's sake than for that of the team, since, as said, I had
been managing my game toward a win. My opponent fought it out all the way to
mate, making my game the last of the match to end. So that round we carried
2.5-1.5.
Round three saw us, accelerated pairings being now done with, on board 66,
playing a team we had actually defeated last year! Their lineup, too, had
changed a bit. My opponent from the previous match was now on board two, and
their new top-board man was a German gentleman making a reentry to tournament
chess after a long career-related break. On this occasion, we turned in a very
nice score of 3.5-0.5, Alan having to accept a draw. The other team's board
three was once again showcasing his assortment of funny hats this year; I forget
which one he was sporting for this round (he changed hats for each game). In
between rounds, we went for lunch and discovered the local Panchero's in so
doing, which was a nice experience.
For round four, we unfortunately had not made much progress up the tables,
landing on board 62. As in round two, we made things unnecessarily difficult for
ourselves, but still eked out a win. Mike shot himself in the foot by
miscalculating a rook sacrifice, for which Bill compensated by winning his game
next. My game had taken a strange turn in the opening, starting out as an
O'Kelly Sicilian and transposing to a kind of weird King's Indian arrangement.
Playing White, I found some nifty ways to make my opponent suffer on the
queenside. He tried rather despairingly to drum up something against my king,
and there was one moment when I played too quickly, forgoing the obvious crusher
in exchange for grabbing Black's g-pawn, of all things. This nearly opened the
floodgates on my own king, but fortunately I could give up my queen to reach a
won ending, which in the event resulted in a quick mate at the time control. To
close out the match, Alan agreed another draw that had arisen from an
interesting-looking endgame of two bishops (Alan) vs. bishop + knight (Alan's
opponent). So 2.5-1.5 for us that time!
Thus we reached Round Five, which for years has been the mountain stopping us
from winning top place in our rating bracket. As I said at the top of this post,
the story is almost exactly like last year. And just like last year, our
round-five encounter put paid to our ambitions. We were paired up on board 28,
against a team whose top board was only rated 2200, comparable to the 2156
rating of the team that we faced this time last year. Bill played well and
obtained a draw for us as the first of the results to come in. As the match
continued, the other team's board three offered Mike a draw. He looked to me for
a verdict, and I, considering my own totally lost position and Alan's at the
time fairly tolerable-looking one, bade Mike play on if there was any way to go
for a win. We might be able to draw the match! We might! But then Alan's
opponent detected a really nice combination that left our man in a position
suggesting images of Hieronymus Bosch and Quentin Tarantino. I had resigned in
the meantime, so suddenly it really didn't matter any more what Mike achieved on
board three. Unfortunately, his captain's orders had left him shackled to a
cruel game in which his opponent was no longer inclined to extend any draw
offers. That game went on so long that some of the rest of us felt the need to
get to dinner before it was too late, so I was spared the sight of my teammate
walking the plank. Ugly loss, 0.5-3.5, made just a little more unsavory by my
feeling of guilt which, in a chess context, I don't recall having ever felt in
quite the same way. On the bright side, we found ourselves another burrito-type
place, called Qdoba (another chain, not as widespread as Panchero's). The
quality here was good as well, though perhaps just a little bit shy of what
Panchero's had on offer.
That set the stage for the final round on board 49, which again played out
just like last year. Obviously we needed a win and got it, but the opponents
showed some tenacity and didn't let us have it all our own way. Bill and Mike
won their games relatively soon. My game was rather interesting, playing a hot
line in the mainline Caro-Kann, in which my opponent actually made a
natural-looking mistake that I didn't quite take full advantage of. Had I been
aware of a certain theoretical novelty from a game in 2003, I could have wrapped
up the game in style. But alas, I chose a way which, though not bad, resulting
as it did in the clean win of a pawn, was definitely not best. It came down to a
queen ending in which, though I had that extra pawn, my opponent's queen was so
perfectly active that my ambitions were quite frustrated, so I had to repeat
moves. Ironically, my sixth-round game last year, occurring in the very same
place in the room, almost to the inch, had also ended in a repetition. Poor Alan
had to swallow another draw, which left us with a 3-1 match win.
Four match points is not bad, but it's not good enough for an Under-2000 team
to win anything at this event, either. Well, enough of my whining about that!
One bright spot was the fact that Mike had some good games and seemed to be
enjoying himself nicely, so this tournament represented a good uptick for him.
Also, Bill Townsend was quite a presence on board four for us, being the team's
top individual scorer this year. This goes to show that ... ahh, now, if I start
talking about the great confidence that we can place in our third- and
fourth-board players, I'll only jinx the operation next year. So I'll just say
that even though this year was a bit of a rerun for us, we did still have a good
time and produced some good games along the way. Next year, though, we should
probably look into some alternative breakfast arrangements, as the diner in
Denville doesn't leave quite the favorable impression with us that it once did.
And I might suggest--only a suggestion, mind--to my teammates that we modify
that habit we've been cultivating in recent years of drinking copious amounts of
select wines on the night before round five.... I still wish we'd saved the
label from that Albanian Merlot, though! Where the heck is "New Platz",
anyway?!
A couple of final notes: Titled players were, as at the last couple of
Amateur Team East events, a little thin on the ground. I played no titled
opponent this year, for example, not even an FM. There were several grandmasters
present all the same, mostly the usual suspects, though reigning Marshall Chess
Club champion GM Mikheil Kekelidze played his first Amateur Team. He seemed not
to like it very much, commenting to me in passing that it was too noisy. But
that's the Parsippany party atmosphere for you. I don't imagine that his
impression of the tournament was much improved by Steve Doyle's having mangled
his name in the introductions--it came out as "Grandmaster Kekel-dizzy", which
Doyle tried to save by blaming his "New Jersey accent". I hope the grandmaster
isn't too put off to come back--having a couple of Georgian GMs in the
tournament does something to keep the rest of us honest. Robert Hess played, and
though he didn't score a 6-0 for himself, he did put up one of the star games of
the event in the last round against Goletiani. There were a couple of other very
good players of whose presence I was unaware until I saw the crosstable after
the fact, such as IM Marc Arnold. Because this tournament is a team event, you
can't necessarily pick out the best players in the room strictly on the basis of
geography as you might in an individual tournament, where you simply look for
the high boards at the far end of the playing hall. At these team affairs, the
good players will obviously be on board one, by and large, of their respective
teams, but they may still be scattered around one whole half of the room. So
some of them can manage to keep a low profile for the entire weekend.
Patrick Chi played on board three for a quite strong youth team that included
his fellow junior talent Kapil Chandran; I forget who their board one was. They
enjoyed a good run, spending a lot of time behind the ropes. It seems Patrick is
starting to make some connections with the young masters elsewhere in the
Northeast, which will be good for him as time goes on. One's progress in serious
chess toward, and eventually at, master level is made easier, I think, if one
can get involved in some of the social networks that exist at the major
tournaments around this part of the country. This is one way how, if you're a
promising young player, you get introduced to good coaches and people of that
sort.
Finally, let me point out that there was a young player at the tournament
named--I'm not making this up; he's number 653 on the list in the
USCF crosstable of the rated results--Jazz Hooks. To the world's everlasting
chagrin, he and the contestant known as Charlie Parker Reeder
(again, you can check me on this--#917 on the wallchart) were not paired against
each other during the course of the competition. Memo to Steve D.: come on, man,
you gotta make it happen next time! Who cares if you have to turn SwissSys
inside out?
I've said enough, I think. Thanks to the entire set of our players for
carrying the flag!
Showing posts with label schenectady. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schenectady. Show all posts
10.09.2011
Schenectady CC Championship start
Hello to our readers! This post will cursorily cover the blast-off of the 2011-12 Schenectady Chess Club Championship, which occurred on October 6 after dark.
As usual for us, there are two round-robin qualifying sections feeding into a six-man round-robin final. The two qualifying sections each yield qualifying spots for the top three scores. Turnout seems to be light this year--so far there are only seven players in each section, though this may change in the next week. Fortunately, with an odd number in each section, a late joiner could be accommodated relatively easily at this point by just putting the newcomer in the 'Bye' slot on the crosstable. I understand there are a couple of other people who intend to play but who couldn't be present for the first round last week for various reasons. One of those people, interestingly, is not defending club champion Patrick Chi! Probably school and whatever other activities he has going are making too many demands on his time at the moment, so it sounds like he won't be with us for this year's engagement.
Let's take a look at the field as it exists officially right now. I don't really have time to make nice tables just now, so here's a bare list of players and current USCF ratings. (I'll have you know, by the way, that while I'm typing this up, I'm having a nice glass of a red wine from the Berkshires, which will have no effect whatsoever upon the accuracy of this post. It will also not cause me to try to come up with silly nicknames for the players... at least not yet.) Bill Townsend prepared his usual nice color-coded crosstables for each section, which I'll attempt to mimic here, although the specific shade of orange that Bill used for the Section A paper doesn't seem to be available to me, which is a pity, because it's really a very nice shade of orange. Oh, well, close enough.
Results of Thursday, Oct 6, round 1:
***
If anyone is looking for a bit of tournament activity, the Western New England Open is next weekend, Oct. 15-16, in North Adams. 5-round Swiss, G/120 with prizes and probably a good shot at playing some of the usual suspects from Connecticut. That is, if you're not already committed to the Deepak Aaron simul at RPI that Saturday. (I only found out about this tournament on Friday myself.)
If you're a member of either the Albany Area Chess Club or the Schenectady Chess Club, don't forget the Albany vs. Schenectady match on Thursday the 13th!
