I my game against Randy white’s and black’s knights were all over the place. At times they appeared in the wrong places and sometimes they missed great opportunities. In the end one of them was allowed to deliver a checkmate.
Seeking Players for Clubs League Season 2
Players of all ratings are invited to join Chess.com’s Season 2 of Clubs League — tentatively scheduled for Saturday, November 7 through Saturday, December 19, 2020. John Wright will be the Team Admin. Leave a Comment below if you’d like to play.
There are two divisions – Division A and Division B. There is no difference in the divisions besides the minimum number of players per match. Division A has a minimum of 10 boards per match. Division B has a minimum of 5 boards per match. We are seeking as many players as possible so that we may qualify for Division A.
Each match is a club vs. club match of two segments – rapid and blitz. In each segment, the club with the most game points wins that match segment.
Each segment is weighted equally – if a club wins both segments, they earn a full match point, if one club wins the rapid and the other club wins the blitz, it is a tied match. In case one segment is tied, the club that wins the other segment will receive the full match point. Game points are not relevant in determining the match result. Only the result of each segment (win, loss, draw) is significant.
👉🏽 Players are not required to play both segments in a match – they may play either segment, or both.
In each segment (rapid and blitz), each player will play 2 games against the same opponent (white/black). Players will not necessarily play the same player in both segments.
The rapid time control is 15 minutes plus 2 second increment. The blitz time control is 3 minutes plus 2 second increment.
Players should show up early for their matches and ensure a stable connection. It is recommended but not required to play from a computer in case of connectivity issues. Players must join the rapid and blitz segments separately.
Clubs are encouraged to bring as many players as possible to each match. The minimum for each segment of each match is 10 players per club for Division A and 5 players per club for Division B. If a club brings less than the minimum number of players, the match will still be played, but that club will be forfeited on the “missing” boards. We are hoping to get 10-15 players committed to playing for the SGVCC Team so that we can can qualify for Division A. John Wright will be the Team Admin for Season 2.
👉🏽 We do not have to use the same players for each match.
The default match time is Saturday 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern Time.
The top 16 clubs in each division will qualify for the playoffs (scheduled for January 2021). The League will tentatively have weekly matches on seven (7) consecutive Saturdays – November 7, November 14, November 21, November 28, December 5, December 12, December 19, 2020.
Leave a Comment below or get in touch with John Wright if you’d like to be part of the team or have any questions.
Knight moves haunt the top boards – Part I
Chris Stychinsky and John Wright faced each other in the second round. I talked about their game one encounter already. In this post we are taking a closer look at their second game.
Chris seems to have moved on from his swashbuckling opening repertoire and played the Ruy Lopez against John’s 1 … e5. I can only recommend to follow in Chris’ footsteps. Playing complex openings such as the Ruy Lopez exposes us to a variety of pawn structures and strategic ideas. In the long run this will make us better chess players.
John countered Chris’ Ruy with the Zaitsev variation—the battle ground of Karpov and Kasparov in the 80s. The positions arising from this opening are often wild, black players seek their fortune of the queenside and white players try to deliver a quick checkmate. However, before launching queenside operations black puts pressure on e4 to slow down white’s queen’s knight attempt to join kingside operation.
The knight manoeuvre I’m referring to was introduced by Steinitz and is commonly used in Ruy Lopez and Gioucco Piano positions.
The best square for the knight on b1 would be f5. It gets there via d2, f1, and g3 and there is very little black can do in this particular situation. Also note, white only advanced the d-pawn to d3 and e4 is under firm control here.
We are now ready to have a look at the game:
Now would be a good time for a black strategy reset. The accidental pawn sacrifice offered white some hope to seize the initiative. Black’s main priority should be to thwart all of white’s active attempts. White enjoys some open diagonals and lines thanks to dropping a pawn. The white bishops are in good positions and both knights are already on the kingside and ready to move to more active squares. Thanks to white’s unfortunate pawn loss black already won the battle on the queenside. There is not much left to fight for.
Stay tuned for part two of the knight move series. I will talk about my game with Randy. Here is a little preview:
Why didn’t Randy take the rook on h2?
