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
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
Mieses Arena Blitz Tournament
On Friday, Sept 11 at 7.10pm, we will be having our first blitz tournament on Lichess. Participation is restricted to members of our lichess team. So, make sure you request membership asap.
https://lichess.org/team/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club
Once a member of our team you can see the link for the tournament on the team site, see link above. Alternatively use the following link to join the tournament:
https://lichess.org/tournament/LVdxP3Um
This is a private tournament and it is password protected. After clicking join a pop-up window will appear and ask for a password. The password is
SGVCC
On the tournament site you will also be able to see all the rules. It’s a 2h arena tournament. After your game you are paired as quickly as possible, so no need to wait too long, games are G5+5. The winner is whoever collects most points at the end of the 2h period. A win yields 2 points, a draw 1 point and a loss 0 points. While on a winning streak the points are doubled. In addition to this rule which we know from chess.com already. Players also have the option to go Berserk at the beginning of the game. This reduces their time to half of the initial time and the player also won’t get any time increment. In return a win yields an extra point.
Now, head over to lichess and sign up for the team and tournament:
Instructive moments from our first online Swiss
We managed to play 56 games in our first online event. I’m very pleased that we got to see some very interesting fighting chess. The lower rated players certainly made their higher rated opponents work for every half point. I certainly got lucky more than once.
Below you can find some of the interesting positions that occured. You can find the solutions to the questions and more here on lichess.
Black took command of the position. What’s the best way to proceed?
In the next game black got a very good position out of the opening unfortunately the tide turned and we reached this position:
How should white proceede?
After a tough struggle we reach the following position. White to move and win:
White didn’t go for the kill in the previous position and a few moves later we reach this point:
Can black escape his fate?
In my game against Raphael I got a better position but suddenly we reached this position:
Raphael just played Qd4 threatening everything. Should white resign?
I just took a pawn on e4
Which knight should black take? Or should he play something different all together
There were many more interesting games played in this tournament. If you want to see one of your games published here please let me know. For more analysis head over to lichess. Once there become a member if you aren’t already and join our San Gabriel Valley Chess Club lichess team.
You can also play through the complete annotated games here.
Don’t forget next Friday we will have a 2h Arena blitz tournament on lichess. More on this soon.
First San Gabriel Valley Chess Club Online Tournament Finished
Last night we played the 5th and final round of our first online Swiss. Each round the opponents faced each other in two games one with each color and a time control of G25 and a 10 second increment. Most of the games were played on chess.com the rest was played on Lichess.
Here are the final standings:
Our second 5 round double Swiss will start on September 18th. Rounds will start Friday nights at 7.10 pm and the tournament will be held at https://lichess.org. More details will be posted soon.
On Friday, September 11th, we will have a 2h G5+5 event on lichess. If you haven’t already done so, join our lichess team: