Still moving up.

On April 28th, I managed to up my rating to 2026 by going 4-0 to win the Joliet Junior College April Open. I was a bit nervous as I arrived as I had not worked on my game much over the past couple of months. My nervousness increased when I saw high school phenoms Zach Kasiurak and Dan McNally hanging around. Luckily, it turned out that they were there to beat up on each other in the Denker Qualifier.

The Open tournament drew thirty-seven players including two masters, but both of them lost before I had to face them. As a result, I was paired down in every round, making it hard to improve my rating too much, but I managed to put a little breathing room between myself and Class A. Joliet also marked the eighth tournament in a row in which I managed to improve my rating. At the age of fifty, I think I am supposed to be going downhill.

I kind of got the feeling that some of my opponents might have been unduly impressed with my expert rating. My Class C opponent in the first round only waited three moves as White before getting out of book with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Bg5!? (he obviously did not know how poor my record is with the Queen's Indian and the Nimzo-Indian).

The most recent experimenter with this move is an IM from Bangladesh whose record with it is +1, -5, =3. My opponent enjoyed no more success. In an effort to simplify quickly, he dropped a pawn while trading queens and never got much play.

In round two, I had White agains a 1757 rated eighth grader who played with the aggressiveness one expects from that species. After developing fairly reasonably in a Tarrasch-like position, my opponent decided to go on the offensive with the optimistic 11...h5!?


Unfortunately, with his king still in a fairly wide open center, he never got to generate an attack and he flagged on move 28.

My third opponent sported a 1697 rating and did not play badly, but he never really tried to put much pressure on me with the white pieces. There was certainly no reason for him to be intimidated by my rating as he had beaten one of the masters in the second round. On the other hand, perhaps he had won that game by playing defensively until the master overreached. In our game, a passive pawn move, 15.a3, came back to haunt him in the ending.

Although down a pawn, my opponent could have made my life difficult if he could have created an outside passed pawn on the queen-side. Unfortunately, it was my move and I fixed his pawns with 47...a4! and I was able to win easily with my extra pawns on the other wing.

My final opponent had an 1887 rating and had eliminated the other master in the third round, but he played very passively against my English Opening. Back when I played 1.e4, I spent several years climbing above and slipping below 1800. I finally left Class B behing for good when I switched to 1.c4. A large part of my current rating has come against players who do not specifically prepare for the English and so wind up in passive positions without a good plan. At Joliet, my opponent went with. 1.c4 e5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 Be7 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.Nc3 0-0 6.0-0 h6?!

At this point, I was pretty sure that my opponent had no active ideas of his own. So I concentrated on securing space control and squeezing him into further passivity, and I wound up winning fairly easily.

My next planned outing will be at the Chicago Open where I am sure that I will have no easy games.

Still alive!

To anyone who has checked in only to find that I have not posted anything in a month, my apologies My day job is trading stock options and the recent volatility in the stock market has commanded most of my attention. I hope that I can get back to sharing more of my chess ideas soon.

Staying at 2000 (3) or Getting to 2200

With a three wins, one loss, and a half-point bye at the UW Winter Open in Madison, I managed to increase my expert rating by four points to 2014. In the first two rounds, I met the father-son tag team of Stephen and Chris Holm. I managed to beat both of them, but I did not feel like I was in command for much of either game despite their 1417 and 1685 ratings. After a third round bye for dinner with my son, I met my old friend Chris Baumgartner and I managed to confuse him into missing a knight fork that cost him his queen. When I played here in September, the highest rated nine year old in the country, Brian Luo, and I both went into the last round with 3 1/2 points and he got the honor of playing master Alex Betanelli. This time, Brian was fortunate to escape with a draw in the fourth round against Ivan (Getting to 2000) Wijetunge. This left me as the highest rated player with 3 1/2 points, giving me the honor of being thumped by the master in the last round.

Alex was very gracious in the post-mortem, and his comments helped me see how far I have to go to get to the next level. After Alex's 11th move, we reached the following "Hedgehog" position.



I was pretty sure that I would have a very solid position if I could get ...a6 in, but I could not figure out how to do it because White is threatening e5. I saw 11...a6 12.e5 dxe5 13.fxe5 Nxe5 14.Qxe5 Bc5 15. Be3? Nf4, but I did not see anything I could do against 15. Nce2. After the game, Alex showed me the zwischenzug, 14...Bd6!, when the White queen lacks a good square. After 15.Qe3 Bc5 16.Nce2 e5 17.Qxe5 Re8, White is not going to be able to maintain the extra material. If I ever hope to make master, I am going to have to learn how to find moves like that ...Bd6. I played 11...Nc5 and went on to lose Betanelli v. Hart.

Staying at 2000 (2)

Now that Prospect's season is over, it is time to put my Expert rating on the line again at the UW Winter Open in Madison Wisconsin. Nice long time controls, a $20 entry fee, opponents that I have not played before, and a visit with my son: who could ask for more?

State (2) Player Improvement

Moves like 30.Bc6! make me look forward to next year. With this five-move combination in Shah v. Lieberman, Tejas saved Prospect from being shut out by Evanston in the second round. After 30...Rxc6 31.Rxg7 Nxg7 32.Bxg7+ Qxg7 33.Rxg7 Kxg7 34.Qg2+! picked up the rook on c6 and went on to win.



