London Chess Classic Rapidplay - Ari's day out

Young Australian IM Ari Dale is competing in the 2014 London Chess Classic Rapidplay, and his first day was certainly a memorable one. He started the event with 4 wins from 4 games, including a win against one of modern chess' legendary players, GM John Nunn. As a reward for this victory his round 5 opponent was former World Champion Viswanathan Anand. In the game (shown below) Dale played a Gruenfeld against Anand's 1.d4, a particularly gutsy choice as Anand had just had his knowledge of this opening tested by non other than Magnus Carlsen.
In fact it turned out to be a good choice, as Dale was equal for most of the game, only coming unstuck when he lost a bishop to a pin down the d file. But having played an international field so far, his opponent for the first round of todays play turns out to be fellow Australian IM John Paul Wallace. If this was Wimbledon, such a match up would not be surprising, but in such a big swiss, so far from home, such pairings are at least amusing.

Anand,Viswanathan - Dale,Ari [D94]
London Chess Classic Rapidplay (5.8), 06.12.2014

Staunton - you hacker

Howard Staunton, English Chess Master, Shakespearean Scholar, illegitimate offspring of nobility, has had a reputation of being a somewhat dour player. I'm not sure whether this reputation is accurate, although there is a notion that he was a 'positional' player, before such things became fashionable.
However, when presented with an opportunity he could certainly go the hack. An example of this comes from the London Tournament of 1851. He plays an opening beloved by hackers, the Scotch Gambit, and is happy to surrender a couple of pawns for a lead in development. His opponent then chooses the wrong way to defend and suddenly Staunton is threatening to win material and/or checkmate his opponent. Given that the games in this tournament were untimed, I am a little surprised that his opponent allowed such an elementary checkmate at the end, but it is possible he was simply choosing the 'gentlemen's way out'.


Staunton,Howard - Brodie,Alfred [C44]
London knockout London (1.1), 27.05.1851

2014 ACTJCL Transfer Championship - This Sunday

The 2014 ACT Junior Chess League's Transfer tournament is on this coming Sunday. This annual event has been running for a decade or so, and always attracts a big field. While most of the players are juniors, the event is open to teams of all ages, with adult teams just as welcome as kindy ones.
It is being held at Campbell High School, Trealor Cres, Campbell (just next to the Australian War Memorial). Registration opens at 12:30pm, and the cost is $10 per player (eg $20 per team). As an added incentive, there will be free pizza provided as part of the prize giving ceremony.
The standard rules of Transfer (Bughouse) apply, including 'drop for mate'. It normally runs for 11 rounds, and apart from trophies for the winners, there will be additional prizes on offer for whoever the organisers thinks deserve it (oldest team, best parent child, and best team outfit have all been awarded in the past).

The School Chess Championship

I am not sure how many schools do this, but Amaroo School gives students a day off school to play in their school's Chess Championship. This has been held for the past 3 years and it normally attracts a field of between 60 and 80 players. In fact it would attract more players, but space an equipment limitations restrict the total number of entries.
The 2014 edition was held today, with 66 players taking part. Amaroo is a K-10 school, but entry is restricted to 4th grade and above. While the bulk of the entries came from the 4,5 and 6 graders, there was still a healthy entry from the high school students. My role at the event was the arbiter, and it was one of the easiest school event I have ever run in my 30 years of chess. A lot of the credit must go to Belinda Robertson, and the chess program she has run at the school over the last 6 years. All the students who took part who both familiar with the laws of chess, and more importantly, familiar with how chess tournaments are run. Before we started there was a thought we might only have time for 5 rounds, but due to the knowledgeable field, we played the full 7 rounds by 1pm, leaving plenty of time to pack up and hand out prizes.
Rarely for a school event there were no disputes, no one cried, and I only had to answer a couple of queries. I was a little bit gentle with the new FIDE 'Illegal move' loses Rapidplay rules, by implementing a '2 strikes and you're out' system, and even then players had the option of not reporting the first illegal move to me. I did get suckered by one player who innocently asked me if you could mate with K+B v K. Thinking he was about to make a draw claim I said no, but he then used this information to sacrifice his bishop for his opponents last pawn, before claiming the draw!
The winner of the event (on countback after a 3 way tie) was Vivian Lam, who also won last year. In fact each of the 3 editions of the championship have been won by a female student, which is another reason it is a rather special event.

2014 London Chess Classic

It might be a long way from Canberra, but the London Chess Classic is still an important event on my radar (and one day I might even get to visit). This year sees the return of the 'classic' tournament, with the main event being a 6 player RR. This years field consists of Caruana, Anand, Nakamura, Giri, Kramnik and Adams. But before they sit down to play chess at long time controls, they are all taking part in the Rapidplay Open that precedes their tournament. There is also a 9 round FIDE Rated Open, a conference on Chess in Schools, and a number of other side events.
The best place to find out more information on the event is at the tournament home page. I've spotted a number of Australian players in the entry list (IM John Paul Wallace, IM Ari Dale and Derek Yu) and I am sure a few others might pop up at the last minute. The whole thing runs from the 6th December through to the 14th, and based on the number of entries for the supporting events, it should be a huge success.

And then there were 2

While Vladimir Kramnik seemed to have a little difficulty in coming to grips with the nuances of the swiss tournament, Anish Giri was more at home in the Qatar Masters, reeling off 6 wins from 6 games. In doing so he has taken a point and a half lead over everyone, with one exception, Vladimir Kramnik. Having drawn his first 2 games, Kramnik has climbed back to the top board after 4 straight wins. This has set up the rather juicy Kramnik v Giri pairing in tonight's round. Kramnik has the white bits for this game, and as I write this they are just getting into a Catalan middle game.
I'm not sure what Kramnik thought of the experience of playing in the middle tables of a tournament, but it seems that he wanted to get out of there pretty quickly. An clear example of this was his 5th round game against Sanan Sjugirov. The game only lasted 25 moves and looked like 'hack v hack'. In the end Sjugirov tries to finish of Kramnik with a piece sac, but it turned out that Kramnik was the one with the mating attack.


Kramnik,Vladimir (2760) - Sjugirov,Sanan (2673) [A05]
Qatar Masters Open Doha (6.2), 01.12.2014

A successful Movember

After

Before

For the last 7 years I have tormented friends and family by participating in the annual Movember fundraiser. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, the idea is to spend November growing a moustache. You start on November 1, and do not shave your upper lip until December 1.
This year was a very successful fundraising month for me, with a large number of donations. I also managed to grow a mo good enough to make the finals of the Canberra Movember judging, in the Ulti-Mo section. I did not win this year, but next year some creative clothing might be enough to put me over the top.
I was not the only chessplayer taking part btw. IM Guy West also took part, and Michael Freeman braved the Northern Territory heat to grow his own tache.
But all weird things come to an end, and I spent the morning hacking off my months growth. I wont scare you with the pics taken during my facial hair surgery, but I will give you the classic before and after shots.