As usual for us, there are two round-robin qualifying sections feeding into a six-man round-robin final. The two qualifying sections each yield qualifying spots for the top three scores. Turnout seems to be light this year--so far there are only seven players in each section, though this may change in the next week. Fortunately, with an odd number in each section, a late joiner could be accommodated relatively easily at this point by just putting the newcomer in the 'Bye' slot on the crosstable. I understand there are a couple of other people who intend to play but who couldn't be present for the first round last week for various reasons. One of those people, interestingly, is not defending club champion Patrick Chi! Probably school and whatever other activities he has going are making too many demands on his time at the moment, so it sounds like he won't be with us for this year's engagement.
Let's take a look at the field as it exists officially right now. I don't really have time to make nice tables just now, so here's a bare list of players and current USCF ratings. (I'll have you know, by the way, that while I'm typing this up, I'm having a nice glass of a red wine from the Berkshires, which will have no effect whatsoever upon the accuracy of this post. It will also not cause me to try to come up with silly nicknames for the players... at least not yet.) Bill Townsend prepared his usual nice color-coded crosstables for each section, which I'll attempt to mimic here, although the specific shade of orange that Bill used for the Section A paper doesn't seem to be available to me, which is a pity, because it's really a very nice shade of orange. Oh, well, close enough.
Section A
- Philip Sells 2010
- Carlos Varela 1751
- Dilip Aaron 1738
- Cory Northrup 1576
- Zachary Calderon (aka 'Calderon fils') 1517
- Jeff Capitummino 1366
- Michael Stanley 1030
Section B
- John Phillips 1924
- Alan LeCours 1911
- Richard C. Chu 1642
- Matt Clough 1577
- Herman Calderon (aka 'Calderon pere') 1493
- David Connors 1487
- Akhil Kamma UNR
Results of Thursday, Oct 6, round 1:
Section A
Northrup 0-1 Sells
Aaron 0-1 Varela
Stanley 0-1 Calderon, Z.
Capitummino: bye
Section B
Phillips 1-0 Chu
Clough 0-1 LeCours
Connors 0-1 Kamma
Calderon, H.: bye
***
If anyone is looking for a bit of tournament activity, the Western New England Open is next weekend, Oct. 15-16, in North Adams. 5-round Swiss, G/120 with prizes and probably a good shot at playing some of the usual suspects from Connecticut. That is, if you're not already committed to the Deepak Aaron simul at RPI that Saturday. (I only found out about this tournament on Friday myself.)
If you're a member of either the Albany Area Chess Club or the Schenectady Chess Club, don't forget the Albany vs. Schenectady match on Thursday the 13th!
7.02.2011
Yet more from the climactic Capital District League matches
Greetings, folks. I thought I'd put up the score of the game on board three of the league match between Schenectady A and Albany A, since our regular reporter, Bill Little, didn't have the game score at his disposal. This was a game driven less by calculation or tactics than by general concepts, at least in my perception, so my annotations will focus more on the general ideas of the game, as well as the progress of my thoughts during it, which may be interesting in the competitive context. I think it may also be useful to point out something about the choice of opening, especially since most of our readers here are amateur players. This is better said here than in the course of the game commentary, where it would just make for clutter.
The Scheveningen Sicilian is rather neglected at the club level these days--I hardly ever see it played among non-masters. Theoretician Lubomir Ftacnik refers to it as not merely a variation, but a whole world containing a great many ideas; and Jaan Ehlvest maintains in his autobiography that the Scheveningen leads to many of the basic positions that one has to understand in order to play most Sicilian variations as Black. I haven't made up my mind yet as to how far this applies to the 'anti-Sicilian' lines, but as far as the Open Sicilians are concerned, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Ehlvest is right. This has nothing to do with the question of transposition between variations, which is very common in Scheveningen move orders, but rather the fact that the Scheveningen lines show you ideas that apply to almost all of the Open variations. I am coming to think of the Scheveningen as being at the core of the Open Sicilian in general, with many of the other main variations--Najdorf, Classical, Taimanov, Kan, even the Sveshnikov to some extent--forming a sort of conceptual network around it, which in turn can be organized into subregions around certain structural themes. So if you understand the Scheveningen, you know a fair amount intuitively about all of these others as well, even before digging into their independent theory.
With these views in mind, I decided some time ago to go back to basics with the Sicilian, and insofar as I have any time for opening study these days, when I am working on Sicilian matters, the bulk of my effort is going into the Scheveningen now. I encourage you to consider the merits of such an approach for yourself, if learning the Sicilian Defense is a goal of yours.
Now, to the game:
Wright,Timothy (1920) - Sells,Philip (1986)
Capital District League (7), 23.06.2011
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6
For this last match, our team needed a win to have a chance at the league title, so I chose a line that would give plenty of opportunity for me to play for a win with Black.
3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Bb5+
For White players interested in challenging for the greatest possible advantage in this opening, the variations of current interest will generally be 6.g4, the Keres Attack--I have gotten this most often from master opponents--or 6.Be3, the English Attack. Other major ways to play against the Scheveningen with White are the main line with Be2 or setups with an early f2-f4, which are perfectly fine. Or if you want something nice and sharp, you can go for the Bc4 arrangements (Fischer/Sozin/Velimirovic). The line chosen in this game is no challenge for Black because its main effect is to make Black's development easier than usual.
6...Bd7 7.Bxd7+
7.Qe2 has been played occasionally without making any extraordinary impact. Black's best reaction seems to be simply to gain space with 7...a6 8.Bxd7+ Qxd7, after which he has no complaints.
7...Qxd7
7...Nbxd7 is also perfectly fine, but it seems to me that with the light-squared bishops having been traded, it's not as important for Black to hang back with this knight on d7. If White has a bishop on b3, for example, this knight very often goes to c5 to get rid of it.
Also, one natural way for Black to develop his light-squared bishop in a structure like this is to put it on the long diagonal; putting his knight on d7 instead of c6 keeps these two pieces from interfering with each other. But since the light-squared bishops have been exchanged, neither of these points applies.
8.0–0 Nc6 9.Be3 Be7 10.f4 0–0 11.Nxc6
11.Qf3 Nxd4 12.Bxd4 a6 is equal.
11...Qxc6 12.Qf3 Rfc8
I obviously want a rook on the c-file, but in order to use the queen's rook, I would probably need to play ...a7-a6 first. I was trying to avoid this in order not to have to waste a tempo. There was also the idea of playing either ...Bf8 or ...Ne8 as needed, depending on how White chooses to attack. Also, there is a prophylactic motive: considering that I would like to play ...b7-b5 soon, with this rook now on c8, my queen will be defended in case White tries for any trick based on the e4-e5 discovery.
13.f5
This is perfectly sensible, trying to expose the drawback of Black's previous move, which left f7 weak. I was actually wondering if I had overlooked something, when it dawned on me that I could defend f7 from along the second rank.
13...Bd8!?
I was irritated to find that the normally desirable move 13...d5 loses a pawn after something like 14.fxe6 dxe4 15.exf7+ Kxf7 16.Nxe4.
After the text, though, if I need to, I can play either ...Rc7 or ...Qd7 to cover the f7 invasion point. In any case, White's attack isn't quite fast enough, because he has no way to quickly force my knight to leave f6, which needs to happen in order for White to really use his battery on the f-file. My other intention here was ...Bb6 to get rid of another of White's important attacking units, the dark-squared bishop.
14.fxe6 fxe6 15.Kh1?!
15.Qh3 would have been logical and was what I had been spending some of my time thinking about after 13.f5, but it's adequately dealt with by 15...d5 leading to an equal position. Having seen this idea was actually what decided me in favor of 13...Bd8. One other consequence of exchanging the light-squared bishops so early is that White can't put much pressure on the e6-pawn.
The game move avoids the exchange of bishops, but gives me a chance to undermine the center. It took me some time to convince myself that this would work.
15...Ba5
The e4-pawn is frequently a target for Black's pieces in Scheveningen structures. Here, White has no good way to defend it.
16.Bd2 Rf8
It's interesting that White opened the f-file, but now Black is benefiting from it.
17.Qe2 Bxc3 18.Bxc3 Qxe4
I was in more of a hurry than I needed to be: an interesting point that I didn't notice at the time was that Black can play to restrict White's bishop with 18...e5! since White still can't save his e-pawn due to the weakness of his back rank: 19.Rae1 (19.Rfe1 Nxe4 is even worse for White because now he has to worry about Black invading on f2 as well) 19...Nxe4!.
19.Qd2
White certainly won't be happy in the endgame, so he has to avoid the exchange of queens.
19...Nd5
I spent a fair amount of time here trying to think of a good way to plant the knight on e4, which seems like its natural destination, together with ...d6-d5 to cement it on its outpost and block the central files so that White's rooks can't use them to get counterplay. The problem with such a scheme is that the dark squares would get very weak for Black then, e5 in particular, so White could get play on that basis. Consequently, I felt that the exchange of the last minor pieces had to be forced so that the bishop would no longer be around to trouble me. In order to keep my opponent from having the time to save his bishop while also minimizing the speed of his counterattack against my central pawns, I felt obliged to choose this less desirable placement of the knight.
20.Rxf8+ Rxf8
Time left: White 31 mins, Black 21 mins. By this time, Barnes and Perry had drawn their game, I believe.
21.Re1 Nxc3 22.Qxc3 Qf5?!
I got myself down to 4 minutes remaining with this move, compared to 29 minutes for my opponent. A better idea would have been 22...Rf2, again using White's back-rank weakness, but I must have thought there would be some problem for me after 23.Qc8+ Kf7 24.Qd7+ Kg6, which doesn't seem to be the case in retrospect. Other decent ideas here were 22...e5 and 22...Qd5. Time pressure was starting to nag me.
23.h3 e5 24.Qb3+ Qf7 25.Qa3 Qf2 26.Qb3+ Rf7 27.Rd1 Qf6?!
27...Qc5 again was a better idea. My extra pawn is now lost. The concept of White finding compensation by attacking my central pawns has been in the game ever since 15...Ba5, and now we see it bearing fruit.
