Tuesday, May 23, 2006

St Lance of Tahmoor

Been such a long time since i have blogged :(

Anyhow the grade Matches started last night and Campbelltown under 1600 team had to travel to Manly for their first round encounter.

Now Let me set the situation up. The Previous Monday the campbelltown under 1600 team had arranged to get a lift with one of their original players. He had to withdraw from the team on the thursday and all of a sudden we had a problem. We were down a player and without a lift to manly. I do not drive, nor does one of the other players and another did not want to drive over to Manly. So..... we had to find a lift as well as another player. I emailed around to try to see if i could swap the round one and two draws to enable the U1600 team to travel to Manly with the U2000 team. After a day of begging and pleading Saint Lance of Tahmoor came to the rescue! He would drive and fill in Board 4. He was not really expected to win with his 1013 rating. It would have to be the other 3 boards that would have to perform.

The plan was to pick one guy up from near his home at minto at about 5.30.... the second guy near Brooks road onramp to the M5 motorway. Picked up the first player just a little earlier than schedule. Then we got to Brooks Road and..... no one was there.......

We then get a phone call.....
"where are ya"
"at Brooks Road, where you told me you were meeting us"
"s**t! i'm at Minto McDonalds" (we had originally planned on meeting there before hand but we decided to leave at about 5.30pm instead of 6.00pm, thus the first player's lift couldn't take him to the McDonalds so we picked him up from near his place.)
"ok we'll come and pick you up"
"ok i'll be near the roundabout."

We get to McDonalds..... nope he wasn't there..... Do a lap of the block...... no sight of him......
"Where are you?"
"i'm near minto station."
"Bugger, McDonalds side or other side"

"ok be there soon."

Get to Minto station....... no where to be seen!
"Where are you?"
"Just walked over the pedestrian bridge"
"well you can walk back over it! we are on the other side"

several minutes later we are all in the car heading towards Brookvale..... our half an hour earlier leaving time has now evaporated and were about ten minutes late.

As it turned out we ended up getting there about ten minutes early.

My game was an interesting Kings indian Defence which i think i might have misplayed. But was able to salvage a draw. Next thing i know our board one comes in and tells me that both our boards one and two have lost. "Damn we're looking at a 3.5-0.5 slaughter here.......and Lance is down on time. At this point i decided to go for a non alcoholic beverage. When i came back Lance was up on time! And Attacking! And the time control of 30 moves had just been played in the 75 minutes so they had 30 min each to finish the game. Lance won his opponents queen for a rook in a combination involving a pin, bishop on king. Lance had defeated his higher rated opponent!

Yes, our last minute ring in saved the day for us. We still lost 2.5-1.5 but it was now a respectable loss.... not a huge loss.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Former NSW Chess Tournament site goes up in flames

Yesterday 150 year old St Barnabas Church was destroyed by a fire. The fire also effected the church's community hall which at one point before my time held chess tournaments.

So much Chess coming up! Olympiad / Mtel

Well where do i start. The first of the Australian Olympiad team fly off today. Gary Lane is visiting the UK before going on to the Torino Olympiad. Accourding to the Torino website there is 9 days 9.5 hours until the olympiad starts.

Good luck to the Australian Team!

The Turino 2006 website looks excellent. I just hope that they will be putting all the games live over the internet so that we Aussies can follow the progress of our team. If so I'll be watching :)

On the right hand side i noticed that there are odds for the Mtel masters that start today. Topalov leads the betting, paying $2.36, closely followed by Anand, $2.5, Svidler $13, Bacrot $30, Ponomariov good value at $13, and Kamsky $50. (I think all prices are in US Dollars)

Monday, May 01, 2006

Ilyumzhinov and Bessel Kok join forces?

I don't know how accurate this is but the Ottawa Chess club message board has brought some speculation that KIrsan Ilyumzhinov and Bessel Kok have made a secret deal. Is this "the right move" for Kok?

A guy named Kevin wrote:
The rumour of a Kirsan-Kok agreement to unite before the Fide election turns out to have a sound basis. It is believed that a secret agreement has been achieved which will have the two work together on various fide projects, save Kok's reputation, and have the fide congress merely 'confirm' Kirsan's continued position as fide president. This appears to imply that there will be no actual vote taking at the upcoming congress in Italy.


There appears to be nothing on this on the FIDE website and nothing on Chessbase.com.

Also there appears to be nothing on Bassel Kok's "the right move" website. In fact Bassel Kok's website has recently released two papers entitled:
POSITION PAPER - CHESS IN SCHOOLS 28.04.2006
POSITION PAPER - FIDE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 29.04.2006

So somehow i don't think Kirsan and Bessel are planning a truce. I could be proven wrong.

