3/5

Today I lost and won. First, in fourth round I was paired against top-rated guy. Well, I had white pieces but once again that didn't help me at all. After 15 moves I was already defending and hoping for a miracle. I defended brilliantly, and eventually my strong opponent couldn't find a way to mate me although almost all his pieces were pointing towards my poor king. In the end I managed to "bounce back", and my counter-attack ended up being decisive. 1-0 for me.

Second game... I messed up the opening, got worse position, defended and defended, but this time my opponent also attacked accurately and I had to resign.

3/5 score, shared third place in group A, rating performance being decent 2100.

Phew...2/3 so far.

Mikkeli's open five-round weekend tournament started today. After three rounds (G/90mins) I have 2 wins and 1 loss, average rating of opponents being 1976. So not that bad, although my goal (5/5 score) can not be achieved anymore, I am still very pleased I have 2 points.

What to comes to the games, well...they were terrible. Get this: In all three games I was either in lot worse position or in dead lost position after 10-15 moves. In first game I played too creatively (out of book) . My opponent had an wonderful idea, double fianchetto, which worked pretty well. The two bishops made my position almost to collapse right after the opening. Had he offered draw, I would have took it immediately. Then something odd happened, despite his great position he couldnt find a good plan and started to drift. I took full advantage of couple inaccurate moves he made, and soon it was drawish endgame. Luckily we both were in serious time trouble. Althought I had actually less time (~2 mins to his 4mins), I knew I could handle the situation better than he would (here we see how playing bullet improves your long chess too). I did, he blundered...and I won.

Second game, perhaps the worst I've ever played OTB, I played with white. After 15 moves I was already dead meat. I think I'll never understand how I can lose so fast without making any visible blunders. Well, the game still lasted another 20 moves. Then I resigned.

Third game. I was frustrated, and wanted to finish my opponent off quickly. Bad idea. Opening wasnt really a success for me, in fact I just barely survived. Then he gave me time to finish my development. After 20 moves I had decent position, which again looked like a draw. Well, he tried bit too hard and I defended well, and eventually we moved to an endgame where material was even but his only knight was trapped in the h-file. So...being practically knight up in material, I managed to "bust in " with my rook and when he finally got his knight out of h-file, it was already too late.

So...phew. I could very well have 0/3 score right now, but luckily I am lucky man, who knows how to deal with inferior positions.

Won a long game

After last weeks shock loss I was paired against another ~1600 rated guy. I didn't learn anything from my loss (deep in my mind I didn't want to...) and played the game blitzing all the moves out. I The game was pretty easy, he played well and position was about equal (although dumb Fritz tries to claim he had already some advantage) until at move 20 he unfortunately missed simple trap and lost a bishop. After that it was of course just waiting for resignation.

One nice thing when playing with increments (1h + 30sec/move) is that you can have more time at the end of the game than at the beginning. Last time (the game I lost) I had about 55 mins time left when I resigned, now I had 1h 7 minutes when he resigned. In next game my goal is to make it over 1h 10 mins :D

Anyway...before the next round I'll have important weekend tournament. Last time I played in national weekend tournament was exactly year ago (2006 edition of the same tournament). And before that the previous one was the 2005 edition, and before that the 2004 edition. And three years ago I finished 8th, two years ago I was 3rd and last year I was 2nd. So...only one logical way to continue...1st place! Not too easy task thou, because in previous three years the winner has always been +2400 rated IM. And I have these twisted tendencies to lose against 1600 rateds and playing blitz-mode permanently turned on.

Faulty problem on CTS

This is a problem from CTS (Chess Tactics Server). White just played Rc6. You are black. What should you do? And as all regural CTS-solvers know, you only have about 3-15 seconds (assuming you dont want to end up losing rating points) to decide whats the best move for black? And for those who dont use CTS (oh why dont you woodpushers use it????) I must inform you that in CTS only one move is regarded as a correct one.

You all probably spot very quickly that white's bishop and rook can be forked, and white can't defend them both. So Nd4 looks like a logical way to continue. In addition, some might think that "hell, after Nd4 white still has a rook, so why don't I just play Rxf3 and after Kxf3 I'll still have that fork." This thinking is also very logical but it misses a simple point: white does not have to recapture the rook after Rxf3. White has in-between-move Rxe6!

"Very cool" might one think. So after all, is there only one correct solution (Nd4)? Nope, because after Rxf3 Rxe6 black also has an in-between-move...Rxg3!!. Now after Kxg3 fxe6 or hxg3 fxe6 black has a trivial win. He is pawn up, and simply by pushing his queenside pawns he can force white king to leave the kingside, and then black king can easily pick up all the white pawns on the kingside. Very logical, very simple. Black wins.

