Quality Chess Blog

The following position is from last weekend’s 4ncl. Not the vital league-deciding match, but one of my less significant efforts with Black.

Black to play

D. Bisby – J. Shaw, 4ncl 2014

Identify the candidate moves and make a quick assessment. I would suggest spending no more than a couple of minutes, 5 at the absolute most.

[fen size=”small”]5bk1/B4pp1/3p4/3Qp1p1/1Pr1P3/5RP1/2q2PK1/8 b – – 0 29[/fen]

Answer below the fold.

Read more…

(Taken from New in Chess Magazine 3/2014)

5. In our previous issue, Levon Aronian said that he didn’t understand what people mean when they speak of good form. Did you feel you were in good form?

I didn’t have that feeling at the tournament – where I was really shining was at the training sessions with Sergey Karjakin that ended a week before Yerevan. I cracked studies like nuts. Usually I take one of Jacob Aagaard’s books to tournaments and solve positions from them to find out what form I’m in. I remember that at the last Super Final of the Russian Championship in Novgorod I was really concerned about the results of my attempts, but it was already too late to do anything about it. But I don’t think I even opened Aagaard’s Calculation in Yerevan, apparently subconsciously feeling that everything was fine.

I am writing on an article to New in Chess at the moment and I came to think of an old argument I had with a friend about definitions. Basically he was of the opinion that good chess consists of opening preparation, intuition and calculation – and nothing else. I have a different view, cutting things up to minor sections. One of the differences came across when we debated a complex position. He said that it was solved with calculation, while I insisted that it was solved with strategic thinking. He did not see a difference.

Sometimes you have to accept that you do not speak the same languages. He had a lot of good points that were interesting, but here I think that we had a different approach. Unfortunately the debate turned sour and never became fruitful.

In STRATEGIC PLAY I wrote about one of my better ideas: to divide chess decisions into four categories. (Obviously they can be put into more or less categories; it all depends on how you choose to see the game. As far as I am concerned, anything that anyone finds useful is worth investigating.)

These categories are (free from memory – what I actually call them is less important, it is the ideas that matter):

a) Automatic Decisions

Moves that can be made without really thinking about it. Either because it is theory, or because there are no alternatives (legal or sensible).

b) Simple Decisions

Positions that can be solved without calculation (not variations necessarily – read the NIC article when it comes!). I have a training system for this in POSITIONAL PLAY, based on the three questions. It is a very powerful training system and if both 2600-players and my six year old daughter find it useful, it might help you as well.

c) Critical Moments

Positions where the difference between the best move (or two best moves, it is not an exact science, but a way for us to understand how we should relate to the position) is big. Let us say a pawn or +1.00 as the young people would call it.

d) Complex Positions

These are difficult positions that can only be solved with an interaction of positional thinking (b) and calculation (c). These come around only a few times in a game, if at all. They will at times have solutions where a positional aim is solved with counter-intuitive or anti-positional sequences. I deal with this type of positions in STRATEGIC PLAY and ATTACK&DEFENCE.

I find this way of carving the various decisions up useful during the game, in order to work out where to invest my time. Maybe I will write a book about this one day…

I am wondering if we should call FROM GM TO TOP TEN for From GM to Queen of the Castle! Congratulations to Judit and Mihail; I hear they are opening the champagne bottle tonight!

Anyway, Quality Chess continues its reign, holding on to all of the top awards: ACP, ECF, ChessCafe and Chess Publishing. The only major award we do not currently hold is FIDE’s Boleslavsky award, which can only be won by registered chess trainers and where the competition is lower. We also have a lot of respect for the Guardian Award, but alas, we do not currently hold it as far as I know :-).

It is one of those days… I cycled to the office for the first time in months (since I was fined £50 for riding with 6 k/ph through a green lights for pedestrians – with no pedestrians in sight – incidentally the same amount I would have been fined for speeding through a red light in a car). I struggled and it took me 55 minutes to cover 13.2 k downhill… Yeah, I have gone fat writing Endgame Play. +5k in a month to be exact.

Once in the office, my desktop obviously decided to not cooperate. It cuts out after 10-20 seconds and will be picked up by Laptop Doctor in the afternoon.

But a good thing is that I will be able to give you a small link to an article I wrote for FIDE. It contains three positions I have used in playing exercises with my students. If you want to attempt to beat a computer, just take Black in both positions and give yourself at least an hour. It is by no means easy; but it is top training.

[fen size=”small”]8/8/1p2bk2/pBpp1p2/5K1P/1P3P2/P7/8 w – – 0 1[/fen]

[fen size=”small”]r1b1r1k1/2p2pp1/3p1n1p/1p5q/3Pp3/1P2P1PP/P4PB1/R1BQ1RK1 b – – 0 18[/fen]

The article is found here. If you want to do your chess any good, you try to play the positions before reading it.