Lasker Open: Striking Gold with Quirky Lines
Mikhael Tal quipped “You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.”
This round we saw a number of games in which white invited black into the deep dark forest by choosing a provocative opening. We were treated to the Trompowski, the Jobova and the “regular” London, as well as the Bird Opening.
David decided to go for a no-nonsense approach when confronted with the Trompowski
and went for 2. … e6 and didn’t face any problems.
Russel went for his trusted Jobava London again and was rewarded with a quick victory.
Arturo got a fantastic attacking position by starting with 1. f4. The Bird is generally considered to be somewhat dubious, Stockfish NNUE actually prefers the moves a3, a4, or h3 to 1. f4. But if things go white’s way it’s easy to see why people like this opening.
John and Chris picked established openings to fight their battles. Here is their King’s Indian/Benoni game.
Randy showed again his versatility in positions arising from 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6. This time he picked the Bogo-Indian Defense and equalized without too much trouble.
The other games played in round two can be found here.
Close calls dominate the start of the Lasker Open
The first round of a Swiss tournament is always special. The upper half of the field plays the lower half and the resulting pairings can be quite lopsided. Be that as it may, the rating favorites still need to win their games. And so they did, but some of the matches could have gone easily the other way.
On board one Arturo Armagnac with the black pieces completely outplayed yours truly. Arturo punished me for mishandling his Leningrad Dutch and was rewarded with the following position:
White’s position is pretty hopeless here. After 22 … b5 white will perish. (Un-)Fortunately, Arturo took on d5 and allowed counterplay on the b1-h7 diagonal.
On board two David Faulkner put up a good fight against John Wright. A Caro Kann yielded the following situation:
The bishop on b2 looks pretty sad. David had the chance here to transfer the bishop to the g1-a7 diagonal. Once the bishop appears on e3 black needs to watch out for sacrifices on b6. 26. Bc1 would have given white the upper hand.
On board three Russel Keating faced Randy Hough. Russel stayed faithful to his Jobova London and could have wiped the black pieces off the board:
Randy just played 15. … e5 hoping for 16. dxe5 Nxe5 which would solve all of black’s problems and this is what happened in the game. Can you spot how white could have punished black for opening up the position while being far behind in development? (You find the solution at the end of the post.)
When you saw this post you might have wondered why I picked a picture of an old Latin book. This book is actually a chess book from 1500 (give or take a couple of decades) and one of the openings it discusses features in our game of the week played on board four between Chris Stychinsky and Patric van Haeren, a truly epic battle.
It’s not too late to join us for round 2 this Friday.
Solution for the Russel-Randy game:
5 Round Lasker Tournament Starts Friday, September 18
Our second 5 round double Swiss starts September 18. Each Friday we will play one double round. The players face each other in a two game minimatch with a time control of G25 and a 10 second increment starting at move 1.
The rounds start Fridays at 7.10 pm. All games will be played on Lichess and players are required to join our Lichess team. Prior to the start of the match all players must log on to lichess, visit our team site and make their presence known in the team chat.
If you haven’t already done so, submit a join request here:
https://lichess.org/team/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club
The registration fee for this tournament is $20. Families can contact us for a reduced entrance fee. 50% of the collected registration fees will be paid out in prize money.
To register head over to
https://caissachess.net/online-registration/index/842
or contact us by email and provide your name, email address, lichess username, and USCF ID (if available). Your most recent USCF rating will be used for pairing purposes only. The tournament will not be USCF rated.
Update 9/15/20: You can pay the registration fee at the link above, or via Paypal by clicking the “Buy Now” button below
[wp_paypal button=”buynow” name=”My product” amount=”20.00″]
or make a cheque payable to the San Gabriel Valley Chess Club and send it to our HQ at:
1010 N Chester Street, Pasadena, CA 91104
The deadline for registration is Friday, Sept. 18 at 5 pm.
First round pairings will be announced by 6.30 pm.
Member Analysis: The Son of Sorrow
Our first online Swiss tournament produced a lot of interesting games. I went over a few games in my last post already. This post features one of the games played in the Randy-Lisa match.