So, Rxf3 and Nd4 both win. Now you are back to square one: which one is the correct solution? You have no way to know, so you just have to take a guess. But if you are lucky and you don't see Rxg3!! at all then you might think only Nd4 wins and you choose the correct one. But if you are unlucky (and in this case "unlucky enough" equals GOOD ENOUGH ) enough to see Rxg3 then there is a big chance you end up losing lot of rating points although you found a winning move.

Weee...

This is the game I lost against 1600-rated. Time controls were 1h + 30sec/move.

[Event "Tourney"]
[Site "MyTown"]
[Date "2007.04.09"]
[Round "1"]
[White "opponent (1600)"]
[Black "jusah (2000)"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B07"]
[Annotator "me"]
[PlyCount "69"]
[TimeControl "300"]

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Bc4 Bg7 5. Nge2 O-O 6. O-O Nc6 7. a3 e5 8.
Bg5 h6 9. Bh4 g5 10. Bg3 Nh5 11. d5 Ne7 12. Bd3 Ng6 13. h3 Nhf4 14. b4 Bd7
15. a4 Qc8 16. Bxf4 exf4 17. Ra3 f3 18. Ng3 fxg2 19. Re1 g4 20. hxg4 Bxg4
21. Be2 Bh3 22. Bf3 Nh4 23. Nce2 Qd8 24. Nf4 Bd7 25. Nxg2 Be5 26. Bg4 f5
27. Bh3 f4 28. Bxd7 Qxd7 29. Nxh4 fxg3 30. fxg3 Qg7 31. Nf5 Rxf5 32. exf5
Bxg3 33. Re6 Rf8 34. Rg6 Bf2+ 35. Kh1
1-0

Here is the position after whites 19th move (19.Re1). I was black.



How does this look to you? Do you think black has little advantage, huge advantage or totally won position? I think its somewhere between =+ and -+. I am a pawn up, and if I want to, I can instantly grab h-pawn and be two pawns up. Also, I have great outposts for my knights on e5 and f4, he has bishop pair and both of his bishops are active. White, on the other hand, has nothing: he has backward e-pawn, bad bishop, knight under attack and kingside ripped off. So we all agree black has huge advantage here. Even more, I used only few minutes to reach this position, in fact, thanks to the 30sec/move increments, I had about 65 minutes time left here. Thats pretty good when you have 60 minutes at the beginning. But watch this: I'll show you how quickly I can make it all my advantages vanish...

So I played 19...g4. Why didn't I grab the pawn? Now that I review this game I would not even consider anything else. But in game I did consider something else, something worse. I thought that taking the pawn is just lame (thats right: lame!) and I wanted to finish him off quickly and in style. Also, I thought that in this position almost any move is fine.

So...eleven moves later I am in this position.


Things didn't go very smoothly. Ten moves earlier I was so sure I had him on ropes I actually, move by move, worsened my position. I didn't bother to take my time and play accurately enough, and here is the result.. Now its me who is down a pawn, and it is me who is in worse position, and its me who still has over 1h time left. I totally blew it.

The saddest thing is that I had seen this position few moves earlier move, and I evaluated this as better for black. The key move, so I thought, is Rxf5. By saccing an exchange I get his great knight out of the game and, more importantly, I can take the g3-pawn on next move. So I thought: "After Rxf5 exf5 Bxg3 his rook is hanging, plus it'll be check after I move my bishop away from g3. I'll gain time, and rip the remainings of his kingside open. I'll be down an exchange, but I have strong bishop and strong passed h-pawn. There is now way I could lose, especially against 1600-rated."

Of course I missed his simple reply after Bxg3.

Blitz going well, long going hell.

I haven't written for almost two months so I think its time to for update:

Good news: I played in team blitz championship of East-Finland region couple weeks ago (open for clubs from our region). 12 teams participated. I was "on the mood" and achieved my best blitz result ever - 20.5 points out of 22 games. My opponents ranged from 1660 rated to 2200 rated, average being 1870. Unfortunately the event was unrated, and even more unfortunately our team didn't win the tournament.

Not-so-good news: What comes to normal OTB games, I am in losing streak. About month ago I lost very important game against 1960-rated player. I had clearly better position but blew it - not a surprise. Also THIS happened to be rated game.

And yesterday I lost against 1600-player. Nothing more to say.