Tal Memorial

(Fischer v Tal)

The Mikhail Tal Memorial this year is the one to look out for and is probably the most anticipated event. This Category XXI rated tournament has a star studded "cast" comprising 10 of the 13 highest rated players among them, Anand, Carlsen, Kramnik.

Live broadcasts with GM commentaries are available at Chessdom.

And to add the icing on the cake, the World Blitz Chess Championship 2009 will immediately start at the same venue after the conclusion of the Tal Memorial. Anatoly Karpov, current world blitz champion Leinier Dominguez Perez and a whole host of other players will join the rest of the players to bring the number of participants to 20.

Since its birth in 2006, the Tal Memorial has steadily rose to become one of the elite competitions to look forward to in the calendar. The number of top ranked players taking part this year has certainly added a great deal of prestige to the tournament. I for one, am happy that there is more chess at the elite level to watch.

On a personal note, I plan to head down to Chess Discount Sales (operated by Peter Parr) in town sometime either later this week or next week to pick up a Chessbase DVD (still haven't decided between getting Daniel King's PowerPlay 11 or a Chessbase Opening DVD instead). I really need to get my skills back up to speed. Currently, my OT blitz games are woeful to say the least. I keep getting myself into bad positions (picking the worst move) or making ridiculous moves (that I always regret 5 seconds after I played it). :)

World Youth Chess Championship 2009 Update:
Had a little chat with Vladimir Smirnov last night (Thanks for giving me a chance to play a few quick blitz games against you, Vlad. It was very much appreciated). Both him and Anton will be flying off this weekend. I wish them and the entire Australian contingent the best of luck.

Ryde-Eastwood Club Championship
I forgot to add that the Ryde-Eastwood Club Championship was still progressing last night. The last game to conclude was between Brenton Yam and Bill Gletsos. It was an interesting game. I thought that Brenton had the upper hand near the endgame but sadly he was unable to hold.

U1600 and U1800 Rd3 Results

Tonight is a bit of an unusual situation.

Both of my teams, the U1600 Norths Bear and the U1800 Ryde Eastwood were playing in the same venue at Norths League club.

I had earlier informed my U1800 team captain David French 2 weeks ago that I could not play for them tonight as I would be playing for the U1600 Norths Bear.

As a result, David had to find 2 players to fill in (Lorenzo was away as well) and Dennis Hale and young Dylan Siow-Lee luckily filled in for replacements for Lorenzo and me.

So the U1800 Ryde Eastwood team comprises Brenton Yum, David French, Dennis Hale and Dylan Siow-Lee.

I had a slight shuffle in my U1600 Norths team as well. The players were me, David Stern, Andrew Johnson and Michael Anderson respectively. We were playing the team from Manly (yes, I know how this sounds really strange) comprising Jack Mejzini, Chris Dimock, Gordon Miller and Nina Vayssiere.

My opponent was Jack Mejzini. I was Black and we quickly transposed into the Sicilian Dragon. Jack made a mistake and blundered his Knight (I was shocked that he left his Knight en prise that I spent nearly 10 minutes calculating the effects of taking it). He got 2 pawns for the Knight in return but it was insufficient compensation and I basically traded into a winning endgame.

Boards 2 and 4 were a draw and Board 3 was lost, so the U1600 Norths emerged 2-2.

I was watching the U1800 Ryde Eastwood team but unfortunately, we didn't fare so well, we lost on all boards and ended up 0-4.

An absolute bummer.

U1800 Rd 1: Ryde Eastwood vs Parramatta Redux

Quick update: There has been a protest(?) lodged regarding last week's game on Board 2 vs Parramatta. The result was that our team-mate Lorenzo Escalante will need to replay his game against his opponent on Wednesday again.

So the score is now 2-1 at the moment as reflected in the official NSW Grade Match Results here.

We have a game against St George on Tuesday and I have a subsequent Thursday match ironically against Parramatta yet again but this time playing in the U1600 division for North Sydney.

U1800 Rd 1: Ryde Eastwood vs Parramatta Results

Okay, this is getting really weird.

Last night, I arrived early at the club and helped to setup the pieces. David Beveridge (? - apologies as I didn't ask for your last name), the U1800 team captain - from Parramatta arrived early as well and he was very helpful in helping me to set up the boards.

Shane Burgess arrived later and helped us to set the clocks for the Grade Matches.

Many thanks to David and Shane for their help.

