Open and closed

Of late there seems to be an interesting overlap in high level chess. On a number of occasions there has been a high level open swiss coinciding with a top level closed event. The latest example of this i the Grenke Tournament and Gibraltar. I'm not sure it forces players to make a choice, as much as it provides a nice back up (eg Nakamura did not play Grenke, but won Gibraltar)
But once these event are over, the top players sometime come together. And example of this is Zurich event starting this evening. The tournament has Kramnik, Caruana, Anand, Aronian, Nakamura and Karjakin playing a mixed Classical/Rapid event. The format has 2 points for a win at classical chess and 1 for a win at rapidplay. While the winner is based on score for both events, I wonder if most fns regard the winner of the classical as the 'real' winner.
Tonight kicks off with a blitz event to decide the pairings, while the real action starts tomorrow. The tournament home page is here, and alongside live broadcasting there is live commentary, including a guest appearance from Australia's own Jan (sic) Rogers.

Things to watch

I am currently in Auckland (NZ) on a work related trip. Usually I try and find some chess angle to talk about on my journey's, but the only thing I could find while flying was a lack of chess content on the inflight TV/Move system (OK, this was to be expected).
But all is not lost, as these days there seems to be a bunch of free movie apps popping up in lots of places. One such place is Snag Films, which has a lot of documentaries on there. While the search for chess only turned up a few inks, the famous "Chess Kids" doco was on of them. If you ant to fill in some time until I resume normal blogging you can look for it here. http://www.snagfilms.com/search/?q=chess 

2015 ANU Masters - Week 1

This years ANU Masters is a slightly slimmer version than in previous years. While the tournament has had strong support from IM's Andrew Brown and Junta Ikeda for the last 3 years, the lack of players rated just below them had left the tournament with  lopsided feel. External commitments for both players meant they were unable to play this year, so instead it has been reduced to an 8 player round robin.
One side effect of this is that it is a pretty wide open event. Less than 300 rating points separate the entire field, and the mixture of improving  and experienced players means that there may be more than a few upsets.
The first round saw two decisive games and two draws. The De Noskowski v Reading game saw De Noskowski gain a big advantage in the middle game, but Reading find a nice tactic to win back material. Rather than risk the sure half point, De Noskowski repeated the position for a draw. Harry Press lost some time in the opening against top seed Andrey Bliznyuk, and felt his position was worse. However he was able to dig in and made a timely draw offer as his position was getting better. Bliznyuk played a few more moves before realising things could start to go wrong and returned the offer.
Victor Braguine started his first Masters with a win over Alana Chibnall. In a messy position Victor seemed to have an edge with more active bishops, but Chibnall should have had more faith in her pieces. Instead she played a couple of dubious moves and collapsed quite quickly. The Litchfield Patterson game saw a large amount of patient maneuvering, and for a long time it looked like it would end up as a draw. However Patterson put a piece on a wrong square, and Litchfield could win a pawn. Once the pawn went, Patterson's position was likely to fall apart as well, so he resigned rather than drag the game out.

De Noskowski,Adrian (1708) - Reading,Jeremy (1894)
2015 ANU Masters Canberra AUS (1.3), 11.02.2015