Here is a game from the local league, played last month. I certainly don’t deserve any medals for beating a sub-2000-rated opponent. However, one-sided games can contain some instructive value, as the viewer gets to see one side’s strategy play out perfectly. The present game also gave me a chance to test Avrukh’s Slav repertoire. Even though my opponent deviated from theory quite early, I was able to apply a few of the ideas that were recommended by Avrukh in other variations.

The concept of “learning ideas instead of memorizing moves” has become rather a hackneyed phrase, usually associated with products such as chess DVDs, and books that place less emphasis on detailed analysis than the GM Repertoire series. However, I have often found my general understanding has been elevated by studying high-level opening books. (Not just from Quality Chess; the “Opening According to Kramnik/Anand” books from Chess Stars also spring to mind.)

Alan Jelfs (1922) – Andrew Greet (2485) D15
Glasgow, 04.03.2014

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 Bf5 5.Nc3 a6 6.b3
My opponent was obviously not familiar with this particular set-up with the pawn on a6 and bishop on f5, and he chooses an innocuous reply.

6…e6 7.Bd3 Bd6!?
I decided to leave the bishop to be taken, as the change in the pawn structure would make the game more interesting.

A decent alternative is: 7…Bb4 8.Qc2 (8.Bb2 Qa5) 8…Bxd3 9.Qxd3 Black has won a tempo and is doing fine.

8.Bxf5
Interestingly, about a month later I reached the same position against the same opponent. On that occasion he avoided exchanging on f5 but made the strategic error of blocking the centre with c4-c5. It was a strange attempt to improve, and I won quickly.

8…exf5
During the game, I remembered that one of Avrukh’s lines featured a similar position, but with the white knight still on g1, which gave him the option of putting the queen on f3 and knight on e2 to challenge Black’s central pawns. (I have since checked and found the line on page 57 of GM 17.) Here there is no such plan, and I already assessed my position as slightly preferable.

[fen size=”small”]rn1qk2r/1p3ppp/p1pb1n2/3p1p2/2PP4/1PN1PN2/P4PPP/R1BQK2R w KQkq – 0 9[/fen]

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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

Today was probably the hardest fought game I played in the tournament. I was early in trouble and tried to find ways to play my position, but instead ran out of time. I found a lot of tricks, but at move 40 we went into an endgame that was entirely lost for me. The easiest way was to exchange rooks and win slowly on the kingside. But all the way to move 57 he had winning chances.

Aagaard,Jacob (2520) – Aabling-Thomsen,Jakob (2331) [B07]
DEN-ch 2014 Skorping (8), 19.04.2014

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Nge2 Bg7 5.g3 0-0 6.Bg2 e5 7.h3 c6 8.Be3 b5 9.a3 Bb7 10.0-0 Nbd7 11.f4 exd4 12.Nxd4 a6 13.Nde2 Re8 14.Bf2 c5 15.Qxd6 Nxe4 16.Bxe4 Bxe4 17.Rad1 Bxc2 18.Rd2 Bf5 19.g4 Bf8 20.Qc6 Be6 21.Rfd1 Qb6 22.Qf3 Nf6 23.Bh4 Bb3 24.Rf1 b4 25.Bxf6 Qxf6 26.Ne4 Qe6 27.N2g3 Red8 28.f5 Qc4 29.Rdf2 Qd3 30.Qf4 Qd4 31.fxg6 fxg6 32.Nf6+ Kh8 33.Qc7 Bg7 34.Nge4 Rf8 35.g5 Bc4 36.Rc1 Rac8 37.Qf4 Bd5 38.Nxc5 Bxf6 39.gxf6 Qxf4 40.Rxf4 bxa3 41.bxa3 Rc6 42.Rd4 Bg8 43.Nd3 Rxc1+ 44.Nxc1 Rxf6 45.Nd3 Rf5 46.Nf4 Ra5 47.Rd3 Rb5 48.Kf2 a5 49.Kf3 Kg7 50.h4 Kf6 51.Rd8 Bc4 52.Rc8 Rb3+ 53.Ke4 Bf7 54.Rc6+ Kg7 55.Rc7 Rxa3 56.Ne6+ Kf6 57.Ng5
[fen size=”small”]8/2R2b1p/5kp1/p5N1/4K2P/r7/8/8 b – – 0 57[/fen]
Here it was suggested from the commentary room that Black still wins with 57…Bg8!, where I would probably have to find 58.Kf4!? to keep the game going, avoiding 58.Nxh7+ Bxh7 59.Rxh7 Rh3!, where White can play 60.Kd5! and keep fighting. I will check finalgen to see if Black is winning here. [obviously it is].
57…Ra4+ 58.Ke3 Bb3 59.Nxh7+ Kf5 60.Rc5+ Kg4 61.h5 ½-½