28.Qd5 Kf8 29.Qxd6+ Qxd6 30.Rxd6
This endgame is pretty equal--White has an active rook to compensate for his king being somewhat out of play. My opponent still had a big lead on the clock--times remaining were about 23 minutes to 3 minutes. I would argue that the position is easier for me to play than for my opponent, so the time disadvantage didn't hurt me much.
30...Rf1+ 31.Kh2 Ke7 32.Rd2 h5
Anticipating White's attempt to activate his king through g3, as well as removing one potential weakness from the second rank.
33.Kg3 Rf4 34.Re2 h4+ 35.Kh2 Ke6 36.g3
I think this is a reasonable idea, to try to break a path for White's king toward the center while reducing my kingside space advantage.
36...hxg3+ 37.Kxg3 Rf1
The game still felt rather even to me at this point. My goal for the moment is to try to keep White's king from reaching the center while inching my passed pawn down the board. White is active enough, though, that he should be able to keep my king out; and White has only one real weakness that he needs to keep watch on, that being the h3-pawn.
38.c4 Rc1 39.b3 Rf1 40.Kg2 Ra1
White has to be careful about committing his rook to anything active because of the weakness of his queenside pawn chain. He is managing that well enough by leaving his rook where it is now.
41.Kf3 Kf5 42.Kg2 e4 43.Rf2+ Ke6
43...Ke5 is playable because White's a-pawn hangs if White uses his rook on the seventh rank.
44.Kg3 g5 45.Kg4?
This ruins the game for White--his king will be marooned on the edge of the board until it is too late. In spite of his big advantage on the clock--still something like 20 minutes to 3--White played too quickly here, probably encouraged by the fact that I had necessarily been playing at blitz tempo for some time. Black will now effectively be playing with an extra piece, namely his centralized king, which will make the win easy. Generally, the king needs to be centralized in the endgame as much as possible. White's king was not in a bad place on g3, so he should have played 45.Rd2, for example, continuing to focus on keeping my king from invading. With that approach, he would probably have held the draw, since it's not so easy for me to make progress in such a position.
45...Rg1+ 46.Kh5 Ke5 47.Kg6 e3 48.Rf7 Ke4 49.Re7+
There is no chance for White after 49.Rxb7 e2 50.Rxa7 e1Q 51.Re7+ Kf4 52.Rxe1 Rxe1, either.
49...Kd3 50.Rd7+ Kc3 51.Re7 Kd2 52.Rd7+ Ke1 53.Kf5 e2 54.Ke4 Kf1
0–1
The rest of the story of that night has been made clear by Bill's previous posts.
The Scheveningen Sicilian is rather neglected at the club level these days--I hardly ever see it played among non-masters. Theoretician Lubomir Ftacnik refers to it as not merely a variation, but a whole world containing a great many ideas; and Jaan Ehlvest maintains in his autobiography that the Scheveningen leads to many of the basic positions that one has to understand in order to play most Sicilian variations as Black. I haven't made up my mind yet as to how far this applies to the 'anti-Sicilian' lines, but as far as the Open Sicilians are concerned, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Ehlvest is right. This has nothing to do with the question of transposition between variations, which is very common in Scheveningen move orders, but rather the fact that the Scheveningen lines show you ideas that apply to almost all of the Open variations. I am coming to think of the Scheveningen as being at the core of the Open Sicilian in general, with many of the other main variations--Najdorf, Classical, Taimanov, Kan, even the Sveshnikov to some extent--forming a sort of conceptual network around it, which in turn can be organized into subregions around certain structural themes. So if you understand the Scheveningen, you know a fair amount intuitively about all of these others as well, even before digging into their independent theory.
With these views in mind, I decided some time ago to go back to basics with the Sicilian, and insofar as I have any time for opening study these days, when I am working on Sicilian matters, the bulk of my effort is going into the Scheveningen now. I encourage you to consider the merits of such an approach for yourself, if learning the Sicilian Defense is a goal of yours.
Now, to the game:
Wright,Timothy (1920) - Sells,Philip (1986)
Capital District League (7), 23.06.2011
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6
For this last match, our team needed a win to have a chance at the league title, so I chose a line that would give plenty of opportunity for me to play for a win with Black.
3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Bb5+
For White players interested in challenging for the greatest possible advantage in this opening, the variations of current interest will generally be 6.g4, the Keres Attack--I have gotten this most often from master opponents--or 6.Be3, the English Attack. Other major ways to play against the Scheveningen with White are the main line with Be2 or setups with an early f2-f4, which are perfectly fine. Or if you want something nice and sharp, you can go for the Bc4 arrangements (Fischer/Sozin/Velimirovic). The line chosen in this game is no challenge for Black because its main effect is to make Black's development easier than usual.
6...Bd7 7.Bxd7+
7.Qe2 has been played occasionally without making any extraordinary impact. Black's best reaction seems to be simply to gain space with 7...a6 8.Bxd7+ Qxd7, after which he has no complaints.
7...Qxd7
7...Nbxd7 is also perfectly fine, but it seems to me that with the light-squared bishops having been traded, it's not as important for Black to hang back with this knight on d7. If White has a bishop on b3, for example, this knight very often goes to c5 to get rid of it.
Also, one natural way for Black to develop his light-squared bishop in a structure like this is to put it on the long diagonal; putting his knight on d7 instead of c6 keeps these two pieces from interfering with each other. But since the light-squared bishops have been exchanged, neither of these points applies.
8.0–0 Nc6 9.Be3 Be7 10.f4 0–0 11.Nxc6
11.Qf3 Nxd4 12.Bxd4 a6 is equal.
11...Qxc6 12.Qf3 Rfc8
I obviously want a rook on the c-file, but in order to use the queen's rook, I would probably need to play ...a7-a6 first. I was trying to avoid this in order not to have to waste a tempo. There was also the idea of playing either ...Bf8 or ...Ne8 as needed, depending on how White chooses to attack. Also, there is a prophylactic motive: considering that I would like to play ...b7-b5 soon, with this rook now on c8, my queen will be defended in case White tries for any trick based on the e4-e5 discovery.
13.f5
This is perfectly sensible, trying to expose the drawback of Black's previous move, which left f7 weak. I was actually wondering if I had overlooked something, when it dawned on me that I could defend f7 from along the second rank.
13...Bd8!?
I was irritated to find that the normally desirable move 13...d5 loses a pawn after something like 14.fxe6 dxe4 15.exf7+ Kxf7 16.Nxe4.
After the text, though, if I need to, I can play either ...Rc7 or ...Qd7 to cover the f7 invasion point. In any case, White's attack isn't quite fast enough, because he has no way to quickly force my knight to leave f6, which needs to happen in order for White to really use his battery on the f-file. My other intention here was ...Bb6 to get rid of another of White's important attacking units, the dark-squared bishop.
14.fxe6 fxe6 15.Kh1?!
15.Qh3 would have been logical and was what I had been spending some of my time thinking about after 13.f5, but it's adequately dealt with by 15...d5 leading to an equal position. Having seen this idea was actually what decided me in favor of 13...Bd8. One other consequence of exchanging the light-squared bishops so early is that White can't put much pressure on the e6-pawn.
The game move avoids the exchange of bishops, but gives me a chance to undermine the center. It took me some time to convince myself that this would work.
15...Ba5
The e4-pawn is frequently a target for Black's pieces in Scheveningen structures. Here, White has no good way to defend it.
16.Bd2 Rf8
It's interesting that White opened the f-file, but now Black is benefiting from it.
17.Qe2 Bxc3 18.Bxc3 Qxe4
I was in more of a hurry than I needed to be: an interesting point that I didn't notice at the time was that Black can play to restrict White's bishop with 18...e5! since White still can't save his e-pawn due to the weakness of his back rank: 19.Rae1 (19.Rfe1 Nxe4 is even worse for White because now he has to worry about Black invading on f2 as well) 19...Nxe4!.
19.Qd2
White certainly won't be happy in the endgame, so he has to avoid the exchange of queens.
19...Nd5
I spent a fair amount of time here trying to think of a good way to plant the knight on e4, which seems like its natural destination, together with ...d6-d5 to cement it on its outpost and block the central files so that White's rooks can't use them to get counterplay. The problem with such a scheme is that the dark squares would get very weak for Black then, e5 in particular, so White could get play on that basis. Consequently, I felt that the exchange of the last minor pieces had to be forced so that the bishop would no longer be around to trouble me. In order to keep my opponent from having the time to save his bishop while also minimizing the speed of his counterattack against my central pawns, I felt obliged to choose this less desirable placement of the knight.
20.Rxf8+ Rxf8
Time left: White 31 mins, Black 21 mins. By this time, Barnes and Perry had drawn their game, I believe.
21.Re1 Nxc3 22.Qxc3 Qf5?!
I got myself down to 4 minutes remaining with this move, compared to 29 minutes for my opponent. A better idea would have been 22...Rf2, again using White's back-rank weakness, but I must have thought there would be some problem for me after 23.Qc8+ Kf7 24.Qd7+ Kg6, which doesn't seem to be the case in retrospect. Other decent ideas here were 22...e5 and 22...Qd5. Time pressure was starting to nag me.
23.h3 e5 24.Qb3+ Qf7 25.Qa3 Qf2 26.Qb3+ Rf7 27.Rd1 Qf6?!
27...Qc5 again was a better idea. My extra pawn is now lost. The concept of White finding compensation by attacking my central pawns has been in the game ever since 15...Ba5, and now we see it bearing fruit.
28.Qd5 Kf8 29.Qxd6+ Qxd6 30.Rxd6
This endgame is pretty equal--White has an active rook to compensate for his king being somewhat out of play. My opponent still had a big lead on the clock--times remaining were about 23 minutes to 3 minutes. I would argue that the position is easier for me to play than for my opponent, so the time disadvantage didn't hurt me much.
30...Rf1+ 31.Kh2 Ke7 32.Rd2 h5
Anticipating White's attempt to activate his king through g3, as well as removing one potential weakness from the second rank.