I was scheduled to play on Board 4. I thought I would be playing Joshua Christensen but it so turns out that his team captain moved him to play on Board 2 instead. I was subsequently rescheduled to play another player, Frank Barisic. After we had filled out the preliminary entries on our scoresheets, I reminded Frank to turn off his mobile phone if he had one and he mentioned that he left it in the car (which I thought was a good idea).

I knew the rules for the grade matches were very strict, the moment a player's mobile phone goes off during a game, the game will be immediately declared lost for the player.

A minute or so later, David moved Frank onto Board 3 instead and - who else would replace him but Sitompul Sotarduga! Imagine my surprise to see him. Sitompul used to be a regular club member for the Ryde Eastwood chess club but having since moved away, he joined the Parramatta chess club instead.

We exchanged pleasantries, shook hands and started the game.

I misplayed my opening and got into an exceptionally bad position and was spending considerable time desperately trying to salvage my position. Then suddenly......

Sitompul's mobile went off.... very loudly.

I let out a small groan and shook my head because I knew the repercussions of what had happened.

Bill Gletsos promptly appeared and approached our table and enquired whose phone had gone off. Once he learned it was Sitompul's, the game was declared lost for him.

Poor Sitompul. All this time Sitompul and I hadn't said a single word.

We analysed the game later and we both agreed that that he would have won if his phone hadn't gone off and he said I was lucky. I agreed with him wholeheartedly.

After the game, I felt horrible and very guilty in winning in this manner. I still do.

Parramata won on Board 1 while there was some sort of discrepancy on Board 2 which was ruled in our favour. Overall, we were victorious with a margin of 3-1.

My brother-in-law Steven showed up (very much to my surprise) and we played a couple of 5 minute blitz games afterwards. I was consistently getting thrashed and only managed to win like 2 or 3 games out of the 10 odd games we played.

To chesstiger: I will try to put up a position from one of my games. Thank you for your comments!

NSW Grade Matches 2009

Next week is the start of the NSW Grade Matches.

And it so turns out that I have been placed in a rather unusual/unique situation of having to play for 2 separate teams in separate groups (this is allowed).

I am rostered to play for U1600 Norths Bears for North Sydney and for the U1800 team for Ryde Eastwood.

My schedule is now packed and looks like this:

Tuesday May 26 - U1600 Norths Bears vs Norths Grizzlies
Wednesday May 27 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Parramatta
Tuesday June 02 - U1800 St George Saints vs Ryde Eastwood
Thursday June 04 - U1600 Parramatta vs Norths Bears
Tuesday June 09 - U1600 Norths Bears vs Manly
Monday June 15 - U1600 Canterbury vs Norths Bears
Tuesday June 16 - U1800 Norths Grizzlies vs Ryde Eastwood
Monday June 22 - U1600 Rooty Hill vs Norths Bears
Wednesday June 24 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Norths Brown Bears
Tuesday June 30 - U1600 Norths Bears vs St George Saints
Thursday July 02 - U1800 Parramatta vs Ryde Eastwood
Tuesday July 07 - U1600 St George Dragons vs Norths Bears
Wednesday July 08 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs St George Saints
Wednesday July 15 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Norths Bear Cubs
Wednesday July 22 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Norths Grizzlies
Tuesday July 28 - U1800 Norths Brown Bears vs Ryde Eastwood

In addition, where I am not playing the NSW Grade Matches on Tuesday nights, I intend to play in the North Sydney Winter Challenge which takes place every Tuesday night as well. This event however is non rated unlike the Grade Matches and time controls are 1hr+30 sec increment for each move. Good enough for a good solid rate of gameplay and not too hurried to be in the same vein as a rapid game.

Ryde Eastwood is having severe problems in fielding players in both the U1800 category and U1600 category (there were not enough of available players for the U1600 team so there is no U1600 team from Ryde Eastwood this year). I'm only rated 1540 (and this rating is expected to fall below 1500 when the next list comes out in June) and I've signed up for the U1800 team. *shakes head*

Reflections And Quiet Times

(above inset: Kramnik reflects and surveys the damage on the big screen - shown on right - moments away from resigning his first game in Game 3 of the World Chess Championship in Bonn, Germany this year)

I have a 2 month break from chess this time between now and the start of the club competition in February.

During this time, I will also be going away for 3 weeks to spend with my parents overseas (looking very much forward to it).

I've also realised how badly out of shape I was during this lull period. I promptly lost a lot of games on FICS. I'm quite surprised how 3 weeks of inactivity has caused 'rustiness' to set in.

