No Rest For The Weary

The last week, I've been concentrating specifically on endgames and endgame technique. I've no time to rest now.

The final round of the Ryde-Eastwood club championship is upon me. I have to postpone the game between Steven and I this Wednesday and we would need to reschedule for this postponed game. This is due to the Ford Memorial Round 7 which coincides on this Wednesday as well.

About the Ryde Eastwood club championship, 6 players including myself will play a single game each for a period of 5 weeks to see. The participants are (ACF ratings stated):

Arthur Huynh (1835)
Bill Gletsos (1829)
My brother-in-law, Steven (1789)
Lorenzo Escalante (1716)
Joshua Christiansen (1662)
Me! (1500)

As for the Ford Memorial, this week's game got moved to Wednesday. My opponent is Horst Bleicher (FIDE rated 1832, ACF rated 1472). He has so far beat Henning Muller (1845), Tom Tomas (1629), Greg Matthews (1248) - definitely a player not to be underestimated.

A total of 62 players took part but it appears that 4 players have since dropped out. I'm placed #29 (smacked right in the middle!) on the list so anything above 4.5/9 is considered a good result.

Last week, Vladimir Smirnov taught me a little idea which is ingrained in my memory now. I would like to thank him for his generous input and advice. He has been great in helping lesser rated players and the local Sydney chess scene would be a lot poorer without his help.

I leave you now with a nice little puzzle from Volokitin's Perfect Your Chess.

White to play and win.

Answer as usual can be found by highlighting between the brackets

[1. Rd5!!

If 1... Qxd5 2. Qe8+ Kh7 3. Nf6+ gxf6 4. Qxf7#

If 1... exd5 2. Qxf5 naturally

If 1... Qf4 2. Rxa5 and Black is a whole piece down.


This move actually forced an instant resignation by Black.]