33.Kg3 Rf4 34.Re2 h4+ 35.Kh2 Ke6 36.g3
I think this is a reasonable idea, to try to break a path for White's king toward the center while reducing my kingside space advantage.
36...hxg3+ 37.Kxg3 Rf1
The game still felt rather even to me at this point. My goal for the moment is to try to keep White's king from reaching the center while inching my passed pawn down the board. White is active enough, though, that he should be able to keep my king out; and White has only one real weakness that he needs to keep watch on, that being the h3-pawn.
38.c4 Rc1 39.b3 Rf1 40.Kg2 Ra1
White has to be careful about committing his rook to anything active because of the weakness of his queenside pawn chain. He is managing that well enough by leaving his rook where it is now.
41.Kf3 Kf5 42.Kg2 e4 43.Rf2+ Ke6
43...Ke5 is playable because White's a-pawn hangs if White uses his rook on the seventh rank.
44.Kg3 g5 45.Kg4?
This ruins the game for White--his king will be marooned on the edge of the board until it is too late. In spite of his big advantage on the clock--still something like 20 minutes to 3--White played too quickly here, probably encouraged by the fact that I had necessarily been playing at blitz tempo for some time. Black will now effectively be playing with an extra piece, namely his centralized king, which will make the win easy. Generally, the king needs to be centralized in the endgame as much as possible. White's king was not in a bad place on g3, so he should have played 45.Rd2, for example, continuing to focus on keeping my king from invading. With that approach, he would probably have held the draw, since it's not so easy for me to make progress in such a position.
45...Rg1+ 46.Kh5 Ke5 47.Kg6 e3 48.Rf7 Ke4 49.Re7+
There is no chance for White after 49.Rxb7 e2 50.Rxa7 e1Q 51.Re7+ Kf4 52.Rxe1 Rxe1, either.
49...Kd3 50.Rd7+ Kc3 51.Re7 Kd2 52.Rd7+ Ke1 53.Kf5 e2 54.Ke4 Kf1
0–1
The rest of the story of that night has been made clear by Bill's previous posts.
2.27.2011
One of the Schenectady Teams at the 2011 US Amateur Team East
Hello out there!
It's time for a report on things that happened at the US Amateur Team East (or, if you insist, the 'World Amateur Team' as organizer Steve Doyle now styles it--as you'll see from the story below, it wasn't a total exaggeration this year). The Schenectady Chess Club fielded two squads, one being 'Favre Snaps A Pawn,' of which I was captain, and the other being 'Chess Club Bailout', led by club member John Phillips. A third team, made up of scholastic standouts from the Albany area, had an indirect connection with the club, as two of its players are or have been club members. I regret that I can only cover here in detail the doings of the team of which I was part; hopefully, someone with greater knowledge of the other teams' play-by-play progress in Parsippany will put up a blog entry here. I, for one, would love to hear about their experiences.
The roster of 'Favre Snaps A Pawn' was a little different from the past couple of years. I played board one, followed by Alan LeCours, Bill Townsend and Phil Ferguson as options on board three, and club president Richard Chu on board four. Phil had things that could need his attention back home at any moment, so we lined up Bill as an alternate.
Our first round was on table ten, just outside the ropes. Unlike in the past couple of years in our first-round match, we were clean shut out. This was a bit of a disappointment since, though we're always paired well up in the first round, we usually come away with at least something from these first-round matchups. I played Black against FM Oliver Kniest from Solingen, who's at school in Boston. It was an interesting back-and-forth game. At one point, I played 26...Rxe3, which came as a rather unpleasant surprise to my opponent. I mention this only because it dawned on me much later that I had carried out the action suggested in our team name--I'd snapped a pawn! The game was very complicated, though, and I was behind on the clock (I know, what a surprise); eventually I turned a winning position into a dead loss due to the time pressure. I thought we carried some decent chances in some of our other games, but in the end we had all succumbed. This was the toughest team we were to face all weekend.
The round after that was easier. We were paired well down this time, and scored 3.5/4, with Alan taking the only draw of the match. Ferguson was the first of us to win; his opponent was for some reason wearing a funny moose hat, which I thought at first was serving as a team 'costume'. None of this gentleman's teammates saw fit to follow his lead, either on this point or in terms of his opening play, which was apparently careless enough to land him in serious trouble with Phil as early as move seven, to judge from the self-deprecatory chuckling that I was hearing from that area. Richard also won quickly, playing a young boy. My opponent lasted rather longer, but that was because I was taking a considerable amount of time trying to refute his strange system against the Yugoslav Attack. He explained to me in postmortem that he and his brother had worked up this setup between themselves, and apparently the brother in particular has done well with it. But he also noted that my treatment of the line was the most pressure to which their setup had ever been subjected, and that because of this, he admitted that it would need some more work.
Round three saw us all the way down on table 70, which was our lowest location for the weekend. We were still in the grand ballroom, but because accelerated pairings were now done with, we were well and truly in the middle of the pack. Again, being paired down helped our cause, and we scored another 3.5/4. I got the draw this time, after Richard and Bill Townsend won their games (I had put Bill in on board three so he could get warmed up in view of Phil's inevitable departure). My opponent, Jonathan Pagan, played fairly well; I tried out the Sveshnikov, which I sometimes do these days against lower-rated players, and this time it didn't give me very much, as Pagan was fairly familiar with the ideas. I thought I had a bit of a bite, but in the end couldn't get any real play and settled for a repetition. But that won us the match, at least. The other games were pretty routine for our side, as far as I could tell from a distance.
Round four was made interesting by the fact that we were paired against a team of unrated youth players from China--Harbin, specifically. Here was a great advertisement for the tournament's alternate name of World Amateur Team Championship! Two of these squads from China, with players ranging in age from perhaps eight to maybe fourteen or so (according to FIDE, my opponent's birth year is 1999, so he's about twelve years old at this writing), had traveled to the US specifically to play in this tournament! None of their players had USCF ratings, of course, and I don't believe any were FIDE-rated, though my opponent, Tong Xiao, is listed currently on FIDE's website as unrated, but with some experience against rated players. In any case, it seemed to me on the basis of what happened in our game that the boy is going to have a respectable FIDE rating before too long. This time, I got to play another Sveshnikov... with White! Knowing what I do about the rigorous Chinese approach to training in just about everything, I assumed that my opponent would be well prepared in the Bxf6 main lines, so I went for the branch with 9.Nd5. Here again, he knew the book line pretty well, and I actually couldn't remember the theory beyond move 18 for some reason. As we approached the endgame, I learned that Phil had gotten a lost position on board three. I wasn't too worried yet. Perhaps if I had seen how Richard's game was going, I might have been more concerned, because Richard told me afterward that he was basically losing, but his young opponent just happened to drop material at a crucial moment, which turned things around for us and evened the match. I eventually won a rather interesting double-rook ending. Alan fought on for a long time trying to use his slight material advantage, but eventually took a draw in order to secure the match for us, 2.5-1.5, rather than risk making a mistake. This gave our team a 3-1 score going into the final day of the weekend--not a bad place to be. For the remainder of the tournament, though, we no longer had Phil available on board three for us.
On the last morning of the event, we were paired up on table 30. Again the round-five blues struck, as has happened to us before, and we lost 1-3. I found myself playing a Hedgehog setup against a strong Expert, which I haven't tried in some time; I had a decent game going, but time pressure again caused me to err, losing a piece, then more material later. Once more the clock had caused me to turn a pretty good position into a dead loss! Richard also lost. Bill had taken a draw on board three, which was actually not a bad result, considering that he was pretty rusty and playing an Expert. My game finished third in line, and that left Alan soldiering on, trying to save our honor. It seemed that he was about to do so when, in a minor-piece ending, his opponent made a blunder, but Alan got his move order wrong and found himself in a dead draw instead.
In the final round, we were on table 49, which happened to be in the exact middle of the room, where the lighting was rather poor due to the arrangement of the fixtures. It was an odd match. Richard's game finished first--in fact, while the rest of us were still in the opening, he and his opponent were already well into the endgame, which ended up drawn soon. My game featured what I felt was slightly passive play from my opponent, but I wasn't sure what to do with the position. Suddenly I found myself losing a pawn, which I tried to pass off with an air of confidence. As I played on, about the only thing I had going for me was my bishop pair. After a long time, this became influential enough to induce a repetition from my opponent, which I accepted rather gratefully--I knew that this 'executive decision' would put a certain amount of pressure on my teammates, but there was no way I could squeeze a win from the position I had. Much to my relief, Bill won his game when his opponent walked into a lost pawn ending. That left Alan with our last game, which seemed to involve a lot of subtle maneuvering from both sides. The sporting situation suggested that Alan's opponent would buckle down and at least make some serious effort to win, but instead, perhaps not being up for a long fight into the wee hours, he extended a draw offer, which Alan accepted. So a very close win for us, 2.5-1.5! (Curiously, the Albany-area scholastic team was playing our opponents from round three at this time.)
That put us on four points, which turned out once again to be "close, but no cigar," as a rival team with a relatively low rating average, but still in our rating class, had performed very well to reach 4.5 points. I don't remember how our other team did in the end, sadly; nor do I know for certain what the final result for the scholastic team was, though I believe they reached 3.5 points, which strikes me as commendable.
Our team's individual scores were:
Philip Sells 3/6
Alan LeCours 3/6
Phil Ferguson 1/3
Bill Townsend 2.5/3
Richard Chu 3.5/6
So Richard was our top individual scorer! Congratulations! I also want to point out Bill Townsend's undefeated record, which was not due only to his abbreviated playing schedule--he showed considerable focus on the last day, fighting through fatigue to keep us in the race. Alan was also playing a good anchor role on board two. Phil Ferguson, of course, was the pirate of the bunch! Again, I thank the team for allowing me to serve as captain, and I'm grateful to the Schenectady Chess Club for all of its support.