Congratulations Ray, Josh!

Congratulations to Raymond Song for winning the City of Sydney on an unbeaten score of 7.5/9!!!! This stunning victory included wins over IM elect FM George Xie and Tomek Rej.

Also Congratulations to Parramatta Chess Club member Joshua Christensen on winning the U1700 division of the City of Sydney. Joshua also won the Doeberl minor recently. A safe prediction: Joshua’s rating will be going upwards.

My Doeberl Games - Comments welcome

I have decided that I’d analyse my Doeberl games and post them here. Suggestions welcome :D

Parker,T (1453) - Clark,D (1090) [D43]
Doeberl Minor 2006 Home, 30.04.2006
[Trent Parker]
1.Nf3 my favorite opening move at the moment. 1...d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.c4 e6 4.Nc3 c6 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 Nbd7 7.Qc2 b6 IMHO if Black intends to fianchetto his Queens Bishop then b6 should be played before the c pawn is moved. I think this is a little too slow. 8.cxd5 cxd5 9.Bb5 I thought this was a better place for the bishop instead of d3 at this point in time. However i did not take advantage of it..... 9...0–0 10.0–0?! [10.Bc6 Rb8 11.Bf4±] 10...Bb7 11.Bd3 Rc8 Now i'm I didn't want Ne4 to come. I decided to eliminate one knight and play my Queen to b1. However i did not want to block my Rook in 12.Bxf6 Nxf6 13.Ne5 If Ne4 now then f3 kicks it away from centre 13...g6 14.Rac1 a6 15.Qb1 Now if Ne4.... 15...b5 [15...Ne4 16.Nxe4 dxe4 17.Bxe4 Bxe4 18.Qxe4±] 16.a3 stopping black from playing b4 16...Qd6 ..... and now that black cannot play Ne4...... 17.f4 Nd7 18.Rf3 f6 To Sac or not to sac is the Question? I ended up sacking the Knight. 19.Nxg6 I should have sacked the Bishop instead: [19.Bxg6 fxe5 (19...hxg6) 20.Bxh7+ Kg7 (20...Kh8 21.Qg6 Rf6 22.Qh5 Nf8 23.Rh3) 21.Qg6+ Kh8 22.Bg8 Rf7 23.Rh3+ Rh7 24.Rxh7#] 19...Rf7 Why not take my Knight? [19...hxg6 20.Bxg6 f5ยต] 20.Nxe7+ Qxe7 21.Rg3+ trying to scam another pawn..... and it works 21...Rg7 22.Bxh7+ Kh8 23.Rxg7 Qxg7 24.Bd3 Rg8 25.Qc2 f5 26.Rf1 Now that i'm two pawns up i want to exchange pieces as much as possible. 26...Nf6 27.Rf3 Nh7 28.Rg3 Qf7 29.Rxg8+ Qxg8 30.Ne2 I had plans of going via c1 and b3 to c5. More direct might have been... [30.a4 bxa4 (30...b4 31.Na2) 31.Nxa4] 30...Nf6 31.Qc7 Infiltration!!!!! :D 31...Qg7 32.Qxg7+ Kxg7 33.h3 Nd7 34.g4 fxg4 35.hxg4 Nb6 I really cannot allow Black's knight to infiltrate my position.... 36.b3 onya bike 36...Nd7 37.Kg2 time to get the king into the action! 37...Nf6 38.Kg3 Bc8 What a bad bishop. Stuck to the defence of blacks pawns 39.g5 Ne8 40.Nc3 Deciding not to go to c5 but try to push e4 making black's e pawn isolated. 40...Bb7 41.Kf3 Nd6 42.e4 dxe4+ Now.... what to take with?... I decided to take with the Bishop because i correctly thought that my knight would be better than his bishop in this endgame..... unless he wanted to exchange everything.... lol 43.Bxe4 Nxe4 44.Nxe4 Kg6 45.Ke3 Bd5 46.b4 annoying music plays in my head..... "u can't touch this" 46...Kf5 47.Nc5 Bc4 48.Nxa6 Bd5 49.Nc7 Bc6 What the hell... I'll win if i can give up two of my pawns for his two pawns..... 50.g6 Kxg6 51.Nxe6 Kf6 52.Nc7 Kf5 53.d5 Bd7 54.d6 Bc6 55.Kd4 Kxf4 56.Kc5 and black resigned 1–0

Off to a Great Start – Not

Yeah, I know I said “more on that tomorrow” and I didn’t deliver. Oh well. Something to continue on next year.

It may not happen overnight but it will happen. At least I have started a diet. I went to a Dr Higginbotham at Narellan who is a GP who specialises in Weight management.