2014 US Open: Rd 9

The worst game I have played in my adult chess life. I am showing my ass here, but what else can I do?

Other items of possible interest: common sense prevailed for one moment at the Delegates Meeting when the knee-jerk ADMs about the problems at the National Elementary scholastics were defeated. It left the room when we spent 30+ minutes on the wording of the rule which specifies that you must touch the king first when castling. A NY TD introduced a slew of ADMs that would have added rules / TD tips to the rulebook to cover the rarest and most inconsequential situations. That took up another 40 or so minutes.

Everyone has plays a real stinker now and again, but did I have to pay so much money for the honor of doing so here?

At least I have the rest of the day to do something … once the thunderstorm that just rolled through passes.

I finished at 4/9 and I will lose dozens of rating points. A recap may follow eventually. Or not. Whatever.

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2014 US Open: Rd 8

It is both a blessing and a curse to serve as a Delegate (pdf of Delegate’s Call) to the United States Chess Federation. On the one hand, it ‘gives me a reason’ to come to the US Open. I even get a small bit of financial support from my state association.

On the other, I have to sit through the meeting.

I’m told that meetings in years past were just painful, especially during the years of the Polgar wars. This year’s meeting, unlike last year’s, stretched into a second day. (I’m writing these words on that second morning right now.) But like last year’s meeting, this one has been mainly palatable, with the transmission of information flowing well and the embarrassing speeches from the floor at a minimum.

*Note that I reserve the right to revise these words after ADMs 14-32 through 14-34, which deals with the debacle at the National Elementary in Dallas this spring, and for which discussion is about to begin.*

The USCF is in a good place right now. The transition to 501c3 status is complete, opening doors to new fundraising and requiring the USCF to begin to rethink and reimagine its role in American chess. We have a new Executive Director who seems both competent and enthusiastic. Our financial status is better than it has been in the recent past, but it will be stressed with the inclusion of two international team events (Olympiad and World Teams) in the next fiscal year. And the executive board actually functions with the best interests of the membership in view. Someone pinch me.

There were, of course, a few uncomfortable moments. The motion which was a thinly veiled plea from a Delegate to let him work at national scholastic events? That was embarrassing. The near-hour spent talking about the US Open time control, based on experience in two and three day events, all of which is less-than-pertinent to the only American one-a-day in existence? So frustrating.

My round eight game was against a nine year old from Florida rated just south of 1500. Great. Just what I want when I’m having a rough tournament! I sat down to play, thinking that I should just try to keep the tactics to a minimum and use my superior intellect and education to grind the kid down. And then I blew open the center on move 12.

The power of the bishops told, and I won the game. Like many ill-educated children, Reddy refused to resign. So I played it out, and right at the point where mate was imminent, he resigned.

Hey kid, if you read this: (1) making me play it out is rude. I’m not a six year old who will stalemate you when I have nearly two hours on the clock. (2) If you’re going to make me play it out, let me deliver the mate. I know it’s not your fault, but your parents and teachers have failed you by not teaching you manners and decorum.

</soapbox>

Curious fact: this week at the Rosen Center and the surrounding area, there have been (at minimum) the following groups meeting:

• the United States Chess Federation
• Miss America’s Outstanding Teen (like Teen Miss America, I think)
• LeakyCon
• The Tuskegee Airmen convention
• A large charismatic Christian convention

Most notable have been the large numbers of young pageant ladies wandering about all week, besashed and bedazzled, both the aspiring Teen candidates and the current Miss America state crownholders. I saw just about every state, but not once did I see a Miss Nebraska – until last night.

Check out the pictures from yesterday, which include Jim Tarjan’s postmortem after his round 8 draw, and my picture with the 4th place finisher in the MAO Teen, Miss Nebraska’s Outstanding Teen Morgan Holen. Omaha represent!

2014 US Open: Rd 6, 7

I took a bye for round 6, leaving most of my Friday open.  I saw my good friend Abhinav Suresh, the NE representative to the Denker, along with his father in the morning, but as I had an early lunch scheduled, I had to pass on breakfast.

In an earlier post I alluded to the fact that I had undertaken a project to collect and preserve games from this year’s US Open. I think it is a scandal that there is no longer a bulletin service at the US Open. I think it is a scandal that the only preservation of games played is via Monroi. Many of the top players do not like to use the devices, and there are only so many devices to go around. Some weeks ago I contacted the event organizers and asked that I might make an effort to sort through the scoresheets and save what games I could.