[Edit: changed the title to make the number of teams more clear]
It's time for a report on things that happened at the US Amateur Team East (or, if you insist, the 'World Amateur Team' as organizer Steve Doyle now styles it--as you'll see from the story below, it wasn't a total exaggeration this year). The Schenectady Chess Club fielded two squads, one being 'Favre Snaps A Pawn,' of which I was captain, and the other being 'Chess Club Bailout', led by club member John Phillips. A third team, made up of scholastic standouts from the Albany area, had an indirect connection with the club, as two of its players are or have been club members. I regret that I can only cover here in detail the doings of the team of which I was part; hopefully, someone with greater knowledge of the other teams' play-by-play progress in Parsippany will put up a blog entry here. I, for one, would love to hear about their experiences.
The roster of 'Favre Snaps A Pawn' was a little different from the past couple of years. I played board one, followed by Alan LeCours, Bill Townsend and Phil Ferguson as options on board three, and club president Richard Chu on board four. Phil had things that could need his attention back home at any moment, so we lined up Bill as an alternate.
Our first round was on table ten, just outside the ropes. Unlike in the past couple of years in our first-round match, we were clean shut out. This was a bit of a disappointment since, though we're always paired well up in the first round, we usually come away with at least something from these first-round matchups. I played Black against FM Oliver Kniest from Solingen, who's at school in Boston. It was an interesting back-and-forth game. At one point, I played 26...Rxe3, which came as a rather unpleasant surprise to my opponent. I mention this only because it dawned on me much later that I had carried out the action suggested in our team name--I'd snapped a pawn! The game was very complicated, though, and I was behind on the clock (I know, what a surprise); eventually I turned a winning position into a dead loss due to the time pressure. I thought we carried some decent chances in some of our other games, but in the end we had all succumbed. This was the toughest team we were to face all weekend.
The round after that was easier. We were paired well down this time, and scored 3.5/4, with Alan taking the only draw of the match. Ferguson was the first of us to win; his opponent was for some reason wearing a funny moose hat, which I thought at first was serving as a team 'costume'. None of this gentleman's teammates saw fit to follow his lead, either on this point or in terms of his opening play, which was apparently careless enough to land him in serious trouble with Phil as early as move seven, to judge from the self-deprecatory chuckling that I was hearing from that area. Richard also won quickly, playing a young boy. My opponent lasted rather longer, but that was because I was taking a considerable amount of time trying to refute his strange system against the Yugoslav Attack. He explained to me in postmortem that he and his brother had worked up this setup between themselves, and apparently the brother in particular has done well with it. But he also noted that my treatment of the line was the most pressure to which their setup had ever been subjected, and that because of this, he admitted that it would need some more work.
Round three saw us all the way down on table 70, which was our lowest location for the weekend. We were still in the grand ballroom, but because accelerated pairings were now done with, we were well and truly in the middle of the pack. Again, being paired down helped our cause, and we scored another 3.5/4. I got the draw this time, after Richard and Bill Townsend won their games (I had put Bill in on board three so he could get warmed up in view of Phil's inevitable departure). My opponent, Jonathan Pagan, played fairly well; I tried out the Sveshnikov, which I sometimes do these days against lower-rated players, and this time it didn't give me very much, as Pagan was fairly familiar with the ideas. I thought I had a bit of a bite, but in the end couldn't get any real play and settled for a repetition. But that won us the match, at least. The other games were pretty routine for our side, as far as I could tell from a distance.
Round four was made interesting by the fact that we were paired against a team of unrated youth players from China--Harbin, specifically. Here was a great advertisement for the tournament's alternate name of World Amateur Team Championship! Two of these squads from China, with players ranging in age from perhaps eight to maybe fourteen or so (according to FIDE, my opponent's birth year is 1999, so he's about twelve years old at this writing), had traveled to the US specifically to play in this tournament! None of their players had USCF ratings, of course, and I don't believe any were FIDE-rated, though my opponent, Tong Xiao, is listed currently on FIDE's website as unrated, but with some experience against rated players. In any case, it seemed to me on the basis of what happened in our game that the boy is going to have a respectable FIDE rating before too long. This time, I got to play another Sveshnikov... with White! Knowing what I do about the rigorous Chinese approach to training in just about everything, I assumed that my opponent would be well prepared in the Bxf6 main lines, so I went for the branch with 9.Nd5. Here again, he knew the book line pretty well, and I actually couldn't remember the theory beyond move 18 for some reason. As we approached the endgame, I learned that Phil had gotten a lost position on board three. I wasn't too worried yet. Perhaps if I had seen how Richard's game was going, I might have been more concerned, because Richard told me afterward that he was basically losing, but his young opponent just happened to drop material at a crucial moment, which turned things around for us and evened the match. I eventually won a rather interesting double-rook ending. Alan fought on for a long time trying to use his slight material advantage, but eventually took a draw in order to secure the match for us, 2.5-1.5, rather than risk making a mistake. This gave our team a 3-1 score going into the final day of the weekend--not a bad place to be. For the remainder of the tournament, though, we no longer had Phil available on board three for us.
On the last morning of the event, we were paired up on table 30. Again the round-five blues struck, as has happened to us before, and we lost 1-3. I found myself playing a Hedgehog setup against a strong Expert, which I haven't tried in some time; I had a decent game going, but time pressure again caused me to err, losing a piece, then more material later. Once more the clock had caused me to turn a pretty good position into a dead loss! Richard also lost. Bill had taken a draw on board three, which was actually not a bad result, considering that he was pretty rusty and playing an Expert. My game finished third in line, and that left Alan soldiering on, trying to save our honor. It seemed that he was about to do so when, in a minor-piece ending, his opponent made a blunder, but Alan got his move order wrong and found himself in a dead draw instead.
In the final round, we were on table 49, which happened to be in the exact middle of the room, where the lighting was rather poor due to the arrangement of the fixtures. It was an odd match. Richard's game finished first--in fact, while the rest of us were still in the opening, he and his opponent were already well into the endgame, which ended up drawn soon. My game featured what I felt was slightly passive play from my opponent, but I wasn't sure what to do with the position. Suddenly I found myself losing a pawn, which I tried to pass off with an air of confidence. As I played on, about the only thing I had going for me was my bishop pair. After a long time, this became influential enough to induce a repetition from my opponent, which I accepted rather gratefully--I knew that this 'executive decision' would put a certain amount of pressure on my teammates, but there was no way I could squeeze a win from the position I had. Much to my relief, Bill won his game when his opponent walked into a lost pawn ending. That left Alan with our last game, which seemed to involve a lot of subtle maneuvering from both sides. The sporting situation suggested that Alan's opponent would buckle down and at least make some serious effort to win, but instead, perhaps not being up for a long fight into the wee hours, he extended a draw offer, which Alan accepted. So a very close win for us, 2.5-1.5! (Curiously, the Albany-area scholastic team was playing our opponents from round three at this time.)
That put us on four points, which turned out once again to be "close, but no cigar," as a rival team with a relatively low rating average, but still in our rating class, had performed very well to reach 4.5 points. I don't remember how our other team did in the end, sadly; nor do I know for certain what the final result for the scholastic team was, though I believe they reached 3.5 points, which strikes me as commendable.
Our team's individual scores were:
Philip Sells 3/6
Alan LeCours 3/6
Phil Ferguson 1/3
Bill Townsend 2.5/3
Richard Chu 3.5/6
So Richard was our top individual scorer! Congratulations! I also want to point out Bill Townsend's undefeated record, which was not due only to his abbreviated playing schedule--he showed considerable focus on the last day, fighting through fatigue to keep us in the race. Alan was also playing a good anchor role on board two. Phil Ferguson, of course, was the pirate of the bunch! Again, I thank the team for allowing me to serve as captain, and I'm grateful to the Schenectady Chess Club for all of its support.
[Edit: changed the title to make the number of teams more clear]
3.21.2010
2009-10 Schenectady CC Championship
Hello there, all you readers.
This is a little update to summarize some of what Bill will presumably be discussing in his next post here. I discovered that the HTML crosstable output from ChessBase is actually of reasonable quality, and thought I'd put up the current crosstable of the Schenectady Chess Club championship finals as an exercise. Hopefully this will be an encouragement to others to use such a tool when posting tournament crosstables, as ChessBase or other such programs take some of the extra work out of formatting a complete table of results--you don't have to total up people's scores by hand, for example, risking an embarrassing error in arithmetic, or go back and forth making sure that a "1" in the box for a given game on one side of the crosstable really does have a corresponding "0" on the other side for the opponent.
I'm not quite sure yet how to control the font size in a table like this. Maybe once a tournament gets to a certain size, the crosstable becomes too wide to post without shrinking the text. Length isn't so much of a concern--adding more rows should be fine and not impair readability.
Anyway, here's your update for the moment. Bill Little is probably coming along with the games from last week.
This is a little update to summarize some of what Bill will presumably be discussing in his next post here. I discovered that the HTML crosstable output from ChessBase is actually of reasonable quality, and thought I'd put up the current crosstable of the Schenectady Chess Club championship finals as an exercise. Hopefully this will be an encouragement to others to use such a tool when posting tournament crosstables, as ChessBase or other such programs take some of the extra work out of formatting a complete table of results--you don't have to total up people's scores by hand, for example, risking an embarrassing error in arithmetic, or go back and forth making sure that a "1" in the box for a given game on one side of the crosstable really does have a corresponding "0" on the other side for the opponent.
I'm not quite sure yet how to control the font size in a table like this. Maybe once a tournament gets to a certain size, the crosstable becomes too wide to post without shrinking the text. Length isn't so much of a concern--adding more rows should be fine and not impair readability.
Anyway, here's your update for the moment. Bill Little is probably coming along with the games from last week.
