Danish Championship – Round 9

There was little to play for in the last round of the Danish Championship. GM Allan Stig Rasmussen looked set to win the tournament after winning against all the other grandmasters. Sune Berg Hansen could still theoretically catch him, but when Allan made a draw, Sune had no fight left in him. He offered a draw, which I declined, only to realise that I had no fight left in me either. On the next move I offered a draw, which was accepted.

All in all I played not that badly, scoring +2 in a strong and highly motivated field. I achieved my goal of securing a spot on the Olympiad team, as the no. 4/5 player together with Jakob Vang Glud, with whom I shared 3rd here. At times I played some good chess, but I clearly ran out of energy by the 6th/7th round and was lucky to end the tournament with only one loss at that point. The many chocolate bars I have consumed while finishing Endgame Play in the night, has not helped. But now the sun is out and it is time to ride the bike to work again. May is maybe the best month of the year in Scotland and I am going to get the most out of it. Sorry John, I will not be coming in that often the next 4-5 weeks :-).

Hansen,Sune Berg (2569) – Aagaard,Jacob (2520) [D00]
DEN-ch 2014 Skorping (9), 20.04.2014

1.d4 d5 2.Bf4 c5 3.e3 Nf6 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nd2 Qb6 6.Qb3 c4 7.Qc2 g6 8.Ngf3 Bf5 9.Qc1 Nh5 10.Bg3 Nxg3 11.hxg3 Qd8 12.Be2 b5 13.Bd1 Bd7 14.e4 e6 15.exd5 exd5 16.Nf1 h5 17.Qe3+ Qe7 ½-½

10 thoughts on “Danish Championship – Round 9”

  1. Thanks for the on-the-spot reporting, Jacob. I hope you’ll do the same for us at the Olympiad. Congrats on a fine result.

  2. The goal was rather vague. I felt that I could not aspire to play in the Olympiad team if I did not play a tournament and I also felt I had to survive it. If 4.5 or 4 would be enough for make the team, I do not know. The selector would decide. My attitude during the games was to try to find good moves, but at the end I was burned out.

    I think the contradiction is not there.

  3. Jacob, couple of Questions.

    I just looked at the 2014 catalogue for the first time, and have my list of “must haves” when they come out, which include Grandmaster Prepartion – Endgame Play, Grandmaster Preparation – Thinking Inside the Box, Mating the Castled King, The Secret Life of Bad Bishops, and The Modern Tiger.

    That said, there are two books listed where to title isn’t so clear:

    Chess Structures – A Grandmaster Guide: Is this, in essence, a more modernized and advanced version of Andrew Soltis’s old classic, Pawn Structure Chess?

    The Grandmaster Program: Is this similar to The Grandmaster Battle Manual, which, in essence, is about playing in open tournaments and random obstacles that entails, like facing lower opposition, facing solid openings, etc.? Or something else?

  4. @Patrick
    Maricio has talked about his book elsewhere on the blog (in the appropriate thread) and the Grivas book might unfortunately not happen after all, so there is no reason to spend too much time on that.

  5. I participated and won a gift certificate and spend it on the Judit books. I am 50-60 pages into the first and I am very, very impressed. I cannot put it down but at the same time I do not want to rush through because this might be the best chess reading experience I have had. It is “feel good books” with lots of small talk and reflections but at the same time the chess ROCKS and the determination of the young lady shines through the pages! Playing through these games and game fragments reminds you what chess is all about – the will to winn and the thrill of the king-hunt! It is like she is showing you: look how hard I worked, but look at the beauty I created.

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