Onto other news, Weng has signed up his son, Dylan for the Australian Open and being one of the first 100 people to sign up, received a free Chess Informant. Dylan was delighted.

The Ryde-Eastwood dinner was a blast and many thanks to Tom Powers for arranging and organising it.

We also had David French moving back to Sydney and a couple of young players joined as well so that means Ryde-Eastwood is starting to fill the numbers again.

In the meantime, I've not been doing anything chess-related lately. My wife is going away for a couple of days to tend to a friend so that leaves me with 4 days to do some things. She has already warned me not to play chess 24 hours a day during that time. Ooops.

December Ratings

I turned up at the Ryde-Eastwood chess club on Wednesday night and had a brief chat with Shane Burgess who duly informed me that the December ACF ratings were out and he was surprised I haven't blogged about it yet. Well, .... errr.... that's because I normally don't put a lot of emphasis on ratings nor do I monitor it closely.

So Shane, this post is for you. ;-)

The last 2 tournaments I took part in have been included.

They were the Ford Memorial Centenary Tournament and the Ryde Eastwood Club Championship Finals.

My rating bumped a bit by 40 points moving from 1500 to 1540.

But that's nothing compared with Shane. Shane's progress was stunning. He shot up 60 points to 1520 (very nice, Shane and stop complaining that you'll have to face tougher opponents next time *wink*).

My brother-in-law Steven's rating rose from 1789 to 1797. Arthur Hunyh rose from 1835 to 1917 (wow!) and Joshua Christiansen remained stable at 1662.

My friend Weng's son, Dylan, is the 2nd most improved player of all of NSW during this 3 month period, getting on the ratings list with an entrant score of 538. Congratulations to Weng and Dylan!

Young Anton Smirnov shot up another 56 points to 1440, showing that he is making good progress.

I've also noticed Anton's analytical skill has improved by leaps and bounds. He is starting to analyse a lot better and his thinking has accelerated.

Yes, I usually lose to him these days in speed chess because my brain malfunctions at higher processing speeds. It like trying to get a Pentium II processor to work at the speed of an Intel i7.

It is just not going to happen. :D

Next Wednesday is the annual Christmas dinner for the Ryde-Eastwood chess club. I've already put my name down with Les and intend to bring my camera along to take some pictures of the event.


Oh, I am most definitely looking forward to it. Yumz...... :)

Missed Chance To Meet Tibor Karolyi

IM Tibor Karolyi was at the chess club at Manly-Warringah on Sep 29 2008.

I only found out about it too late (yesterday) . Bummer.

Kind of a shame really because I have his book Kasparov's Fighting Chess 1993-1998 and just wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his book (I'm still looking through his immense annotations even though I bought the book nearly half a year ago). Tibor formerly was Peter Leko's trainer and is here in Sydney under the gracious invite of Brett Tindall and the Sydney Academy of Chess.

Onto other things, in the Ford Memorial at North Sydney, I am now at +3-2=0 with another 4 games to go. My target was to get +5 in this competition and right now, I'm still on course. My brother-in-law Steven is currently on +3-1=1.

In the Bobby Fischer Cup at Ryde-Eastwood, tonight is the last(?) round for me with a +11-6=3 score (a most absymal performance by my standards). My losses going to Ted Wong, Bill Gletsos, Lorenzo Escalantes, Joweynn Lua, my brother-in-law Steven and finally Theodore last week (where I hung a Rook).

Onto better news, my parents-in-laws are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks' time and it'll be great to see them again as it was my father-in-law who introduced me to chess.

The Ego Has Indeed Landed

Immediately after finishing first in the recently concluded Bilbao tournament, Veselin Topalov gave an interview and proceeded to rubbish the upcoming WCC match:

"I will watch the forthcoming match between Anand and Kramnik but I should confess that I am not that interested in the match between number five and number six in the rankings."

"Kramnik is not the strongest chess player even in Russia. Morozevits, who outplayed him on Tal Memorial, stands higher. And Anand in Bilbao has only been a “pale shadow” of the previously great player....."

Isn't it amazing what winning one tournament can do to a player's ego?

Last week in the end, I did drop by to play in the traditional Lightning competition for Grade Match Presentation at Ryde-Eastwood RSL.