Schenectady CC Ch finals 2009-10
| 1 | Mockler, Mike | 1917 |
| 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.0 / 3 | |||
| 2 | Sells, Philip | 1986 | 1 |
| 1 | 2.0 / 2 | ||||
| 3 | Phillips, John | 1883 | 0 |
| ½ | 1 | 1.5 / 3 | |||
| 4 | Howard, Dean | 2000 | 0 | ½ |
| 1 | 1.5 / 3 | |||
| 5 | Chi, Patrick | 1978 | 0 | 0 |
| 0.0 / 2 | ||||
| 6 | Rotter, Bobby | 1930 | 0 |
| 0.0 / 1 |
Generated with ChessBase 8.0
3.02.2010
The first of the League matches
Hello again!
Now that I got that post on the USATE out of the way, and since I have the day off, I thought I'd put up a little something about the opening day of the Capital District League season. I should apologize in advance to Mr. Little since this will embarrass him to an extent :) , but the first match of the season was not in fact the one between Schenectady A and the Geezers, about which he posted the other day, but rather between Schenectady A and Uncle Sam of Troy, which happened three days before the Schenectady derby.
The results were:
I'll link to my analysis of the game on board one, if anyone is interested, here. Also, at this page, is analysis of an interesting position that came up toward the end of the Hill-Rotter game. The other games I only saw in bits and pieces.
Now that I got that post on the USATE out of the way, and since I have the day off, I thought I'd put up a little something about the opening day of the Capital District League season. I should apologize in advance to Mr. Little since this will embarrass him to an extent :) , but the first match of the season was not in fact the one between Schenectady A and the Geezers, about which he posted the other day, but rather between Schenectady A and Uncle Sam of Troy, which happened three days before the Schenectady derby.
The results were:
Uncle Sam | vs. | Schenectady A |
Ogundipe, Odunayo | 0-1 | Sells, Philip |
Thomas, Phil | 0-1 | Chi, Patrick |
Hill, Elihue | 0-1 | Rotter, Bobby |
Canty, Sylvester | 0-1 | Barnes, John |
I'll link to my analysis of the game on board one, if anyone is interested, here. Also, at this page, is analysis of an interesting position that came up toward the end of the Hill-Rotter game. The other games I only saw in bits and pieces.
Report from USATE 2010
Hello, you readers out there!
I was brought into the writing group on this blog on the premise that I would be producing a timely report on the Schenectady A team at the US Amateur Team East a couple of weeks ago. Well, timely or not, I've decided to write something, at least, even if it's not of the best quality. I've been trying to educate myself about the use of Blogspot's features and have learned a little bit, but it has taken me some time to get the hang of it. One of the other things I've been trying to do is figure out a method of game display for blogs like this. Various possibilities have crossed my path, but one of the more appealing ones that I eventually decided upon is shown in action on my own blog, to which I'll link for the detailed analysis of these games that I'm going to show you.
To start off, as Alan mentioned in his post (beating me to the punch to a degree), the Schenectady Chess Club fielded two teams for the event this year, the higher-rated of which consisted of this writer and Messrs. LeCours, Barnes and Townsend in that order. We've had the good fortune to field almost the same team with few alterations in the lineup for a couple of years in succession. We took the moniker Beans & Rice Gambit: Recession-Proof Opening for this occasion (henceforth 'Beans & Rice' for short). This was my conception, in the hope of appealing to the organizer's whimsical predilection for topical and punny team names. We might be in the running for best team name this year! Worth a try. The other team featured our clubmates Messrs. Phillips, Chu (the club president and captain of his team), Northrup, and Eson; their team took the name Leko my Greco, which is catchy for those of us who like waffles and Hungarian chess masters.
There were a couple of other teams in the competition whose doings would have been of some interest to players in our region. I remember seeing a team from the Hudson Valley, I think, on which Ernest Johnson was playing first board, for example. Jon Leisner from the Saratoga area was heading up a team of old friends of his from high school (maybe? I forget exactly). There was a scholastic team from the Capital Region containing a couple of youths from Kingston, the Albany area (including an old student of mine), and one pick-up member from downstate. I didn't get a chance to follow these teams much, being absorbed in our own struggles.
We didn't actually decide on who was going to captain our team until we were sitting at the board for the first round. I took on the duty, figuring it was basically my turn anyway (there's been a kind of rotation among us in practice--as I said, team composition remaining pretty stable from one year to the next, this is easy to arrange). For this first round, we were at table three (!), which is the highest I myself have ever reached at this event so far. Our opponents were Khodarkovsky's MACademia, featuring the strong (2400) master Mackenzie Molner on board 1 (I think he'll start reaching for the IM title soon), and several other good players such as Chris Wu and Sean Finn; I forget who their fourth board was. Since they were on table three to start with, they were obviously one of the top-seeded teams in the crosstable, so we knew it would be a challenge to get something from this match. But in the past couple of years, playing up in the first round in similar circumstances, we had often come away with upset match draws, so we were hardly without hope in this case. And it seemed to me that our new team shirts, provided thanks to Alan's efforts, would inspire some confidence in the wearers.
In the event, the only one of us not to lose was John Barnes, who played very well to upset his 2100+ opponent. John often punches well above his weight at this tournament, and he did so once again here. Unfortunately, his teammates failed to rise to the occasion. Bill Townsend's game was actually the first to finish, then John's game. Alan and I resigned almost simultaneously. I'd made my opponent work a little bit, but not very much, in a Bg5 Najdorf that I played rather half-heartedly. It looked like Alan's opponent had played rather skillfully to reach a winning endgame in the meantime. So we lost this match 1-3.
But not to worry! For round two, we were paired down on table 45 against a team of youth, Dean of Chess All-Stars. From the name, it was clear that this was one of the teams coming from IM Dean Ippolito's chess school in New Jersey. This match we cleaned up 3.5-0.5. My game finished first; it was fairly routine, brightened by one tactic that some readers may find cute, if not particularly challenging. I've posted the game at my other blog here. Then Bill and Alan defeated their opponents, leaving John to soldier on in what looked like a tricky position. At one point, his young opponent offered him a draw, then after John had thought about it for some time, announced that he (John's opponent) no longer wanted the draw. John admonished him that the offer, once extended, could not be taken back; and after some more thinking, accepted the draw. It's often a tricky thing with these teams of young kids, the notion of proper etiquette in these matters. It reminded me of a similar experience we'd had with a different opposing team of children a few years ago.
So we had 1 out of 2 points from the first day, which held out some hope for our chances. In round three, we had a chance to build upon this, being paired down again at around table 60 (I seem not to have written the table number down on my note cards). Our opponents, Pawn Pushers Anonymous, were again a team of youth, so we knew we had to be a little careful. You see, it's been a trend in the past couple of years at this event that there almost inevitably comes a crucial match in which we're playing a team of kids, and the entire team has a collective fit of lunacy, plays badly and loses the match in a landslide. I was hoping that this wouldn't happen this year! But one thing that we had going for us this time was that such collapses have historically happened to our team in rounds five or six, when we really need to deliver. But this being round three, maybe we could avoid the jinx. And so it proved--we again won 3.5-0.5, my game finishing first after my opponent messed up a tactical sequence (though I still thought he resigned very prematurely), then Bill and Alan bringing in their points, and finally John drawing against his opponent. I'm suddenly a little skeptical about my memory of this--John Barnes drawing a 1492 in one round, and then a 1234 in the next?!--but this is what my notes tell me. And I made a point of being a better captain than I'd been last time, taking notes on our opponents and all. Anyway, we won handily, which is obviously the important point.
Now to round four, when we were due to meet Tiger's Wood Pushers on table 55. Before the start of the match, we had the usual contests for Best Team Name, Best Team Skit, Best Costumes and so on. I was hopeful that our team's name would at least make a showing in the voting by the crowd, but was shocked when, after Steve Doyle ran through the list of the eleven or so nominees, he had said nothing about Beans & Rice! There were far too many variations on the theme of the Tiger Woods scandal, and most of the others on the short list seemed like extremely lame selections--I mean, the choices absolutely paled in comparison to the good team names of the recent past. I was extremely disappointed--our name should definitely at least have made the cut. To make matters worse, the final winner was some hideous double-entendre involving Tiger's personal life. I may just have to give up trying to predict the organizers' predilections. Most of the skits were pretty uninspiring as well, though it must be appreciated that people put in the effort to do this sort of thing for their teams. At least the Village Pieces' rendition of "Y. M. C. A." with modified lyrics was rather funny, at least for me:
Going into the final day, our score was therefore 2.5/4. A score of 4.5/6 was within reach, and might get us a chance to get the top Under-1900 team plaque (our rating average, by the way, was 1893), depending on tiebreaks. First, though, on table 41, we had to fight the Kapengut Family, made up of IM Albert Kapengut and some of his chess-playing relatives. I recognized his name from his theoretical work in the Benoni back in the eighties--Watson's book on that opening has a full chapter on the Kapengut System, for example, and cites his work at many other points. (Interestingly, as I've since discovered, Kapengut is originally from Kazan, as is my old coach GM Ibragimov. He has apparently recently changed his FIDE federation to USA, however.)
I briefly toyed with the notion of playing 1.d4 against the master to see what would develop, but decided against it once I sat down to the game. I got instead an Accelerated Dragon from what was actually a pretty normal move order, though I rarely encounter it with White. Because of my rather inexcusable unfamiliarity with this move order, I messed up the opening to a degree and got a difficult position early on. My teammates all won their games; Alan's conduct of the Traxler Two Knights (see his post from the other day) was especially satisfying. I suffered through to the end, finishing last of all of us this time. Here is the game. Even though I lost, I felt it had featured some of my best play of this event thus far, which admittedly wasn't saying much since I'd been playing well below my standard for the entire weekend. I knew I hadn't gotten enough rest before the tournament, and this was probably the reason for my performance problems. But we did win the match 3-1, so our chances were still alive.
