Capablanca's worst moment

The great Cuban master of positional chess didn't make many blunders in his career and left us countless positional masterpieces. This however was his moment to forget!

White: Sämisch
Black: Capablanca
Karlsbad 1929

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.a3 Bxc3+ 5.bxc3 d6 6.f3 c5 7.e4 Nc6 8.Be3 b6 9.Bd3



In a fairly normal Nimzo type of position Capablanca got caught only thinking about strategy and played 9...Ba6??

This just loses immediately and after 10.Qa4 Bb7 11.d5 white can resign and indeed I believe Capablanca did!

Live Blitz #13 - Black vs IM 1.b3

I also posted Live Blitz #78 on ChessVideos.tv.  I have different series on Youtube, 3 minute games there, 5 minute games on CV.tv. I might change that but at least it will be different series.

Latest upload on CV.tv: http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8085

Van Wely scalp

No....it wasn't me, it was Jake Kleiman rated USCF 2453 in the North American Open. I was browsing through the game and naturally I was curious to see how Van Wely lost with white as it's normal for him to be at or very near the top in these American Opens.



After maneuvering around for 20+ moves trying to find ways to go forward, make his king safe and make good on his extra pawn....he got hit with an unexpected tactic in his position.

52...Rxc5!

A bolt out of he blue...last move 52.Qd5 was meant to prevent that! Now it all falls apart for Van Wely. He can't take the rook lets look at that:

53.Qxc5 Qd1+ now 54.Kc3 meets 54...Qd3# and I'll leave it as an exercise to find the mate if 54.Ka2.

After 53.Qd7 Bd3 Van Wely could have resigned but managed to fight for another 30 moves before being forced to throw in the towel.

ICC tactics

From a 3-minute game tonight. I was white vs PenelopeCruz



Black is probably fine, even slightly better after 30...exd4 since d5 is likely to fall. He however got fancy with 30...Qxd5+ which is tempting. Take a pawn with check and then take the bishop. However I had a nice shot 31.e4! Qxe4+ 32.f3 and white wins a piece since black can't take the bishop and save the queen and rook with one move, also the bishop conveniently covers Rb2+

More patterns

I played a bullet game with my best friend many many years ago. I kept it, it was a fairly unintereting game as most bullet games are...however:



After I played Kh1...having used very little time he played immedately 26...Qc7 setting up a trick which I fell for I played 27.Ref1 and he played the nice move 27...Bg1!



A very nice move, maybe not hard to spot but impressive to find using almost no time (1,5second spent on Qc7 and Bg1). The reason he found it was we had just before that looked at Tim Krabbe's page. He has a section there called "The Ultimate Blunder" which is resigning in winning positions. The first example of this that he quotes is Von Popiel - Marco



Marco resigned here thinking he was losing the pinned bishop on d4....however 36...Bg1! turn the tables!

A miss by Kasparov

I saw some simul games by Kasparov in this newspiece on ChessVibes some time ago:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/kasparov-on-the-fide-elections-carlsen-and-more/#more-31172
(at the bottom of the page)

I looked at the game Kasparov-Paul De Vos (the 4th game). The opening moves were:

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 e6 4.Nf3 g6?! 5.c4 Bb4+??



Kaspaov played 6.Bd2 and won in 22 moves, however he missed the best move and my pattern recognition immediately went to work when I looked at this game. I had seen this before!!

It was on Tim Krabbé's page:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary.htm (check item number 381, marked with red in top corner of each entry)

The move here is indeed 6.Ke2!! and white wins a piece since after the knight retreats we play c5 and then trap the bishop with our pawns, be sure to check the Tim Krabbé piece, this is called the earliest king move to cause resignation!

So if the greatest player in the world has holes in his pattern recognition, we don't need to feel bad about our quick loss in an online game on ICC right? It was a simul but still I'd expect the best player in the world to have seen this ;-)

Fantastic miss in the Icelandic League last year

GM Helgi Olafsson had white for the Vestmannaeyjar team (which I now play for) against the team of Fjolnir's Faruk Tairi from Sweden. He just played 32.Ng7?? which looks good, attacks g6 and he indeed won after 32...g5? 33.Bxd4 etc. He would have been in for a huge shock had black found a strong move in the diagrammed position.

As an amusing anecdote, it was more of a shock that the chessboard got hit with a snowball! Some annoying kid entered the hall and randomly threw a snowball into the crowd of about 400+ chessplayers and randomly hit this game!



32...Bg5!!

This might have been more of a shock than the snowball had Faruk found this move! White probably just loses in all lines.

33.Qxg5 is met with 33...Ra1+ and 34...Nxf3+ winning the queen and...
33.Bxg5 Rc2+ 34.Kd1 (34.Kb1 a2+ 35.Ka1 Nb3#) a2 -+

Wonderful fortress study by Troitsky

I really like beautiful endgame studies. For me studying endgame studies can be beneficial. Studies often demonstrate the power and limitations of pieces in very pure form and also it can't be bad for the imagination to go through many of these.

Troitsky is one of the best known study composers of all time. In this study white seems to be in deep trouble since his knight is attacked and there doesn't seem to be a good way to stop the pawn...


Don't  worry though, we'll just let the d-pawn do it's best!

1.Nc6! d3
Otherwise the knight should get to the pawn, it only needs to sacrifice itself since we have the wrong rook's pawn and black can't win that
2.Nxa7 d2
3.Nb5 d1=Q
4.Nc3
What the hell? We just allowed black to make a new queen and now we attack it with a wimpy little knight and black can even move the queen and give us a check? Is there a solution or is this an early April Fool's joke??



What do you think??

Find the strongest move

What's the absolute best continuation for white here.......and the most crowdpleasing ;-)

New video posted on ChessVideos.tv

I recently posted my first game in the 5-minute pool on ICC. Usually I post 5-minute games from ICC on CV.tv and PlayChess games on the YouTube channel. In this game I have the black pieces against Grandmaster Botvirosian in a Symmetrical English.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8063

Also I thought that the game Short-Vallejo from Reggio Emilia was interesting for French players. The Brazilian lover of the French Defence, Rateodoro has analyzed this video on Chessvideos.tv. You can find this game here:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8055