And surprisingly, I came in joint runners-up in the U-1600 category, getting a score of +4-4=1 and got $9 for my effort. A nice tidy sum of cash - which I proceeded to use it on my way home with Steven who needed to buy milk at the petrol kiosk. The highlight of the lightning competition has to be my game against top board Jason Hu (2200++) who showed me the art of crushing your opponent (me!). :)

Last Saturday was spent at home fixing up a handrail and installing a security sensor light at my backyard with my neighbour's help. I was working on Sunday so I couldn't get much training in and although last night was a scheduled day for postponed matches for the Ford Memorial, I didn't have any games on. So I spent the time..... sleeping.

I admit I have not been doing any form of serious chess training lately. Sure, I looked up a couple of lines in the Sicilian (out of boredom) but that was just about it.

I would really like to get back to chess training in preparation for next week's Ford Memorial game but I'm just not in the mood for it. If I can kick myself in the ass if it means getting myself invigorated, I'd do it (aka. laziness).

Hmm.... I just realised that I will again be working this Sunday.

Tonight, the Ryde-Eastwood Bobby Fischer Cup soldiers on.... and I'm quite tempted to play a new opening I just came to know about 2 weeks ago.

In the meantime, it appears the US markets decided to take a plunge because of the sub-prime loans fiasco, taking with it many Oz investors' superannuation savings (similar to 401ks for the US) and thankfully, for now, I am not affected. However, I dread to be the one who is nearing retirement only to find out that my lifelong savings has gone down the drain.

Ford Memorial Signup

Last night, I turned up at the chess club at Manly-Warringah RSL with Steven. We got in a couple of 10 minute blitz games before the club's official/unofficial 15 minutes blitz games started.

I've also confirmed my participation in the Ford Memorial at North Sydney RSL which starts on August 26th and have paid Norman Greenwood the entry fees. Steven is participating as well and we've made plans to travel there after my work (I work in North Sydney so it's good that I can give him a lift to there and back to his home as well).

I found out how seriously out of shape I was when Tze Weng asked me to play for their blitz games. My first game was a drawn endgame. My second game was horrible. I was playing vs James Burt and lost my Queen due to a simple fork. My third and fourth game got on progessively better but it was nothing to shout about. Martin van Elmpt left his Knight en prise under time pressure while Jozsef Gonda also suffered a similar fate unfortunately.

I hope my performance at Ford memorial will be much better.

Les Mikolajczyk also emailed me informing Ryde Eastwood club members that the Fischer-like rapid competition's time format will be shortened to 20min+10sec increment to allow players to have 3 games a night. I lost against Ted Wong last week so I plan to play better tomorrow night.

Had Too Much Fun And Relearning

Okay, while my aunt and uncle were here last week, I basically ate a lot and did very little else (chess-wise).

When I went back to chess training last night, I had realised I forgotten some of the moves required in my 1. d4 repertoire. This only shows that I've not committed the move to long term memory and that means I need to relearn all over again.

*sigh*.

I've not touched Volokitin's tactics book for 3 days now, which means I need to spend more time reading it.

Last night, I was looking at one of the side-variations and was saying to myself, wow. This opening sure requires a lot of memory work because of the dense theory involved.

Onto NSW chess news, Manly-Warringah has been nominated to host the NSW Open in January. I wish them the best of luck.

In my club, Les has emailed all the members saying that they're starting a rapid competition (called the Bobby Fischer Cup) with Fischer time controls at 30 min + 10 sec and it's game on tonight, running for about 7 weeks.

I can't wait.

U-1400 Grade Matches - Final Round

My U-1400 Team Captain Greig emailed us about the final round U1400 Draw for the NSW Grade Matches. These are the final three rounds.

Club Standings after Round 7

Place Name Score
1 ST GEORGE DRAGONS 17.5
2 ST GEORGE SAINTS 16.5
3 ROOTY HILL 13.5
4 RYDE EASTWOOD 12.5

First name team at Home

Round 8
Mon July 14th - 2 v 3 ROOTY HILL v ST GEORGE SAINTS
Tues July 15th - 1 v 4 ST GEORGE DRAGONS v RYDE EASTWOOD

Round 9
Mon July 21st - 1 v 3 ROOTY HILL v ST GEORGE DRAGONS
Wed July 23rd - 2 v 4 RYDE EASTWOOD v ST GEORGE SAINTS

Round 10
Tues July 29th - 1 v 2 ST GEORGE SAINTS v ST GEORGE DRAGONS
Wed July 30th - 3 v 4 RYDE EASTWOOD v ROOTY HILL

I hope we put up a good fight this time round and am looking forward to it.

Death Comes As The End

I'm sure some of our fellow chess bloggers have been wondering why I've blogged so much in the last couple of days. Well, that's because my studies are finally out of the way and I can now comfortably work on my chess.