Randy, the rating-favorite, started the game with 1.d4 and Lisa immediately started to fight back by choosing the King’s Indian Defense. Randy killed any hopes of a black pawn storm against the white king by picking the fianchetto system and soon afterwards the game entered Benoni territory.
The game offers a number of instructive moments. Randy was determined to show why this opening is called “Son of Sorrow”, hurled his d, e, and f pawns forward, and eventually crushed through black’s defenses. But in the process the white king got pretty exposed himself and black was not without counter chances.
Anybody who would like to learn more about counter chances in the Benoni should have a look at the games of the late Vugar Gashimov. One of the few elite players that consistently played the Benoni.
I hope you find my comments somewhat useful. If you want to see one of your games featured here, please let me know.
But now without further ado
The ‘Chess Cuisinart’ of Daily Play
SGVCC member “Wandering Knight” (aka Randall Hough) sets an early blazing trail with four straight wins against international Daily Club competition. Not beginners luck! Randy has more chess experience than most of us put together: National Master, National Tournament Director, International Arbiter and more. But what made him into the “Chess Cuisinart” of Daily Play? Let’s look and learn:
Black opts for the ultra sharp Najdorf Sicilian defense and White plays a theoretical novelty (TN) on move 10 with f4, opening dark square weaknesses. Black hops on these weaknesses with 13)…Qb6!, Qa7, and follows with b5, then b4, picking up a pawn. After 20)…Nf2+ (again a dark square!) picking up more material and leading to the exposing of Whites’s king. A satisfying mate on g2 ends the game. Well done Randy!
1st SGVCC ON-LINE SWISS TOURNAMENT!
UPDATE
Please, use the following link to register:
https://caissachess.net/online-registration/index/819
Standings at: https://caissachess.net/live/819
——————
We are pleased to announce our first 5 round event starting August 7th and concluding on September 4th.
Entry is free and rounds will start each Friday at 7:10 p.m. The games will be 25 minute + 10 sec. with two games against the same opponent per round. Chess.com will be the playing site and chess.com’s rapid ratings will be used.
We will also have a Prize Fund! Overall 1st-3rd is $60/40/30. Best Junior (u16), Senior (60 and over) and Best Female player are all $25 each. Registration ends on August 7th at 5pm. So sign up early!
To join, use the Contact Form to send a message with your full name, USCF ID, and chess.com username before 4pm on Friday, August 7th.
Games will start Fridays at 7:10 pm. To play, please log into the Chess.com Live server a few minutes before the start of the round, and challenge your assigned opponent to a G25+10 game. After the game is finished, play a second game with reversed colors. Finally, download the PGN for both games and email them to sgv.chessclub@gmail.com. Mention the round, players, and result in the subject.
SGVCC Goes International!
We may all be physically stuck at home but your fellow Club members are making their presence felt abroad—online that is! We are presently in team matches against clubs from Scotland, France, and Singapore. We also have our old foes the Reno Chess Club. The matches started on July 15th and are what is called “Daily Play” by Chess.com, who organized the event. But in fact it is more like old school correspondence chess as you have three days to make a move. Each participant plays two games against the same player in each match.
The match against Singapore has the most players, with seven on each team. But someone may have forgotten to remind our opponents of the time control as Randy Hough won his first game in record time—-a mere 3 days! Randy was surprised at the speed of his opponent’s moves but certainly took advantage of it. His e6 pawn push was a nice way to pick up the errant Black Bishop on g4. It is our featured game:
In fact, we are now up 4-0 against the team from Bishan, Randy also won his second game and Chris Stychinsky, not to be outdone, also finished 2-0.
But, it is much more likely that the matches are going to take many months to finish. We are still waiting for our match against Thousand Oaks Chess Club to conclude, which started last March and is 93% done, with @ObedientRunner playing the clock out in a lost position. We will be providing periodic updates but you can check out the games yourself by following these links:
United Kingdom: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1145550
Singapore: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147218
France: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147212
Reno: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147214
Azerbaijan: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147248