The idea was twofold. First, I would encourage all players to e-mail me their games after the event for inclusion in a crowdsourced database. Flyers are up near the pairing sheets, the results sheets, and next to the scoresheet dropbox. I had business cards printed up to be distributed at each chess board before round 9.

I also planned to sort through scoresheets, sift out the top 20 boards from each round, and photocopy them for input into ChessBase. The organizers – Franc Guadalupe, Jon Haskell, and Alan Losoff in the backroom – have bent over backwards to accommodate this windmill tilt, and I would like to thank them publically. What I learned yesterday morning sifting and sorting was that my original plan would not work. Many of the yellow carbon copies of game scores would not photocopy. So the organizers agreed to ship me the scores, making my life much easier.

Lunch was had at Emeril’s Orlando with my friend John Watson. Being the fan of NOLA food that I am, Emeril’s was kind of a ‘gumbo patch’ for my NOLA addiction, and it served its purpose nobly. The trip out to the CityWalk was, if I am honest, disturbing. The sprawl of tourist sites shocked my Midwestern sensibilities, and I couldn’t understand how all of them – all the hotels, all the restaurants, all the waterslides – could make money. Maybe the economy isn’t as bad as everyone says it is.

I got back to the Rosen Center Hotel just in time to make part of the Publications Committee meeting, which was a bit of a shambles, and the Chess Journalists of America meeting, which was not. Injecting new life into a moribund organization takes time, and the CJA is transitioning. A few new initiatives were mentioned, and the Chess Journalism Awards were also announced. The home team was sadly shut out in all three categories for which it was nominated. Oh well – I’ll just have to work harder and win next year!

My round 7 game was against Steve Kuzma of Texas, who I learned was a former (and perhaps future) Husker like myself! I managed to win the exchange on move 15 and converted the point, although not without some difficulty.

This game was a good example of where my chess is at these days. I saw his idea on move 13, and nearly immediately saw the refutation at move 15. This kind of brute tactical idea is something that I think has improved in my game, and I attribute that mostly to the work with the Stappenmethode workbooks. I am stumbling, however, in positional areas. I’m too willing to eat a pawn and try to hold on. And I think I underestimate passed pawns while overestimating the bishops. The drive to improve never ends.

As I write these words, I am sitting in the Delegates Meeting, ‘enjoying’ the goings-on. More on that (with some pictures) tomorrow.

2014 US Open: Rd 4, 5

This was not a good day for me.  Well, not chess-wise, anyway.

My Thursday began with a visit with an old friend who I’ve not seen since my wedding some years ago.  This was lovely.

My round four opponent, Theodore Biyiasis, handed me a deserved defeat on the the Black side of the McCutcheon. I accepted a gambit pawn and failed to absorb the pressure.  After the game, we had a fruitful post-mortem and I got to speak a bit with Ruth Haring, current USCF President, while we located a set for analysis.  Both the post-mortem and the chat with Haring made up for the lost against the 2000+ Biyiasis.

In round five I lost, mainly through self-inflicted actions, against Alex Little, a 1630-ish player from Georgia. I got a dream position and then thoroughly misunderstood the lay of the land, giving up two minor pieces for a rook, a pawn, and the phantom of the initiative. By the time I understood that I stood worse, it was too late, and I folded like a house of cards. Kudos to the winner, but this one was on me.

As the night wore on, I had a few drinks with friends, and ended up meeting the coming scion of a salacious publishing empire at the bar.  He is in town for LeakyCon, the end-all of Harry Potter cons, and we traded stories about our respective events for a time. It’ll make for quite a tale for our friends back in Omaha.

Here are the games with light annotations.  I’m trying to avoid getting too deeply into analysis while the event goes on, preferring to focus on rest and socialization.  (I have even cut back on the opening prep after last year’s experience.) Today I attended the Publications and CJA committees, and my round 7 game is tonight. Let’s hope that this Lazarus can arise and play decent chess once more.

2014 US Open: Rd 2, 3

After a decent night’s sleep – decent, not sufficient! – I awoke to breakfast with Nebraska’s brightest young female chess player and her mother.  I took a quick jaunt to the Whole Foods to find coffee filters for my Hario V60 pourover, visited the bookstore with Jacey and her family,  and meandered a bit after they left for shopping and their flight home.

(Pro tip: if ever you forget to bring your special V60 filters with you on a trip. you can jerry-rig Melitta #4s and still brew your delicious, non-hotel coffee.  Don’t say I never did anything for you.)