I was particularly upset yesterday as I had just learnt that a family friend had passed away in the afternoon. He had been ill and was suffering from cancer for a year now. My wife and I were intending to visit him this weekend as we learned that his condition had worsened and was warded at West Mead hospital. We were very shocked to learn that after taking his X-Ray at half-past twelve yesterday, he suddenly couldn't breathe and just collapsed and was gone. Just like that.

The news knocked me out of my stride. While I turned up last night to play our scheduled games against Parrammatta, I told the U1400 team captain Greig that I was in no mood to play but if he cannot find a replacement at such short notice to play, I would fill in. I didn't really feel like playing but I didn't want to let the team down either. Unfortunately, there was no able replacement so I ended up playing. After all our games finished, Greig informed me that our U1400 team's 3-1 win over Parrammatta was enough to secure the final 4th place for the next round. Our team had garnered 12.5 points to Parrammatta's 10.5.

During my game, I was very surprised to see Weng turning up at the chess club with his son. Weng is my brother-in-law's Steven friend (we went over to his place a few times for a nice Christmas meal) who is also another chess fan. He's currently taking his Masters and is thus not available to play for the club. When my game ended, I had a good long conversation with Weng. Weng's concern was his son's chess progress. I offered to help him by passing him some chess materials which hopefully can be of some use to him.

Vladimir turned up (!) as well and he and Shane had a good conversation and were in a jovial mood. When Steven finished his game, Vladimir proceeded to do a simul against Steven, Shane and me in 5 minute blitz chess. He wiped us off all the board with me being the first to fall. In our second round, again, I was the first to fall, Steven resigned a few moves later after me and Shane kept talking to Vladimir and made him forgot his clock was still running and Vladimir lost on time. It was hilarious. Many thanks to Vladimir for being so gracious in taking time to play against patzers like me and to Shane for helping to lighten up the atmosphere of the game. I really needed that as their good nature helped lessened the impact of the news of the death.

The U1600 Team Captain, Les informed me that I would need to fill in to play the North Sydney chess club next Tuesday on Board 4. That's it from me for now.

A Loss Tonight

My brother-in-law Steven and I went down to St George tonight to play against the Dragons. I got Board 4. My opponent was a nice gentleman by the name of Terence Wall.

As Black, I got a winning position but as usual I chose to mess things up and went for more complications when I should not have.

All in all, a good game by Terence who never gave up despite my relenting attack and made me pay for my inaccuracies. A fine win by Terence. Well done, mate.

As for now, it's nearly 1am in the morning, I'm brain dead from the long travel. My finals exam begins next week and between now and then, I'm going to take a break to study and hopefully come back charged.

For now.... it's zzzzzzzz time.

A Madhouse

One of the gripes of playing in Ryde Eastwood RSL was that we seldom get to play in one of the larger rooms anymore. I know space is a prime commodity these days but last night, we have 3 teams of 4 members (+ their team captain who may or may not be playing) each coming from other clubs. That means there were at least 24 players being squeezed into a room the size of half a basketball court. We also had the regular social club players as well and this was getting a bit tight. Unfortunately, there was insufficient tables to setup a board a good distance away from the games going on which meant that post-mortem analysis was always going to be a problem.

I spoke to the U1400 Team Captain Greig Edwards and the U1600 Team Captain Les Mikolajczyk and it was agreed that I should play in the U1400.

In the meantime I saw Joshua Christiansen and congratulated him for his excellent performance in the Sydney Weekender which concluded a couple of days ago. We talked a little about the game and he said it was one of the best games he had the pleasure to be in, including holding a draw against Max Illingworth(2246). Well done, Josh!

Anton Smirnov and his father Vladimir (it's hard to miss them as Vlad is fairly tall and Anton is a cute 6 year old who plays a mean game of chess) turned up. Vladimir asked me if Bill Gletsos was going to turn up and I said I was not sure but he sometimes turned up at around 8pm. Unfortunately, Bill was a no-show in the end. Sorry Vlad, if I gave you the wrong information!

By 7.40pm, we were asked to start our games. It was a weird scenario. We had players missing, and some of the other clubs had players missing as well.

The U1600 Board 1 player for our club, Sotarduga Sitompul came some 15 minutes late and this would later have a profound effect on the game because he lost on time (failed to make the required number of moves before the first time control by 1 minute! He had to make 8 moves in 1 minute before the first time control).