As happened to us last year, we were on a fairly high table in the last round (19), paired well up against a team apparently called simply Lucas, or maybe Lucas I (there was a Lucas II somewhere further down the crosstable, I think). Amusingly, Leko my Greco was facing the Kapengut Family on the other side of the ballroom. Anyway, this team Lucas I had another 2400-master on board one waiting for me, that being Thomas Bartell. (I see him and Molner often at the big Philadelphia events, which is how I know some of these players.) And also as happened to us last year, we were fairly wiped out in the last round by this strong team. Alan's game ended first when, playing another master with White, his bishop got trapped on h6 in a King's Indian, and he decided to resign to avoid a state of wretched misery, for which I couldn't blame him at all. Then it was my turn to go down in flames as Bartell worked some finesse to win the exchange from me and then fend off my feeble attempts at counterplay. This game was really irritating because he played the very same anti-Sicilian line against me that Mr. Lawrence had used to beat me in round four! I really suspected that Bartell had seen that game and had chosen the variation for precisely that reason. Either that, or--it would not have surprised me at all to find this was true--maybe my former opponent had sent out a secret text message to the effect of "Hey, everybody, if you're scheduled to play board one against Sells with White, play this line! He won't have a clue!" It's a conspiracy, I swear! However, I did manage to dream up a completely different setup in the opening this time, which actually gave me a reasonable position (which I then proceeded to royally botch up very soon afterward). It was one of those games that I walk away from shaking my head at my own incompetence. That doesn't happen to me very often, but it seemed that bad.
Anyway, to conclude, John unfortunately lost from a crazy position with some kind of material imbalance, and Bill T. finished by winning his game. So with a 1-3 match score, we finished on 3.5/6, which seems to be where we've ended up fairly often in the standings in recent times. I think we had an okay tournament as a team. We tried a restaurant in Parsippany that we'd not been to before. But the event did seem to me to be a little less fun than in some previous years. There were not many titled players in attendance, though at least Leonid Yudasin and Robert Hess were among these. I was feeling a bit out of sorts for much of the time, which I put down mostly to the aforementioned general tiredness and maybe a little bit of unsettled health. But some of us did have some good games--John's win in round one and Alan's miniature from round five stand out. So congratulations, team! We made it through another year! :) Thanks for allowing me to serve as your captain.
I was brought into the writing group on this blog on the premise that I would be producing a timely report on the Schenectady A team at the US Amateur Team East a couple of weeks ago. Well, timely or not, I've decided to write something, at least, even if it's not of the best quality. I've been trying to educate myself about the use of Blogspot's features and have learned a little bit, but it has taken me some time to get the hang of it. One of the other things I've been trying to do is figure out a method of game display for blogs like this. Various possibilities have crossed my path, but one of the more appealing ones that I eventually decided upon is shown in action on my own blog, to which I'll link for the detailed analysis of these games that I'm going to show you.
To start off, as Alan mentioned in his post (beating me to the punch to a degree), the Schenectady Chess Club fielded two teams for the event this year, the higher-rated of which consisted of this writer and Messrs. LeCours, Barnes and Townsend in that order. We've had the good fortune to field almost the same team with few alterations in the lineup for a couple of years in succession. We took the moniker Beans & Rice Gambit: Recession-Proof Opening for this occasion (henceforth 'Beans & Rice' for short). This was my conception, in the hope of appealing to the organizer's whimsical predilection for topical and punny team names. We might be in the running for best team name this year! Worth a try. The other team featured our clubmates Messrs. Phillips, Chu (the club president and captain of his team), Northrup, and Eson; their team took the name Leko my Greco, which is catchy for those of us who like waffles and Hungarian chess masters.
There were a couple of other teams in the competition whose doings would have been of some interest to players in our region. I remember seeing a team from the Hudson Valley, I think, on which Ernest Johnson was playing first board, for example. Jon Leisner from the Saratoga area was heading up a team of old friends of his from high school (maybe? I forget exactly). There was a scholastic team from the Capital Region containing a couple of youths from Kingston, the Albany area (including an old student of mine), and one pick-up member from downstate. I didn't get a chance to follow these teams much, being absorbed in our own struggles.
We didn't actually decide on who was going to captain our team until we were sitting at the board for the first round. I took on the duty, figuring it was basically my turn anyway (there's been a kind of rotation among us in practice--as I said, team composition remaining pretty stable from one year to the next, this is easy to arrange). For this first round, we were at table three (!), which is the highest I myself have ever reached at this event so far. Our opponents were Khodarkovsky's MACademia, featuring the strong (2400) master Mackenzie Molner on board 1 (I think he'll start reaching for the IM title soon), and several other good players such as Chris Wu and Sean Finn; I forget who their fourth board was. Since they were on table three to start with, they were obviously one of the top-seeded teams in the crosstable, so we knew it would be a challenge to get something from this match. But in the past couple of years, playing up in the first round in similar circumstances, we had often come away with upset match draws, so we were hardly without hope in this case. And it seemed to me that our new team shirts, provided thanks to Alan's efforts, would inspire some confidence in the wearers.
In the event, the only one of us not to lose was John Barnes, who played very well to upset his 2100+ opponent. John often punches well above his weight at this tournament, and he did so once again here. Unfortunately, his teammates failed to rise to the occasion. Bill Townsend's game was actually the first to finish, then John's game. Alan and I resigned almost simultaneously. I'd made my opponent work a little bit, but not very much, in a Bg5 Najdorf that I played rather half-heartedly. It looked like Alan's opponent had played rather skillfully to reach a winning endgame in the meantime. So we lost this match 1-3.
But not to worry! For round two, we were paired down on table 45 against a team of youth, Dean of Chess All-Stars. From the name, it was clear that this was one of the teams coming from IM Dean Ippolito's chess school in New Jersey. This match we cleaned up 3.5-0.5. My game finished first; it was fairly routine, brightened by one tactic that some readers may find cute, if not particularly challenging. I've posted the game at my other blog here. Then Bill and Alan defeated their opponents, leaving John to soldier on in what looked like a tricky position. At one point, his young opponent offered him a draw, then after John had thought about it for some time, announced that he (John's opponent) no longer wanted the draw. John admonished him that the offer, once extended, could not be taken back; and after some more thinking, accepted the draw. It's often a tricky thing with these teams of young kids, the notion of proper etiquette in these matters. It reminded me of a similar experience we'd had with a different opposing team of children a few years ago.
So we had 1 out of 2 points from the first day, which held out some hope for our chances. In round three, we had a chance to build upon this, being paired down again at around table 60 (I seem not to have written the table number down on my note cards). Our opponents, Pawn Pushers Anonymous, were again a team of youth, so we knew we had to be a little careful. You see, it's been a trend in the past couple of years at this event that there almost inevitably comes a crucial match in which we're playing a team of kids, and the entire team has a collective fit of lunacy, plays badly and loses the match in a landslide. I was hoping that this wouldn't happen this year! But one thing that we had going for us this time was that such collapses have historically happened to our team in rounds five or six, when we really need to deliver. But this being round three, maybe we could avoid the jinx. And so it proved--we again won 3.5-0.5, my game finishing first after my opponent messed up a tactical sequence (though I still thought he resigned very prematurely), then Bill and Alan bringing in their points, and finally John drawing against his opponent. I'm suddenly a little skeptical about my memory of this--John Barnes drawing a 1492 in one round, and then a 1234 in the next?!--but this is what my notes tell me. And I made a point of being a better captain than I'd been last time, taking notes on our opponents and all. Anyway, we won handily, which is obviously the important point.
Now to round four, when we were due to meet Tiger's Wood Pushers on table 55. Before the start of the match, we had the usual contests for Best Team Name, Best Team Skit, Best Costumes and so on. I was hopeful that our team's name would at least make a showing in the voting by the crowd, but was shocked when, after Steve Doyle ran through the list of the eleven or so nominees, he had said nothing about Beans & Rice! There were far too many variations on the theme of the Tiger Woods scandal, and most of the others on the short list seemed like extremely lame selections--I mean, the choices absolutely paled in comparison to the good team names of the recent past. I was extremely disappointed--our name should definitely at least have made the cut. To make matters worse, the final winner was some hideous double-entendre involving Tiger's personal life. I may just have to give up trying to predict the organizers' predilections. Most of the skits were pretty uninspiring as well, though it must be appreciated that people put in the effort to do this sort of thing for their teams. At least the Village Pieces' rendition of "Y. M. C. A." with modified lyrics was rather funny, at least for me:
Young man--did you make a bad move?Anyway, the match itself was unexpectedly challenging for us. The games lasted all fairly long, mine finishing first once again, in a rather embarrassing loss for me. My opponent played one of these Bc4 anti-Sicilians which had the feel partly of a Closed Sicilian, partly of a Grand Prix Attack. I elected to play it as a Closed, which misled me into doing some things as Black that would be correct ideas in a real Closed Sicilian, but don't make very much sense with White's light-squared bishop already on the a2-g8 diagonal. My opponent's kingside attack became dangerous long before my queenside counterplay could appear, and he found the right tactics to knock me out fast. Bill's victory balanced this out, but John and Alan both had positions that looked tough to win from. Alan's game was becoming tactically complex in time pressure, and I thought he missed a win at one point in the endgame, but that ended up drawn. Prior to that result, John had held his opponent to a draw in a simple rook ending. So we walked away with only a 2-2 result from a team that we had outrated. I think this result was more my fault than anyone else's.
I said, Young man--now you think you might lose
You're embarrassed--'cause the kid's in preschool...
Going into the final day, our score was therefore 2.5/4. A score of 4.5/6 was within reach, and might get us a chance to get the top Under-1900 team plaque (our rating average, by the way, was 1893), depending on tiebreaks. First, though, on table 41, we had to fight the Kapengut Family, made up of IM Albert Kapengut and some of his chess-playing relatives. I recognized his name from his theoretical work in the Benoni back in the eighties--Watson's book on that opening has a full chapter on the Kapengut System, for example, and cites his work at many other points. (Interestingly, as I've since discovered, Kapengut is originally from Kazan, as is my old coach GM Ibragimov. He has apparently recently changed his FIDE federation to USA, however.)