Let me say something first about the bookstore, run this year (as last) by Chess4Less and the Rochester Chess Center. These guys do a great job stocking books, equipment, and swag. They are on-site for hours and hours, answering questions, suffering fools gladly, and letting bloggers like me take pictures.  Lots of them are provided in a link below.

As part of my quest to preserve the game scores from this tournament, I also dropped by the Director’s Room. The Director’s Room is where pairings are done and where the gruntwork of running a big tournament like this takes place.  I was tickled to learn that USCF directors have named their computers after world champions.

After a quick bite to eat, I dropped by the Scholastic Chess Committee meeting at 2pm. There was a bit of a kertuffle in Dallas this year at the National Elementary School Championship, as a team from WA were admitted to a section for low rated played for which they were dramatically overqualified.  Their USCF ratings did not represent their actual strength, while their NWS ratings (local to the NW) did. Naturally, when they won the event, things got ugly. Chess parents are about as delightful as stage parents.

So there has been a push among certain verbose members of the USCF community to make radical changes to procedures for dealing with foreign rating systems.  As I am the Nebraska delegate to the USCF, I thought I should learn about this issue and thus attended the Scholastic meeting.

What a mistake.

The meeting was filled with petty, backbiting nonsense from some of the ‘leading’ players in American scholastic chess.  One eminent figure repeatedly whined that no one contacted him to access his vast knowledge at key moments. (Nevermind the fact that this eminent fellow is no longer on the the Council, etc.) Another started to shout – literally – because he had to have the last word when his alleged ‘facts’ were corrected by someone with first-hand knowledge of a specific matter.

I think institutional memory is invaluable, but man, the USCF needs some new blood in a desperate way.

I managed to grab a quick nap and eat before my round three game.  As I took a half-point bye for the afternoon game, I started with 0.5/2.  My opponent was a plucky 11 yr old from Florida, and I managed to defeat him without too much difficulty.

In other news, Jim Tarjan drew the top rated player as he continues his comeback to tournament chess, and John Watson won his game to take his score to 4/5.

As promised, here are about 60 pictures from Wednesday!

2014 US Open: Rd 1

I caught a 6:40am flight from Omaha to Chicago to Orlando, arriving in town at about 1:30pm.  I had hoped to sleep on the flight, as I awoke at about 5am and slept fitfully before that, but could only doze on the first leg and struck out on the second. I’d never considered it before, but there are a LOT of kids on fights to Orlando, and more than one decided that mid-flight was the time to sing us all the songs of their people.  Oy.

After picking up my car, I headed over to the playing site.  The Rosen Centre Hotel is a very big place, and there are two or three large convention type events going on at once.  Besides the chess, I have seen some kind of Harry Potter event, a meeting of the Tuskegee Airmen (wow!), and various parts of the Miss America Outstanding Teen pageant.  Chess players and beauty queens.  Gotta love America.

Between 3 and 7, when rd 1 began, I wandered around a bit and got the lay of the land.  The bookstore is impressive.  (More on that later.) The playing hall is tremendous. There are lots of kids playing bughouse and blitz everywhere you look. And ICC is on-site, handing out free memberships to players in the Denker, Barber, and NGIT. Some 20 year ICC members (ahem) might also have gotten themselves a six month extension after banter with the on-site rep…

My round one game was against a young expert from Cleveland, OH named Zane Eisen.  I think I was better after 15 moves, but got too ambitious and missed a shot around move 25.  My attempts at complicating were for naught, and Eisen collected the point after time control was made.  We had a good post-mortem, and Al Lawrence dropped by to say hello. Al, former Chess Life editor and a Lincoln native, is one of the good guys in American chess, and it’s always good to see him.

As I am playing in the six-day, I took byes in rounds two and six so as to minimize my having to play two games a day.  So today I had breakfast with Nebraska’s NGIT player Jacey Tran and her mom, made a quick run to Whole Foods for coffee filters, and met up again with the Trans in the bookstore.  Later I’ll take some pictures during rd 2 of the six-day and I’ll also begin the work of my US Open games project, about which more will be said in a later post.

US Open 2014: Preparation

Things may seem to have gone quiet here at Chess Book Reviews, but this is not the case.  Much has been afoot behind the scenes, most notably the drafting and submission of a longer-than-usual review to Chess Life on opening videos.  I’ve been watching a lot of video from a number of providers, including ICC, chess24.com, chesslecture.com, chess.com and Chessbase.  Combine that with a lovely trip to see family and friends, and it’s not hard to see why there have been relatively few reviews in recent weeks.