By 7.50pm, 20 minutes after the game was to have started, I had no choice but to start the clock. One minute later, my opponent Hareesh turned up. He was in a bit of a fluster, so I stopped the clock and asked if he wanted a drink and for some time to steady himself before starting the game. He said ok before returning to the board a minute later with a cup of water. We shook hands and proceeded to start the game. The game was a bit unusual and the pieces were flying off the board to reach a R+2P v R+4P endgame. At one point in the middlegame, my brain keeps telling me something about the position looks odd and there's something in there but for the life of me, I could not see it (sure enough, Fritz would later tell me that I could have trapped his Queen with an unusual Knight sacrifice).

Overall, I had a nice game against Hareesh. He agreed to my request for a post-mortem analysis of the game and we managed to find a board to analyse our game (only 1 meter from an actual playing board). Hareesh is a very polite, friendly chap and a gracious opponent. I hope he does well for the rest of the competition.

In the U1800, Steven won his game after his opponent panicked in a drawn N+6P v B+6P (!) endgame and unnecessarily sacrificed his bishop for pawn play. Joshua picked up a nice win against his opponent with an amazing attacking combination. David French lost on time to his opponent and Konrad Zielinski won his game when his opponent's mobile phone rang! Score: 3-1

In the U1600, Vince Chiara and James Hickey won their respective matches while Les and Sitompul lost. Score: 2-2

In the U1400, Douglas Eyres won his game, Simon Parker drew with Anton Smirnov. At this point, it was late so Steven and I headed home with Greig's game still going.

Truly a madhouse night.

Up next week on Tuesday, I'm playing against the St George Dragons and their players are (the March ratings are shown with the June 08 ratings in brackets):

Astorga, Peter 1643 (1654)
Press, Brian J 1542 (1553)
Britton, Geoffrey J 1510 (1513)
Wall, Terence 1506 (1496)

It's going to be a tough fight!

Back Again To The U1400s .... Or Not?

This Wednesday's U1400 match has Ryde Eastwood playing against North Sydney (?!). Deja vu indeed as my game last week was against the U1600 North Sydney team as well.

A quick look up shows the list of possible opponents from North Sydney (the numbers on the right are the Mar 08 ratings while the numbers in brackets are the Jun 08 ratings):

Carden, Matthew 1320 (1267)
Thippeswamy, Hareesh 1224 (1110)
Jennings, Andrew (Garry) 1172 (1263)
Smirnov, Anton 1110 (1371)
Palmer, Paul 691 (763)
Little, Nicholas unrated (unrated)

I played 6 year old Anton Smirnov last week in the U1600s. During our postmortem of the game, I could not help but be impressed by his level of understanding of positions, tactics and formations. He's fast developing into a dangerous tactical player and on his day, it can be a formidable task to face him. In a space of 3 months, his rating has jumped a massive 261 points to reach 1371. A very impressive record. Under his dad's guidance, I am certain he would break the 2,000 rating level before his teens. If he's on board 1 on Wednesday, then I get to play him again.

I have just been informed by my U1400 team captain, Greig that I have been rostered to play in the U1600s instead against Manly on Wednesday. Oddly, I've not received word from the U1600 team captain Les that I was playing in that group this week. *puzzled*

The list of possible opponents from Manly (the numbers on the right are the Mar 08 ratings while the numbers in brackets are the Jun 08 ratings):

Mejzini, Jack 1607 (1616)
Roberts, David 1605 (1565)
Miller, Gordon 1585 (1588)
Dimock, Chris 1549 (1581)
Schwandl, Hans 1505 (1477)
Roach, Owen 1479 (1458)

This group is definitely a tough challenge.

Thankfully, as the venues for both matches are at Ryde Eastwood RSL at the same time, it is just a simple matter of turning up and finding out which team I am supposed to play for. Talk about getting my lines crossed.

Yesterday, my brother-in-law Steven and I headed down to the Manly-Warringah chess club for a couple of rounds of chess. We met up with Tze Weng and had a chat with him. It was a rather quiet night with only a couple of players turning up but we still had a good time playing social chess at 10 minute time controls.

Steven and I have a tendency to start the clock at 10 minutes and allow the clock to run out of time and yet continue to play on because our games tend to lead to very interesting positions and it would be a shame to claim a win/loss based on time. As a result, our games normally runs to half an hour if not more. Never one to conform to openings, I played a huge variety of openings, including the Philidor, 2 Knights, Sicilian Grand Prix Attack, Sicilian Najdorf, King's Indian Defense, French, Nimzo-Indian, Scotch, Catalan, English Opening (phew, that was a mouthful) etc.