Compare this to Tejas's 30...Be3?! from Popovic v. Shah in Prospect's second match of the year.

31.fxe3?? Rf1# is a cute two-mover, but so obvious that a player cannot reasonably expect his opponent to fall for it. After 31.Nc4 Bc5 32. Nxa5, White had two connected passed pawns and won without a great deal of trouble.

State Tournament (1)--Disappointing Finish

I drove down to Peoria yesterday to watch the second day of the IHSA State Chess Tournament. Prospect finished 4-3, beating Romeoville, York, Glenbard West, and Richards, while losing a close match to Nequa Valley and getting shellacked by Evanston and Hinsdale Central. It is not a terrible result, but after going 8-2 in the regular season, I thought we might have been able to join Barrington and Palatine at 5-2 . Rolling Meadows, Fremd, and Hoffman Estates also finished 4-3. Buffalo Grove, Conant, and Schaumburg finished 3-4. Elk Grove went 2-5.

The individual board results were slightly disappointing as well. After impressive results in both the regular season and MSL tournament, I had hoped that either Tejas Shah or Parth Patel might break through for a board prize. Neither was able to do so, although Tejas did save the team from getting blanked by Evanston. The MSL did alright though with Zach Kasiurak 6-1 on 1st Board, Rishi Sethi 7-0 on 2nd, Ani Katre 6.5-.5 on 3rd, Mike Yang 6.5-.5 on 6th, and Chuck Novak 6.5-.5.

I hope to take a good look at Prospect's games over the next couple months to get a clearer picture of their strengths and weaknesses, although I already have a few ideas:

(1) Prospect players need to develop more determination when playing bad positions. It seems that after a blunder, they resign themselves to a loss and go down without spending much time on their moves. In the 6th round loss to Nequa Valley, it seemed like the four games we lost were over in fifteen to thirty minutes while the Nequa Valley players made us fight for an hour and a half for the points we got. There are certainly times when the loss of a piece causes a player's position to collapse completely, however, there are just as many times when the position contains defensive resources if the player work to find them.

(2) The players definitely need work on their endgame skills. Part of their lack of gumption in bad positions may simply be the fact that they are not familiar with the kinds of places that draws can be found, so they have trouble coming up with any plan when they are behind.

(3) Some of the players have just enough opening knowledge to get themselves in trouble. There were several games where someone thought they knew the opening that was being played when in fact it was a different variation that presented different problems. Rather than working to figure out those problems, they played the moves they thought they knew and wound up in trouble.

There were certainly some encouraging signs and it was a good season overall. If the players are willing to put in some effort and I can figure out how to communicate things to them, I think next year can be even better.

MSL (4) Playing the Two Knights Defense

I was a bit surprised at first by how frequently the Two Knights Defense occurs in Mid Suburban League games. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 is a pretty natural sequence of moves to play, but it can lead to some really wild tactical variations that higher rated players are reluctant to explore without a great deal of preparation. The Two Knights tends to be more popular with correspondence chess players who have more time to work out the various permutations than over-the-board players do.

The classic response to the Two Knights Defense is 4.Ng5 when the only way for Black to preserve his f-pawn is with 4...d5. After White plays 5.exd5, things get tricky. If Black continues with the natural looking 5...Nxd5, White can throw caution to the wind with the famous "Fried Liver Attack," 6.Nxf7!? Kxf7 7.Qf3+ Ke6. Black winds up with his king in the middle of the board and White winds up with a substantial material deficit. 6.d4 is considered to be a better move for White. After 6...Be7, White continues in Fried Liver style with 7.Nxf7 with the added advantage that his other bishop is ready to jump into the action. As Black encounters so many difficulties after 5...Nxd5, opening theory recommends the unnatural looking move 5...Na5 which may be followed by 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6, when White can play 8.Be2 or 8.Qf3.

If Black prefers to be the one to sacrifice all his pieces in a wild attack on his on opponent’s king he may be attracted by the move 4…Bc5 which is known as Wilkes-Barre Variation or the Traxler Attack. If White goes for the knight fork with 5.Nxf7, Black tries to bring the White king into the open with 5...Bxf2+. As GM Nick DeFirmian says in Modern Chess Openings, "These lines are for the adventurous."

I usually recommend 3...Bc5 leading to the Giuoco Piano rather than the Two Knights. 4. Ng5 is not an option for White as the Black queen covers g5, and Black can proceed with ...Nf6 and ...0-0 in a more usual fashion. It just seems to me that there are lots of points in the Two Knights where a strange looking move like 5...Na5 is considered correct while a natural looking move like 5...Nxd5 leads to trouble. There is nothing wrong with an opening like that (in fact, such openings are great for the player who knows the strange moves while his opponent plays the natural looking ones). However, it is hard to play the Two Knights without a fair amount of book knowledge, and young players who have a limited amount of time to devote to chess study could probably use it more profitably elsewhere.

Besides the need for book learning, it takes an instinct (and nerve) for wild attacks as well as an indifference to material deficits in order to play some of the crazier variations of the Two Knights well. After losing on the White side of the Wilkes-Barre Variation against Barrington back in November, Prospect’s Parth Patel decided to venture it as Black in the second round of the MSL Tournament. Although Parth managed to win the game (as he managed to win 80% of his games this year), he definitely came out on the wrong side of the opening. A look at the conservative manner in which he played the opening in his first round game leads me to believe that the Wilkes Barre may not be for him.