In three weeks time I make my second appearance at the US Open.  Attentive readers will recall that last year I ‘live-blogged’ my experience and games there, and it is my intention to do so again.  I began last year’s bloggery with a description of what I’d been doing to prepare.  I will do so again in this post.

My chess has been miserable this past year.  After an abysmal showing at the Nebraska State Closed Championship, I decided that I had to do something radical to improve my game.  That radical step was, in truth, six steps – the six steps of the Dutch Stappenmethode (available in the States at Chess Steps and in an Amazon storefront) program for learning chess.

I will give an in-depth description and review of the Steps in the near future, but for now, let me say that the idea of the Steps is to offer users a systematic course for learning and improving one’s chess.  It is designed for children – my wife, in fact, asked me why I was so busy with children’s workbooks at the start of my project – but I find it equally ideal for the adult self-learner.  I have been busy solving all of the puzzles, including those in the Plus books, since the spring, and am now in the midst of Step 4.  My idea was to finally learn the basic grammar of chess, seeing as I, like most Americans, had a rather slapdash chess education.  I think it’s helping, but it’s too early to know what the long-term benefits (if any) will be.

I will continue moving through the Steps as I prepare for the US Open, and I will also be looking at a couple of other books, namely Chess Training for Post-Beginners by Yaroslav Srokovski and Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual by Mark Dvoretsky.  Dvoretsky’s book is a classic, but Srokovski’s book is new, and it will also (not coincidentally) be half of the subject of a review in Chess Life by yours truly later this year.

I will also try to get some practice in, both in set endgame positions against the computer and in solving middlegame problems on a board.  The middlegame problems will come from Krasenkow’s new book Finding Chess Jewels: Improve your Imagination and Calculation.  The endgame positions will come from Dvoretsky and from Aagaard’s GM Prep: Endgame Play.

What about openings?  Openings are not such a big part of my preparation this year, and for a couple of reasons.  I did a lot of opening work for the Nebraska Closed, and I did just watch a lot of videos on the opening.  Mainly I hope to review what I already play and fill in gaps where needed.

So ‘tune in’ during the Open for daily updates, and watch the British Chess Magazine later this year for a report by this foreign correspondent on the event.  And stand by for some new reviews before the Open!

Rd 9: A Deserved Hiding

I got to sleep in on Sunday, since the Delegates – miracle of miracles! – had managed to finish up all their business on Saturday.  After a late breakfast with John Watson, I tried to clear my head and get ready to play some chess.  The round time, as is common, moved up on the final day to 3pm.  My opponent came ready to play.  I did not.  This game is the result.

http://www.viewchess.com/cbreader/2013/8/7/Game32095973.html

Multiple flaws in my game are on display in this little disaster.  My bishop belongs on e7 and not c7; I got carried away with ideas of pushing …e6-e5 and breaking up White’s center, but even there, the bishop should be on e7 to hit the c5 pawn.  My calculative abilities, if one can call them abilities, were shocking.  I just don’t seem to have the sense of danger that I should.  If any readers have ideas on how to train that, I’d be much obliged.

The silver lining is that while Team Hartmann had a miserable event, Team Watson had a very good one.  John went 6-1 (plus two half pt byes in rds 1 and 2) to finish at 7-2 and grab a share of the U2400 money.  More important than the money was the quality of his play, which was very strong indeed, and all the more impressive given his time away from the competitive arena.  There is only one of his games in TWIC, but it’s a fairly good one, and well worth your time to track down.  Below is a picture of John analyzing with his rd 9 opponent and other future members of the US Chess Olympic team.

Rd 8: A Professional Job

I’m home after a long drive yesterday, and after some much needed sleep.  (Who knew chess tournaments took so much out of you?)  Now it’s time to catch up on Rounds 8 and 9, and then I’ll cap things off with a recap, review and reconsideration of my game.  I’ll return to book reviewing shortly thereafter with a review of Christian Hesse’s book.

Saturday was Delegate Meeting day.  Oy.  I’ve been told it was Kissinger who once said that academics argue so much because there’s so very little at stake.  I’m sure, however, that if he’d attended the Delegates Meeting, he’d want to modify that statement.  Chess players just love to hear themselves argue over the smallest things, and while I’m sure it’s part of my training in informal logic that makes me say this, I heard some of the dumbest arguments imaginable on certain barely consequential votes.

