Olympiad starts in 3 weeks

The Olympiad kicks off in 3 weeks, although for various reasons, it still seems like months away for me. Having got visa's organised, flights booked and teams registered, I've been putting of thinking about the actual tournament for a couple of weeks. Not helping is the uncertainty over some aspects of the event, such as accommodation for the teams. Unlike previous Olympiads we haven't been told which hotel we are staying in, and the rumour mill has it that university accommodation may be what we get instead. The charter flight times also keep changing, although I may not be as inconvenienced as some.
What I do find surprising is that 160 teams are playing in the Open competition, which will be a record. Given the difficulty in getting to the host city, both in terms of travel and permission, this shows a level of organisation that national chess federations aren't usually noted for. Of course who actually shows up on the day may be a another matter entirely.

Never bet on anything that talks

The Pakistan cricket team continues to entertain. After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory against Australia earlier this year, they've managed to do it again, this time against England in a just completed Test Match. Despite having England at 5 for 47 and 7 for 102 in the first innings, they allowed them to score 446, and then folded cheaply in both innings (74 & 147) to lose by an Innings & 225 runs.
The team is now being investigated for match fixing, which was also raised in the context of their loss to Australia. Interestingly the Australia team still maintains that they felt their was nothing wrong with their win at the tine, although this may have more to do with Ricky Ponting seeing the win as a massive 'up yours' to the media who (correctly) criticised him for batting first on a demonic pitch.
Of course this 'see no evil' attitude isn't just confined to cricket. There were plenty of questions raised in 2004 after the Georgian team went down spectacularly 3.5-0.5 to the Armenian team in the last round of the Olympiad. Actually plenty of questions were raised *before* the Georgians lost, with the American and Israeli teams drawing the attention of the officials to a potential 'fix', after rumours of a betting plunge on exactly that result began to spread. And as far as I'm aware, these questions were never answered.

Chess Nuts

'Chess Nuts' is an interesting book I read the other day.By Julia Lawrinson, it is 'young peoples fiction' (ie 10 to 14 years I guess) and is about a school chess team and the members of that team. As with books aimed at this age group the themes aren't that complex, and deal with the issues of fitting in, competition and acceptance. From a chessplayers point of view I was pleased that most of the chess references were correct (ie real opening names, real players quoted) and had a pretty accurate description of the actual competition activities (although the villains were painted a little too thickly).
It is a recent publication (2010) and I picked it up a school book fair. I'm assuming that it will probably turn up at similar book fairs at plenty of schools in Australia, and if you see it, it would make an pretty good gift for the junior chess player in your family.

Injustice Positions

While flicking through a Russian language book on endings that I had in my library, I came across a set of positions. Even though I cannot read a word of Russian, I recognised the positions as 'Injustice patterns'. The 'injustice pattern' is a position where it looks as though one side 'must' be winning, but it turns out that the positions is instead drawn. One obvious example, indeed so obvious that the description is never applied to it, is K+B+rP v K, where the bishop does not cover the queening square, and the defending king does. A not so obvious example is given in the first diagram. Here White has the right coloured Bishop but the presence of the pawns on a6 and a7 mean the position is drawn any way (although a number of my computer engines spend a lot of time thinking it is winning for White!). You can even shift the position 1 file to the right and it will still be drawn. However moving it yet another file across turns it in to a win for White as the King can sneak around the other side of the pawns.
One other surprising example given was in the second diagram. Although it looks as though Black has no hope of holding back the King, Rook and Pawn, he just has enough to stop the pawn from queening. (The obvious 1.c7 is met by Kb7!)
You can probably discover other such positions using an online tablebase, but I'm not sure anyone has catalogued the full list of these patterns. I would be interested in hearing if anyone has.

The Shootout

One of the topics that GM David Smerdon covered in his coaching seminar last week was using Chessbase/Fritz in opening prep. He discussed a number of approaches to use (choose something offbeat that has been played by a strong player etc) and demonstrated a number of analysis tools to use.
One tool that I knew of, but had never used, was the 'Shootout' option (available in Fritz). You start with a set position, and then get one or more engines to play against each other from the position, either with set times, or with increasing search depths.
I gave it a whirl during the week and noticed some interesting results. Firstly a lot of my opening chooses do badly. Secondly, they only do badly as the search depth increases. So they seem to work against shallow searchers, but fail against deep searches. One of the positions I tried was after White's 7th move in the game I gave in yesterdays post. At plys 3&5 is cleaned up for Black (0-4) but after that White got the upper hand (Plys 7,9&11 finish +3=3-0 for White).
On reflection this doesn't surprise me as a lot of my opening choices are based on early tactics/traps, in the hope of catching the unwary opponent. Against the more observant/prepared opponent I haven't always done so well, and Fritz just confirms this.

The 50%'ers

Over the last year or so my son and myself have played in a number of tournament together. Interestingly our combined score in these events is usually 50%. In a couple of blitz events I've either scored 5 or 6 out of 9, while he has scored 4 or 3 from 9. In long time control events the night often ends with one of us winning and the other losing, or both of us splitting the point.
While this is statistically interesting, my real worry is that he is getting a lot better. This means that if the trend continues, his scores will go up, while my scores will come down. At least for the moment I have a slight edge, but if the following game is any evidence I'll be soon heading into negative territory.

Yin,Wenlin - Press,Shaun [C56]
Belconnen August, 26.08.2010

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.e5 Ne4 6.Qe2 Nc5 7.c3 dxc3 8.Nxc3 Be7 9.Be3 Ne6 10.0-0-0 0-0 11.h4 d6 12.Ne4 Na5 13.Bd3 d5 14.Neg5 g6 15.Nxe6 Bxe6 16.Bh6 Re8 17.h5 Bg4 18.hxg6 fxg6 19.Qc2 Bxf3 Sacs on g6 are just winning at this point. 20.gxf3 Bg5+ 21.f4 Bxh6 22.Rxh6 Re6 And even here is is still way on top. 23.Rdh1 Rc6 (D)
After the game he confessed he missed this move, but it turns out that my queen has no safe squares to run to after his reply! 24.Rxh7 Rxc2+ 25.Bxc2 Qf8 26.Rh8+ Kf7 27.Rxf8+ Rxf8 28.Rh6 Ke7 ½-½

Dato Arthur Tan Malaysian Open

The 2010 Data Arthur Tan Malaysian Open begins in a couple of days, and it is look likes it will attract a strong field. The organisers have announced that 50+ titled players are taking part, although I haven't been able to find a link to advance entries on their website.
I do know a number of Australian players are taking part, a couple of them courtesy of their high placing in last years Myer-Tan Grand Prix. For the moment the official website has a couple of stories up, but is lacking the detail the chess bloggers like (who, when, how etc) but hopefully that will change once the event is under way.