Tripled pawns

The nicest looking triple pawns I've had in a chess game! My opponent resigned here in Johannesson-Ragnarsson, HTR 2005.

Comical finish in recent game

This position was seen in a recent game between young GM Dariusz Swiercz from Poland vs IM Twan Burg from the Netherlands.



Black is doing a great job of outplaying his opponent (the eventual winner of the tournament) and one would think that white would have to suffer for a long time in this position! Let's see what happened:

62. Ra4+ Ke3 63. Ra3+ Kd2 64. Rd3+ Ke1 65. Kg1



Hmmm...well black has activated his king but now it's a little cramped and white all of a sudden threatens Nf2 with a mate threat on d1. So black reacts, probably thinking he has this under control.

65...e4 66. Rd4 Rb6 

Probably intending to meet 67. Nf2 with 67...Rb1 stopping the mate.

67.Nf4 exf3 68.gxf3

68. Nxd5 Nxd5 69. Rxd5 f2+ followed by ...Kxf1 and black wins. Now Ng2# is threatened so...

68...Bxf3



69. Be2!   Ooooopps!

Suddenly mate is again threatened on d1. And stopping it with Rb1 loses the f3 bishop with continued mate threats.

69...Bxe2 70. Ng2#

A truly comical ending that deserves a diagram!



If in doubt, checkmate!

Live Blitz #9

Strange behaviour of online players

Eh LOL is all I can muster after this funny episode. I played a game in the 3-minute pool. I win.

My opponent gives one of those lame pre-programmed "gg txx" or something like that. I don't care people may do what they want. I don't answer immediately and he says:

LG312 says: why are most chess players antisocial !??!

I answer: You got that from our game?

Not sent -- LG312 is censoring you.

Not that first time some blistering idiot censors me without me ever uttering a word to him. Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

Tactics in yesterdays online games

I found some neat and unusual tactics in yesterdays online blitz games. While I feel good finding these I also need to stop playing 3 0 as the quality of games is close to dramatically better in online 5 0 games vs 3 0 games. Time is just too huge a factor in 3 0 and it annoys the hell out of me to build up good positions only to be flagged by an opponent who did close to nothing constructive the whole game.

But such is life...we need to take the positive out of these games and I was happy with these tactics.

#1 White to move



#2 Black to move

Marin's English Opening

I am very impressed by the 3-volume work that Mihail Marin did on the English Opening. It really fills in some voids that I had in my English 1.c4 and/or 1.Nf3 repertoire. I have been trying some of the lines in online blitz games and will share some of that with people here on my blog. Here is a game I played against a strong IM in the 3-minute blitz pool on ICC. It's in the so called "Fischer line" where black plays 5...e6

Calculation exercise

This is a good exercise in calculation/tactics. Does the tempting move 20.Nxg5 work? The main idea being to answer 20....Qxg2 with 21.Nxe6+ ??

Tactics - The Karpov choke

In the Czech Open 2004 in Pardubice my opponent allowed me to finish the game with a well known trick. The answer is in the comments. If you haven't seen this trick before or you would like to learn more about this trick then watch Pattern Recognition #4:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4179

Aronian wins World Blitz Championship!

Congratulations to Levon Aronian for winning this fantastic event. It is clear that this form of chess is the most commercially ready product for the general people who know little or not much about chess. The Russian organisers did a great job with a brilliant live broadcast and I enjoyed myself thoroughly watching some live games (video of the players playing, not just a relay of moves) over the 3 days that the event was played.

Many of the games are also quite interesting because the players at this level play extremely strong even with this short time control and we get to see top class intuition at it's best.

I recommend everybody to watch some games, they are for instance available on these channels on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/bumblebee1607

http://www.youtube.com/user/MikhailKalenkov

ChessVibes also has some videos in two parts:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/videos-from-the-world-blitz-part-1/

and:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/videos-from-the-world-blitz-part-2/

This success by Aronian follows quite good results recently and he is currently over 2800 which is a pretty sexy rating!

I met Aronian in Gothenburg 2005 and he is a very nice guy, difficult not to root for him!

Clumsy blunder by ex FIDE World Champ

This position is from the "Cup of Governor" or the 6th Femida Tournament which I think is some kind of superleague in the Ukraine. It was four teams on four boards playing a round-robin. Some top players included Ponomariov, Eljanov, Jobava (all rated 2700+) and some very strong Ukrainians like Korobov, Volokitin, Miroshnichenko and Moiseenko.

In the diagrammed position, former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov just played 30.Qb3-d3?? allowing Jobava Baadur with black to hit him with a nasty tactic. Jobava won all his 3 games which should mean he should be very close to a career high in rating (he also beat Eljanov!).

Jobava played 30...Nf2! and Ponomariov had to give up the exchange with 31.Bxf2 and suffer while Jobava brought home the point as 31.Rxh7 fails to 31...Rxh7 32.Rxh7 Nxd3 32.Rxe7 Nxe1 which is also check, leaving black a full piece up after he captures the rook on e7!