That said, I did rather enjoy being a Delegate, if only because I could tune out and look at things on Chessbase if the discussion went sour.  I learned quite a bit about the state of the USCF and its finances, which, all things considered, are decent and perhaps even on the upswing.  Michael Khodarkovsky gave a report about FIDE and Americans in international play.  We learned that Franc Guadalupe is actively working to get some kind of online play for USCF members and, perhaps more importantly, is bargaining with Random House to publish the long-awaited 6th edition of the Rulebook.  Guadalupe seems incredibly competent, which naturally means we can’t induce him to stay on as full-time director.  Oh well.  A boy can dream.

Two motions were actively debated.  The first dealt with the introduction of an age-limit for Delegates.  This makes sense, and legal opinion apparently was on the side of age-limiters.  But youth prevailed, if only because (1) there was a 14yr old Delegate already seated with whom the majority of the grandparently delegates were smitten, and (2) people were convinced by some of the least well-thought speeches I’ve ever heard.  So we can seat toddlers as delegates… because states rights.  (Seriously.)

Second, Jim Berry tried to introduce a plan to allow scholastic players up to the age of 12 to buy life memberships for $500.  Sounds great, right?  Most scholastic players drop out, so that has got to be a cash grab for the Federation.  But it would seem that no one actually did any cost-benefit analysis to determine how many players drop out and come back, what percentage of players would have to disappear as adults to make such a cheap price point feasible, etc.  I was moved to make my one and only comment from the floor here, telling the delegates that most of them were far older than me and that I (and my coming governing cohorts) might have to deal with the consequences of a plan that apparently wasn’t worth their doing basic math or anything.  Luckily reason – or non-insanity – prevailed here and the motion failed.

It turns out my evening game was against another delegate, this time a woman from Wisconsin.  After some dodgy opening play, I was able to tie her defenses down to a backward c-pawn and then open up a second attack on her kingside.  I probably could have won faster, but in the end I’m basically pleased with my play here.  The resistance could have been stronger, but it wasn’t a blowout and I had to actually, you know, do something to win.  This left me at 4.0/8 heading into the last round.

http://www.viewchess.com/cbreader/2013/8/6/Game23773039.html

Rd 4 & 5: Doubleheader

Yesterday was my long day, my day of unending chess labor, my two-a-day.  I’ve never played in a large national event where multiple rounds of 40/2 SD/1 games are on the cards, and now I know why.  It’s exhausting, even if – as I did – you luck out and get a fairly quick win in the late game.

I started the day at 1.5/3, so I expected to be playing someone fairly decent in round 4.  My opponent was a 20ish 1977 player, and to be honest, he flat-out beat me.  They don’t call the Ruy ‘Spanish Torture’ for nothing.  If Black plays inaccurately in any number of lines, White just builds up a powerful kingside attack and wins.  Had I kept my light squared bishop, I think my chances would have been better, but in the end, the ‘kid’ (I can say that at 37, right?) just outplayed me.  Hats off to him.  (I will note, however, that begging out of a quick postmortem because ‘you might have to eat’ is a little sketchy when the next round starts in 3.5 hrs.  Just say you’re not interested.)

After some muttered profanities, I cooled my jets in the bookstore and then went off for dinner at the restaurant across the street.  It was then time for pregame coffee and chess prep!

Some of the discussion at chesspub about these posts led me to reconsider my overly zealous pregame habits, so I tried to take it easy, only looking at a few variations to remind myself of key points.  It might also have been a small blessing that pairings didn’t go up until perhaps 20 minutes before the round, as I couldn’t obsess over my opponent’s repertoire if I didn’t know who he or she was.

My round 5 opponent turned out to be a very nice 11 yr old from New Mexico rated around 1500.  This is his second US Open, he told me, and his brother played in the Barber.  I’d looked at a lot of d4 openings in the weeks before the Open, and my thinking generally is that older folk such as myself should strongly consider playing things besides 1.e4 against talented kids.  He played a variation of the Slav where he takes …dxc4 early, and I was a bit befuddled.  Eventually I sac’d my b-pawn and got a lot of play against his exposed queen.  Surely he resigned too early, as there was plenty of play in the position, but White is vastly better in the final position.

I ended the day at 2.5/5, and with my half pt bye in round 6, I’ll be at 3.0/6 when the schedules merge tonight.  Today I’ll return to downtown Madison for awhile, and then I’ll attend the Chess Journalists of America meeting before eating and preparing to play tonight.  I should also have more pictures tomorrow!

Here are my games, presented with my thanks to those who would take the time to view them!

http://www.viewchess.com/cbreader/2013/8/2/Game5847213.html