In at least half of the games, I noticed I have a tendency to miss stronger moves and it usually happens after I played it. This tells me that I really need to take more time and analyse more carefully before making moves.

Winning Is Everything, Right?

I basically lost my head and naturally lost my game playing on Board 1 for the U1400 NSW Grade Matches Round 2 last night.

However, an amazing incident happened. My opponent was from St George. He was slowly but surely going to win his game. We reached the position shown with White to play.

Suddenly, he moved his right hand, grabbed the g-pawn, moved it to g4, say,"Check!" and hit the clock.

I was stunned. Mainly because he had just completed an illegal move. I didn't know what to do at this point as clearly he made an illegal move, I told him that he can't do that and he realised to his horror what he has done. He then tried to take back his move but I stopped him and say,"You can't do that."

The arbiter (TD) Bill Gletsos was not around and had briefly left the hall and I tried looking for him and found him sitting on the sofa just outside the room chatting to my brother-in-law Steven. I informed Bill about the illegal move.

Bill subsequently told me that the correct procedure was to give me an additional 2 minutes. I told him that I do not know how to set the clock in this way.

So we both made our way back to the board and surprise, surprise, he had moved his g-pawn back and had instead used the Rook on e5 to capture my Rook on f5 and was acting like nothing had happened.

When questioned about it, he lied through his teeth and said,"Yes, I played Rook takes Rook."

At this point, I was so disappointed with his response. He was in a totally winning position and there was really no need for him to do this kind of thing.

Can you imagine that, a player playing on Board 1 with a rating of 1360++, playing against an unrated player (me) in the Under-1400 Grade Matches just didn't want to own up that he made a mistake.

The incident was resolved after his team captain spoke a few brief words to Bill and the clock was adjusted and the game continued.

I resigned a few moves later.

Lest it be known, I have no qualms about losing. I played like crap and thoroughly deserved to lose and I applaud him for his good play.

The reason I didn't know what was to be done was because this was the first time it had occurred to me. I take part of the blame in not knowing what I should have done.

My brother-in-law Steven subsequently told me that what I should have done, is to ask a fellow player to keep watch over the board while I go look for Bill and to make sure my opponent recorded the move on his scoresheet so there is no denial in the future.

I will keep this in mind.

I am just thoroughly disappointed with my opponent's behaviour. This isn't some multi-million dollar competition. It's just a game for crying out loud, playing for some silly rating number that does not make you a better human being or a worse one should you win or lose.

After the game, nevertheless, I gave my opponent a little hand on the shoulder and congratulated him for his win and told him that there was no need for him to do what he did because the penalty was only adding an additional 2 minutes on my clock.

It was only after the game when I asked Steven if I should have approached Bill in this instance and he told me that what I had done was correct. But what I also did wrong was to leave the board unattended and didn't wait for him to record the move else it was a my-word-vs-his word thing. Steven told me that my opponent's team captain didn't believe him either and which was why my clock was adjusted.

Just in case you're wondering, my opponent isn't some young kid. He's easily over 40 years old.

This was my first game in a Grade Match. Now I know the kind of players I can expect from St George. Btw, he never did apologise for his behaviour.

Welcome to the world of competitive chess. Win with grace and lose with dignity indeed.

Sigh.

NSW Grade Matches Results So Far

Ryde-Eastwood Chess Club
Performance Grade Results

(NB:Ryde-Eastwood players highlighted in bold
- note that the names highlighted in bold
DOES NOT MEAN these players have White)

____________

Under 1800

Liu, Steven Hern (1779) v Talum (?), Lito (u/r) 1-0
Escalante, Lorenzo (1742) v Mejzini, Jack (1607) 0-1
Zielinski, Konrad (1679) v Foong, Tze Weng (1621) 1-0
Christensen, Joshua (1651) v Greenwood, Norman (1530) 1-0

Club Standings
Place Name Score
1 RYDE EASTWOOD 3 pts
2-3 MANLY, NORTH SYDNEY 2.5 pts
4-5 ST GEORGE DRAGONS, ST GEORGE SAINTS 2 pts

____________

Under 1600

Hickey, James (1594) v Ruan, Jack (1557) 0-1
Hale, Dennis (1591) v Papantoniou, John (1629) 0-1
Mikolajczyk, Les (1473) v Ruan, Harry (1459) 0-1
Chiara, Vince (1389) v Gu, Sean (1361) 0-1