Good tie-breaks

Lets start with the idea that there is no perfect tie-break system. Some are probably better than others, but not all tie-breaks work the same way in different situations. Having been involved in various technical discussions about tie-breaks over the years, what I have mainly learned is that tie-breaks are often a matter of preference, and depend on how you weight the pros and cons.
For example, head-to-head seems to be a fair system. And yet some people object on the grounds that you don't know which games are important and which are not, until towards the end of the tournament. Others like systems like Sum of Progressive Scores, which do not depend on the results of other players, while just as many prefer SOS (Buccholz), on the grounds that you need to measure a players performance using the rest of the field.
One tie-break that I have been utilising recently is APRO - Average Performance Rating of Opponents. This was drawn to my attention by Roberto Ricca (Secretary of the FIDE Pairings Commission), as part of his work for the FIDE Rules Commission. You simply calculate the Performance Rating of each player, and then take the average of everyone that a player has played. On the upside it seems to work ok, even with unrateds (although not too many), as they will also have a TPR, even if it is based on a few games. It also happily deals with bye/forfeits/missing games as it is an averaging system. On the other hand it is difficult to work out on the fly, meaning that players find it difficult to calculate their own tie breaks (NB some organisers think this is a positive).
Whether it catches on probably depends on which arbiters push it. If it turns up in a high profile event, like the European Championships, and solves the tie-break problems that have occurred in the past, then I can see it becoming more popular. Otherwise it may just float around in the background, used for small events, but nothing too crucial.
 

A lot of FIDE Rated Chess in Canberra

I seem to make this post every year, publicising the upcoming FIDE Rated events in Canberra. In fact there are a couple of extra events this years, targeted at club players, but there is still the imbalance between the start of the year, and the rest of the year. In fact there are 6 FIDE rated events in Canberra over the next 2 months, and then only 1 more (IIRC) after that.
The ANU Chess Club is hosting 2 FIDE Rated events, starting this Wednesday. The 2015 ANU Masters is an 8 player Round Robin with a field made up of winners of the ANU Club events from last year. Alongside it, for the first time, is the 2015 ANU Challengers, which is an Open Swiss for players rated below 2200.
The ACT Championship is being held over the weekend of the 6-9th March. It is a 7 round swiss, with a Friday night round (6th) and 2 rounds on each of the following 3 days (NB Monday is a Public Holiday in Canberra).
The O2C Doeberl Cup will be holding 3 FIDE Rated events this year. Along with the Premier and Major, the Minor (Under 1600 ACF) will be FIDE Rated for the first time. The Premier starts on the 2nd April 2015 (9 rounds) while the other two tournaments start on the 3rd (7 rounds).
After that the only FIDE rated event I can think of is the ACT Junior Championships, although the ANU Club may FIDE Rate a few more events if the numbers for the Challengers indicate a demand.

Burning bridges

One thing I learnt very quickly when I started playing Chess Olympiads was never to 'burn your bridges'.  While the 'kitchen sink' attack might work at the club level, the further up the ladder you went, the harder it was to justify throwing away all your material on a hunch, especially if there were good alternatives to play.
While I could dig up so of my old games to show, a more recent example occurred at the Grenke Classic.  I'm not sure what Baramidze saw, but it turned out to be a mirage, as Naiditsch just took what was offered and hung on to it. To be fair the exchange sacrifice was only 'dubious', but giving up the knight was just a waste.


Baramidze,David (2594) - Naiditsch,Arkadij (2706)
GRENKE Chess Classic 2015 chess24.com (4), 06.02.2015

Oops, I meant j'adoube

The attached position comes from a final round game played at Street Chess today. Black is clearly winning, and the full point would secure a share of second place. But last rounds, and a shortage of time, can do strange things to the thought process, and Black fell victim to this. He started with the obvious 1. ... Rb1+ intending to meet the forced 2.Bg1 with 2. ... Rxg1+. That was until his hands got out in front of his brain, and he picked up the bishop on f6. Sure Bd4 forces mate, but only if White decides to pass, which is not allowed under the Laws of Chess. In fact Black did not even complete whatever move he had to play, Instead he let out a strangled cry and waved the bishop around for a while before simply shaking hands with an absolutely delighted White.
After the game I suggested that maybe he could have tried to bluff his opponent by using the bishop to stir his coffee (or clean his ears) before putting it back on f6. The other option was of course to try the old "j'adoube" trick, claiming you meant to say it *before* you touched the piece. But having already given the game away by his reaction, I doubt this would have worked.
So a pair of naughty hands cost Black a tie for second, and instead left both players sharing third place with a couple of other beneficiaries.