The one move loss

 A number of years ago I once won a game by playing a single move (It was from a set position and my opponents first move allowed a mate in 1). To that collection I can now add a one move loss.

Usually I do not play in events I organise (including online events), but to make sure that there would be 5 rounds in the ACT Chess Association Wednesday Night Rapid, I entered at the last second. After 3 rounds I had even managed to get to 3/3, and was paired in round 4 with Harry Press, who was on 2/3 (having missed the first round). I started the game with 1.e4 and then to see what his intentions were, made a very quick draw offer. Or so I thought. In my haste to offer the draw I accidentally clicked the 'Resigns' button, and as a result we were now on 3/4. (NB I have now set 'Confirm resignation' to 'On' in my settings)

Whether it was the extra break between games, or just a need to fix my mistake, I did manage to win my final round game (see below), leaving father and son as joint winners of the event.

DoctorWho64 (1600) - shaunpress (1837) [A26]
Live Chess Chess.com, 09.09.2020

Two events - one online one possibly not

 There have been two announcements regarding important chess events in the last couple of days. The first is the 2020 FIDE Congress will be an online event, to be held from the 1st to the 6th of December.

The second is that the 2020 Candidates Tournament will recommence on the 1st of November in Yekaterinburg.  The announcement was initially made by the Mayor of Yekaterinburg, but has now been confirmed by FIDE as well. However, there is still some uncertainty about the Candidates, as it still depends on the players being able to resume the event, and that there is no further outbreaks of Covid-19 in the host city.

Online chess isn't all bad

 While a lot of players are suspicious of the real identity of their online opponents,at least one GM can see the upside to unsupervised opponents in online events. "Where else can you regularly find 2800+ strength players entering local club events?"

Is this a win?

 

Black to play

The position shown occurred during a CC game that I was an arbiter for. At some point earlier White thought the position was drawn, although I am not sure a draw was ever offered. When this position was reached Black did something that only happens in CC. Instead of playing a move, he claimed a win, which was checked by referencing a 7 piece tablebase. I'm not sure how long this process took (probably seconds!), but the claim was upheld. 

I was a little surprised that this in fact is a win, but after checking it against a 7 piece tablebase I was less surprised by the result, but very surprised about the actual winning method. In fact there are 2 different winning plans (based on how White defends) but both of them are quite ingenious. The first involves getting the Black king to f4 and the rook to e3, and works if the king is on the 2nd or 1st rank. With the king in a 'box', Black forces the king across to a1, and the threat of mate forces White to unprotect the e pawn. Black will capture the pawn and then have an easy win. 

The second (and more amazing) win is if the White king gets up to the 3rd and 4th ranks. The Black puts the rook on e5 and plays Kf4-g6-h6!-g7!-f8!-e7!-d6! before using the same 'box' strategy to force the White king to the edge of the board.

An incredibly clever idea, and one I think would be very difficult to conceive at CC chess, let alone OTB

What a run!

 The new Australian Chess Federation Ratings for September 2020 came out this week, although understandably, there were very few games actually rated on the Standard List. So much so that the most active player seemed to have played 18 games, while the vast majority of players played 0 games. 

One of those players was IM Stephen Solomon, who wondered if this was the first rating period that he had played 0 games since 1971! This means he has gone 49 years playing at least one rated game during each rating period. Of course this claim might be hard to verify, which is probably why Stephen raised the question himself. The earliest published games of Solomon I have in Chessbase occur in 1979, in the World Under 16 Championships. In that event he played (and lost to) Nigel Short, but did score the following win over future GM Josef Klinger.

Klinger,Josef - Solomon,Stephen J [C02]
World ol U16 qual Gr4 01st Viborg (1), 14.10.1979

Too young and too quick

 I decided to have a go at an online event that is being organised weekly by GM Hrant Melkumyan on Lichess. It was a 2m+1s arena even, that ran for 90 minutes. Normally such events are better suited for players a lot younger and quicker than me, and this was certainly was. After winning the first game it was all downhill for me, as I failed to win another game. I was close in a couple but either my reflexes weren't fast enough, or my brain just failed me at the critical moment. I did at least  get to play the tournament organiser early on, and as he eventually won the event I feel I at least contributed to that.

But instead of showing one of my games, here is an upset win by an untitled player over a GM. After the game the GM commented that his opponent was the "strongest 2400 he has ever played"

VersaceEros (2400) - iamstraw (2722) [B30]
GM Melkumyans Weekly Arena https://lichess.org/HR7xTCaP, 03.09.2020

Karpov the crusher

 One of the great tournament performances of all time was when Karpov won the 1994 Linares tournament with 11/13 (+9=4). I suspect I was following the results via the internet, and was amazed at how well Karpov was playing.

One of the most remarkable games from the tournament was his win over Topalov. Normally it would have been Topalov on the attack, but in this game Karpov just demolished him with a series of well calculated sacrifices. 

Karpov,Anatoly (2740) - Topalov,Veselin (2640) [A33]
Linares 12th Linares (4), 1994