Club Standings
Place Name Score
1-2 ROOTY HILL, ST GEORGE SAINTS 4 pts
3 MANLY 3 pts
4-5 NORTH SYDNEY BROWN BEARS, NORTH SYDNEY GRIZZLIES 2 pts
6 PARRAMATTA 1 pts
7-8 BONNYRIGG, RYDE EASTWOOD 0 pts

to play against Bonnyrigg tomorrow (Wed) at Ryde-Eastwood RSL at 7.30pm

Likely Opponents from Bonnyrigg

Blazeski, Krste (1647), Todorovski, Marjan (1587), Banovic, Milko (u/r)

____________

Under 1400

to play against St George Dragons tomorrow (Wed) at Ryde-Eastwood RSL at 7.30pm

Participants
Douglas Eyres (1222), Simon Parker (u/r), Greig Edwards (u/r) and Chee Tan (u/r) with first reserve: Luke Farrugia (u/r)

Likely Opponents from St George Dragons
Taric, Omar (1361), Keuning, Patrick J (1358), Ollivain, Thierry (1342), Johansson, Par (Peter) (1335)

Update On Grade Matches

Les Mikolajczyk has replied to my email regarding my participation in the Grade Matches. So instead of moving to the U-1600, I'm now shuffling between 2 divisions, both the U-1400 and the U-1600. It looks like there were players who either could not travel or could not play on those dates. So I got drafted in. In addition, Les also mentioned that I might be asked to fill in in case some people cannot make it.

So now my updated schedule looks like this:

U-1400: 28 May (Wed): Ryde Eastwood vs St George Dragons
U-1400: 02 Jun (Mon): Rooty Hill vs Ryde Eastwood
U-1600: 03 Jun (Tue): North Sydney Grizzlies vs Ryde Eastwood
U-1400: 11 Jun (Wed): Ryde Eastwood vs North Sydney
U-1600: 17 Jun (Tue): St George Dragons vs Ryde Eastwood (or)
U-1400: 17 Jun (Tue): St George Saints vs Ryde Eastwood
U-1400: 25 Jun (Wed): Ryde Eastwood vs Manly
U-1400: 02 Jul (Wed): Ryde Eastwood vs Parramatta
U-1600: 08 Jul (Tue): Nth Syd Brown Bears vs Ryde Eastwood

Well, I obviously can't play on both boards simultaneously against St George on 17th June so one board will have to give.

I'm a bit worried on that day as well. The final exam for my studies is some 5 weeks away so it would be around that time for both my final theory and final exam (after that, it's no more studies for me). I'll just have to see how it goes.

In the U-1600 group, my club didn't play well unfortunately on Tuesday. Vince Chiara, Dennis Hale, James Hickey and Les all lost against the players from St George.

NSWCA Grade Matches: I'm In The Under 1400 ??

Okay, much to my surprise, I got put into the Under-1400s group for the Grade matches (??). I know I am not rated but the looks on the faces of Shane and Joshua were priceless when I told them I got signed up to that group - which brought much reaction in the form of "what-the-heck" (?)

I've sent an email to Les asking if something could be done to move me to the under-1600s instead (although I doubt it'll happen). I had a quick look at some of the teams for this group. There's a couple of players in there whose rating is 1400++.

Van Elmpt, Martin (1448), Manly
Macgillivray, Ken (1421), Rooty Hill
Lee, Marco (1388), St George Saints
Sewell, Bob (1429), Parramatta
Keuning, Patrick J (1358), St George Dragons

I've a feeling that I'm certain to meet at least one of these players considering I'm on Board 1 and there's a very good chance these players have probably improved since their last rating.

Lately, I find my chess skills deteriorating (alarmingly) and have been putting up dismal performances.

Take for example, last night. That was a horror showing from yours truly, who played quite a number of 10 minute blitz games against Vasey (1029) and I lost approx. 9 games out of 10.

Subsequently, Steven and I got a few blitz games as well and I only got 1 decent win out of 4 or 5 games against him.

Dang, I am just terrible at blitz chess. Plain and simple, I play crap chess at 10 minute time controls. My brain starts operating at 1 ply mode and it became a game of I-see- a-move-I-make-a-move reactionary chess. Maybe I should dunk my head in water.

Steven reckons that I become too eager and have a tendency to make a mess of middlegame positions. Frankly, I'm not surprised.

Vince Chiara lost to Arthur Hunyh last night so that means I got into the playoffs with the 1700++ group for the Club Championship. I expect a +0-8=0 rout.