I briefly toyed with the notion of playing 1.d4 against the master to see what would develop, but decided against it once I sat down to the game. I got instead an Accelerated Dragon from what was actually a pretty normal move order, though I rarely encounter it with White. Because of my rather inexcusable unfamiliarity with this move order, I messed up the opening to a degree and got a difficult position early on. My teammates all won their games; Alan's conduct of the Traxler Two Knights (see his post from the other day) was especially satisfying. I suffered through to the end, finishing last of all of us this time. Here is the game. Even though I lost, I felt it had featured some of my best play of this event thus far, which admittedly wasn't saying much since I'd been playing well below my standard for the entire weekend. I knew I hadn't gotten enough rest before the tournament, and this was probably the reason for my performance problems. But we did win the match 3-1, so our chances were still alive.
As happened to us last year, we were on a fairly high table in the last round (19), paired well up against a team apparently called simply Lucas, or maybe Lucas I (there was a Lucas II somewhere further down the crosstable, I think). Amusingly, Leko my Greco was facing the Kapengut Family on the other side of the ballroom. Anyway, this team Lucas I had another 2400-master on board one waiting for me, that being Thomas Bartell. (I see him and Molner often at the big Philadelphia events, which is how I know some of these players.) And also as happened to us last year, we were fairly wiped out in the last round by this strong team. Alan's game ended first when, playing another master with White, his bishop got trapped on h6 in a King's Indian, and he decided to resign to avoid a state of wretched misery, for which I couldn't blame him at all. Then it was my turn to go down in flames as Bartell worked some finesse to win the exchange from me and then fend off my feeble attempts at counterplay. This game was really irritating because he played the very same anti-Sicilian line against me that Mr. Lawrence had used to beat me in round four! I really suspected that Bartell had seen that game and had chosen the variation for precisely that reason. Either that, or--it would not have surprised me at all to find this was true--maybe my former opponent had sent out a secret text message to the effect of "Hey, everybody, if you're scheduled to play board one against Sells with White, play this line! He won't have a clue!" It's a conspiracy, I swear! However, I did manage to dream up a completely different setup in the opening this time, which actually gave me a reasonable position (which I then proceeded to royally botch up very soon afterward). It was one of those games that I walk away from shaking my head at my own incompetence. That doesn't happen to me very often, but it seemed that bad.
Anyway, to conclude, John unfortunately lost from a crazy position with some kind of material imbalance, and Bill T. finished by winning his game. So with a 1-3 match score, we finished on 3.5/6, which seems to be where we've ended up fairly often in the standings in recent times. I think we had an okay tournament as a team. We tried a restaurant in Parsippany that we'd not been to before. But the event did seem to me to be a little less fun than in some previous years. There were not many titled players in attendance, though at least Leonid Yudasin and Robert Hess were among these. I was feeling a bit out of sorts for much of the time, which I put down mostly to the aforementioned general tiredness and maybe a little bit of unsettled health. But some of us did have some good games--John's win in round one and Alan's miniature from round five stand out. So congratulations, team! We made it through another year! :) Thanks for allowing me to serve as your captain.
5.10.2008
Chess Camps Summer 2008
Scholarships available for both camps.
“MATCH” … Maurice Ashley Teaches CHampions … at Proctors in Schenectady
July 7-11 , 9am – 4 pm Ages: 8-14 years Fee: $420 ($460 after 5/25)
Contact Proctors at 382-3884.
“The MATCH chess camp trains participants by using world-renowned Grandmaster Maurice Ashley’s revolutionary teaching method. Participants learn from the Grandmaster himself as well as from coaches who have been specially trained in his techniques. Between matches students will enjoy fun activities, including films in the new GE Theater at Proctors.
Fee covers entire cost of a child’s participation in MATCH Chess Camp including lunch and extracurricular activities at Proctors. To learn more about Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, please visit his website mauriceashley.com “
HELDEBERG WORKSHOP includes a Chess Class … on Picard Rd, town of New Scotland.
July 7-18 mornings Grades 5 and up HW Fee: $200 per 2-week class
Contact: 765-2777 or www.heldebergworkshop.org. Some catalogs available at Tulip Festival.
Interested players should contact the Heldeberg Foundation without delay and mention CHESS.
“Join our experienced chess mentors as you develop your skills and strategies for two exciting weeks! Spend the first week reviewing the official rules, examples of traditional openings, simple combinations, opening strategy and basic endgames. Play your classmates and instructors, each day sharpening your skills for the second week mini-tournament, and maybe more, depending on student experience! We’ll have an end-of-class competition, with trophy award! Instructors: Ken Evans and William Little.”
“MATCH” … Maurice Ashley Teaches CHampions … at Proctors in Schenectady
July 7-11 , 9am – 4 pm Ages: 8-14 years Fee: $420 ($460 after 5/25)
Contact Proctors at 382-3884.
“The MATCH chess camp trains participants by using world-renowned Grandmaster Maurice Ashley’s revolutionary teaching method. Participants learn from the Grandmaster himself as well as from coaches who have been specially trained in his techniques. Between matches students will enjoy fun activities, including films in the new GE Theater at Proctors.
Fee covers entire cost of a child’s participation in MATCH Chess Camp including lunch and extracurricular activities at Proctors. To learn more about Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, please visit his website mauriceashley.com “
HELDEBERG WORKSHOP includes a Chess Class … on Picard Rd, town of New Scotland.
July 7-18 mornings Grades 5 and up HW Fee: $200 per 2-week class
Contact: 765-2777 or www.heldebergworkshop.org. Some catalogs available at Tulip Festival.
Interested players should contact the Heldeberg Foundation without delay and mention CHESS.
“Join our experienced chess mentors as you develop your skills and strategies for two exciting weeks! Spend the first week reviewing the official rules, examples of traditional openings, simple combinations, opening strategy and basic endgames. Play your classmates and instructors, each day sharpening your skills for the second week mini-tournament, and maybe more, depending on student experience! We’ll have an end-of-class competition, with trophy award! Instructors: Ken Evans and William Little.”
1.06.2008
GM Simul at Proctor's
The City Mission and Proctor’s Theater Present
A simultaneous chess exhibition with
Grandmaster Ronen Har-Zvi
Former world Under-16 champion
Wednesday, January 23
Limited to 25 boards
Entry is FREE – but number of boards is limited.
Many are reserved but some will be given away by raffle.
At Proctor’s
(near the Box Office and Muddy Cup Café)
Event opens at 4:30 p.m. and the simul begins at 5:15 p.m.
There will be door prizes for participants, and every scholastic player will get a prize!
So far GM Har-Zvi is undefeated in this area, could YOU be the first to beat him?
For more information contact
Ashok Aaron at the City
Sponsors include: Proctor’s Theater, City Mission, Internet Chess Club, Make the Right Move Foundation, Capital District Scholastic Chess Foundation, ENYCA, the Studio of Bridge and Games
8.10.2007
Schenctady Chess Club Activities
Sept. 20: Annual organizational meeting of the Schenectady Chess Club
at the
Oct. 4: First round of the Schenectady Chess Club Championship
in the
7.13.2007
Chess in downtown Schenectady
On Tuesdays there will be a two hour chess activity between 11:00AM and
1:00PM in downtown Schenectady! It is a free chess playing experience at no
cost. It is a combined effort between City Mission and Proctor's Theater.
It is held under a blue tent across from Proctors Theater and in front of
Center City in State Street, Schenectady. If you are driving by, you can
not miss the tent and the chess players.
The first session was held on Tuesday(7/10/07). Quite a turn out of chess
lovers who played several games. There was checkers played as well on the
side, but the focus is the chess activity. 2006-2007 Schenectady Chess Club
Champion, Deepak Aaron settled down to play and remained undefeated after
all the challenges by interested onlookers and curious players! If you have
the time to make it and enjoy the experience, you might go home without a
loss and remain undefeated next Tuesday. Remember, you would make a
positive impact in downtown Schenectady when you come and play a game of
chess!
If you have the time and are in the area, do come out and brave the weather
and make some hot moves on the chess board that will turn back the clock in
the history of Schenectady to its glorious past!
It is a free activity during summer, so come with a healthy appetite for
some exciting midday chess during lunch time!
Ashok Aaron
6.14.2007
Grandmaster Simul in Schenectady's Central Park
In Schenectady this coming weekend, June 15-17th, come and join in the fun at the Capital District Juneteenth Celebration. The Celebration runs Friday evening, Saturday from 1 to 7 pm and Sunday from 11 am to 5:30 pm. Fun, entertainment, food, art, competitions, special services, rides and children's activities! A whole lot of everything!
And Saturday includes a very, VERY special day of chess - world renowned Grandmaster Maurice Ashley returns to play two dazzling chess exhibitions.
He will play 25 players at once at 1:30 pm and again at 4:30 pm. Entry fee is $30. Come to play or to watch! Arrive early to enter and reserve a seat. Chess sets and boards provided (although bringing extra sets is always a good idea for other games).
FOR INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT TAJ MAJORS, (518) 346-1262, EXT. 10
Join the fun at Central Park in Schenectady this weekend!
Enjoy!
And Saturday includes a very, VERY special day of chess - world renowned Grandmaster Maurice Ashley returns to play two dazzling chess exhibitions.
He will play 25 players at once at 1:30 pm and again at 4:30 pm. Entry fee is $30. Come to play or to watch! Arrive early to enter and reserve a seat. Chess sets and boards provided (although bringing extra sets is always a good idea for other games).
FOR INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT TAJ MAJORS, (518) 346-1262, EXT. 10
Join the fun at Central Park in Schenectady this weekend!
Enjoy!
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