2012 Australian Player of the Year

Once again there were a number of worthy contenders for the Chessexpress Australian Player of the Year. Both Moulthun Ly and Max Illingworth lead the way for the younger brigade with good performances for Australia at the 2012 Olympiad. Anton Smirnov showed he is also likely to join them in the near futire with a win in the 2012 Australian Masters, while Brodie McClymont won a number of weekend events to confirm his obvious promise.
But I look back to the start of the year for a set of performances for this years winner. GM Darryl Johansen started off  by winning the Australian Championship for a record 6th time. He then followed this up with a win on tie-break in the 2012 Queenstown International, scoring 7.5/9 against a very strong field. He also won the 2012 Fiji International Open with a perfect 9/9.
So congratulations to GM Darryl Johansen for being the 2012 Chessexpress Player of the Year.


Jones,Gawain C B (2653) - Johansen,Darryl K (2403) [B21]
Queenstown Classic Queenstown (9.3), 23.01.2012

Auctioning off openings

One of my little Olympiad jokes is to offer my opening choices to the highest bidder. I'm sure there is someone who has invented a pet opening or line who would be willing to see it played on board 66 of the 2014 Olympiad. This might solve the problem of the lack of Hammerschlag's or Sodium Attacks in chess databases, although there are ways to improve this situation.
In the old days, thematic tournaments were organised. These were normally double round robins where the players were required to start from a fixed position or opening. A number of tournaments to test the Rice Gambit were arranged in the late 19th century but such tournament are less common theses days (A Open Sicilian event in Argentina is the last I can recall). Such tournament still exists in Correspondence Chess these days, but even they shy away from anything completely outrageous.
One opening that could do with a few more games is the Tumbleweed (mentioned in passing here). In my database the line 1.e4 f5 2.exf5 Kf7 3.Qh5+ g6 4.fxg+ Kg7 only shows up 6 times but of those 6 games the score is 3 draws and 3 wins for Black! Is it the case that no one keeps track of the White wins, and only Black victories are savoured? Or that no one is really to 'take one in the name of science' and lose a few games for the sake of research results.
Maybe 2013 can be the year of the Tumbleweed, where a few brave souls gain a degree of immortality by increasing the number of 1.e4 f5 games on record.

A random puzzle

From the inventive mind of Henry Ernest Dudeney comes a couple of chess puzzles. Take a 4x3 chessboard with 4 white knights and 4 black knights arranged at the top and bottom of the board. Label each knight A.B,C,D corresponding to the file they are standing on. What is the minimum number of moves required to swap the position of each knight with its counterpart?
If you want an easier puzzle, place 2 white knights and 2 black knights on the corners of a 3x3 chessboard. What is the minimum number of moves to swap the positions of the white knights with the black knights (it does not matter which knight is swapped for which)?

An (old) new idea

While flipping through a non chess book I came across a fairly simple acronym that describes a business planning process. The acronym is SWOT, and represents Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Of course such a term could have come directly from the world of chess, as I have read a number of chess planning books that describe this exact process.
Turns out I was not the first person to make this connection, as I discovered a couple of articles linking the business approach to the chess approach. Probably the best of these was an article titled "Using Business Processes for Chess" by William Stewart. The only difference between his ideas and mine is he looks at Strengths and Weaknesses in terms of personal abilities (eg weak at openings/strong at endings), while I looked at the whole thing as a positional analysis tool (eg Strong knight on d5, weak pawn on b2).
His article is worth a read as he explains the SWOT system better than I could, and provides a framework for asking the 'right' questions during the game.

Tournament links + 1

A couple of significant tournaments are starting up (or have already started).
In Australia, the Australian Open begins on the 2nd of January 2013. At the current time, the field for the Open is close to 100 players, with 3 GM's and 6 IM's filling up the top end. Tournament details (entries, results etc) can be found here.
My favourite tournament that I have never been to, Hastings, is also kicking off today (Friday). Check out the tournament website for more details on this historic event.
There is also the Christmas tournament in Groningen, which is just getting to the business end. Of interest is the participation of former Australian Champion IM John-Paul Wallace, who seems to be making a comeback to tournament play. Results etc are here (in Dutch)

And if you want a bit of chess 'humour', then this effort from the BBC may make you laugh (btw it does have a bit of language. You have been warned).

But no chess gifts for me

Hopefully there are at least some of you who received chess gifts, or at least chess related gifts this year. This year I missed out on the chess presents, although I did get some pretty good non-chess presents instead. Probably the closest thing I got to a chess present was a book titled "The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life", from someone who has probably met too many chessplayers in her time.

A gift for Christmas

I'm currently playing a number of friendlies for Australia in Correspondence Chess, with the games all starting to get quite interesting. As is my habit, I normally follow established theory in the openings, having neither the time or ability to try and poke a hole in someone else's opening analysis. But occasionally I end up in an opening position which seems to be quite new.
In one of my games I played a pretty offbeat opening, and got to a position where I seemed to be winning material. But I smelt a rat, especially as the reference work I was relying on seemed not to mention the piece winning line. Turns out my opponent had set an interesting trap, which had been played in a similar but different opening. Fortunately I decided to check the line in this other opening, where the whole trap was laid bare before me.
As I am loathe to discuss actual games in progress on this blog (in case a helpful reader fills the comment section with analysis) I will offer the trap from the other line as a gift.
If you play against either the Alekhine's Defence or even the Scandinavian then be aware of the following trick. 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e5 Ne4!? 4.Nce2 d4 5.c3 dxc3! Now 6.Qa4+ looks like it wins a piece but 6. ... Nd7 7.Qxe4 Nc5! leaves White in a heap of trouble. The Black knight is landing on d3 and will either fork on f2 or even support cxb2, and Black is better in either case. So best for White is to avoid the check, and simply recapture the pawn with 6.bxc3!