Tick Tick Tick ...

As of today, dear reader, I have just one month left of my thirties.

I must confess I'm not hugely keen on growing older but at least up to now I've been able to comfort myself with the widely held notion that the 17th of September will bring a re-energized fresh start for me. Unfortunately this morning during an ill-advised googling expedition I found an old article in the Daily Telegraph that began,

The belief that life begins at 40 is a myth. Research has found that the fourth decade heralds the beginning of the end.

Bugger.

Time, I think, to get few a easy chuckles by mocking those less fortunate than myself. Normally of course that would mean a visit to Chess Now* but today I'll go the other route and take a look at a choice example of the embarrassing resignation.

The position below is taken from Geoff Chandler's chapter on Tactics and Combinations in Master Chess: A course in 21 Lessons, Pergammon Press 1985**.

Black to play

White is threatening 1. Rxh7+ Kxh7, 2. Rh1+ Bh6, 3. Qxh6 mate.

Although Black threw in the towel here he has a move that not only saves the game but even wins if White tries to force a mate by sacrificing the rook on h7. You work out what it is while I spend the day getting ready for my impending doom.




* e.g. I, II or III

** a book I have mentioned several times before (an endgame study, an endgame technique and a double bishop sacrifice)

Chess in Art X

Albert, Duc de Bavière affronte son épouse aux échecs

Hans Muelich (1552)

frontispiece to The Book of Jewels of the Duchess Anne of Bavaria

[Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich]

Partita a scacchi

Sofonisba Anguissola (1555)

[Muzeum Narodowe, Poznan, The Raczynski Foundation]

[Chess in Art index]
[Chess in Art collected]

When Termites Attack

Judging by the overflowing crowd at the venue last night, or by the Grandmasters merrily analyzing away in the bar after their games, or purely by the entertaining chess being played, one would think this year's Staunton Memorial Tournament another unqualified success.

Yet organizer and arbiter Eric Schiller's interesting Behind The Scenes article suggest a problem with certain metaphorical termites: a problem which threatens the very future of the event. These termites, says Schiller, are people who complain on the internet about certain aspects of the event - such as the inclusion of underdog Bob Wade - whilst attacking the organizers personally.

"The foundations of the event are ... being undermined by a tiny minority of “termites”," writes Schiller, going on:

The organizers are subjected to abuse for many decisions, often under circumstances beyond their control, as the termites would know if they had ever in their lives attempted to put on a Grandmaster chess event ...

Termites have an affect. They nibble away and cause the true chess workers endless grief, and organizers and staff grow tired of it and become less enthusiastic about repeating the experience. We have lost many good organizers and staff because of this. None of us are making any money on this ...

The termites threaten to destroy the Staunton, as they have destroyed many fine tournaments in the past. Keep in mind the hard work required to put on a major chess event and don’t become a termite! I hope we’ll have another fine event next year, but the insidious insects try to make this less likely.

Indeed, it would be a real shame for London to lose the Staunton Memorial, and I've often wondered why Dutch sponsor Jan Mol hasn't considered moving the event to Holland.

Still, the negative comments on the internet are clearly in the minority, and it's usually best not to engage in such squabbles anyway. On which note, the tournament website has today introduced a positive response, in the form of a new page called Quotes. In fact already there's two enthusiastic comments there to read - one from Shaun Taulbut and one from Andrew Martin - and there is also an email address provided for fans to send in comments. Will local chess-loving Londoners - who perhaps feel lucky to have this tournament held here each year - follow suit and email in their support to help bolster this event?

Or will this summer see the last Staunton Memorial - with all that remains a dust-pile at the centre of our city, the termites scuttling off in search of fresh wood for next summer?

England's Number One?

Following yesterday's rest day for the players (though no day off for the organisers who've been busy on the internet), the Staunton Memorial resumes this afternoon at Simpsons-in-the-Strand.

At the halfway point, van Wely is in second place with 4/6 closely followed by Smeets, Timman, Short and Speelman on 3.5/6. Of these five Smeets and van Wely have the advantage of not yet having played either Cherniev or Bob Wade. The latter pair are the tournament back markers and by some margin the lowest rated in the event, so the two dutchmen should probably be considered as having their noses some way in front of the three former candidates.

Out ahead of everybody, however, sits Michael Adams who has a very perky 5/6. Handing out spankings to Werle, Timman, Smeets and Wade has given him a rating performance for the first half of the tournament that works out to a shade over 2800 and he's looked almost totally invincible so far.

Almost.

Adams was fortunate to survive a dodgy moment against Nigel Short on Tuesday. If my database's memory serves this was the the first time England's top two have faced each other for seven years* and Nosher thought it worth wheeling out Alekhine's Defence for the occasion. Rumours that he was briefed on the finer points of 1. ... Nf6 by our own Angus French have yet to be confirmed but in any event Short obtained a fine game and at move fifteen reached this position ...

Black to play
Adams-Short, Staunton Memorial (6) 2008

Adams played 15. Bd2 apparently totally missing Black's idea. It could have been a lot worse but as it turned all he suffered for the oversight was the loss of any possibility of playing for an advantage. The game burned out to a completely level position and was agreed drawn five moves later. Who was it who said the good player is always lucky?




Curiously the day before his encounter with Short, Adams had missed another simple (by his standards) tactic.

Black to play
Wade-Adams, Staunton Memorial (5) 2008

Wade had just retreated his queen from c2 to d1 in response to the capture of a pawn on c4. After a few minutes thought Adams played 35. ... Nd5. It's certainly an attractive move since it leaves Black a pawn up with a knight blockading the isolated queen's pawn which is infinitely superior to White's horrible bishop on e3. It's difficult to imagine anybody surving this against Adams, least of all a semi-inactive opponent several hundred rating points out of his depth.

Wade did indeed resign a few moves later but just like Nigel Short it seems Mickey Adams doesn't always pay attention to Tuesday's second aphorism. It may be slightly harsh to point this out since he is winning anyway but in the diagram above Black has a neat tactical sequence that ends the game at once. I realised this while I was watching the game waiting for Black to play. Not that I'm a tactical genius you understand. Andrew Stone pointed the key move out to me no more than five nanoseconds after Wade had retreated his queen.

Adams is obviously one of the greatest chess players the country has ever seen. According to chessliverating.org his performance during the first half of the Stauton Memorial has lifted him back into the world's top 10. Doesn't that illustrate the underlying attractions and frustrations of chess?

If a player of Adams' class can make such simple mistakes what chance do the rest of us have? Chess is just impossibly difficult. Though not, it would seem, too difficult for Andrew Stone.





* Not quite their first game this century as we'd thought yesterday. It seems they played three games in 2001, the last being a 33 move draw in the 4NCL in May of that year.

Staunton Memorial: Photograph Report

Thanks to Vad for these splendid pictures of yesterday's Staunton Memorial Tournament, which witnessed the first clash between the English greats Adams and Short this century, I believe!

But first . . .

. . . the venue Simpson's-in-the-Strand from the outside, sandwiched between two buses . . .

. . . who'd know it was hosting a chess tournament?



But inside things are getting ready.



Nigel Short waits for Michael Adams, looking fully concentrated . . .

. . . while Bob Wade peruses the paper - perhaps looking for pointers from Ray Keene's chess column?



The games begin. Arbiter Eric Schiller stands behind the two players.



Meanwhile, Short has surprised Adams on move 1, playing the Alekhine with the black pieces . . .



. . . but the game soon peters out to a twenty-move draw. Looks like the fianchetto variation, where with white against Timman back in 1991, Short won a well-remembered classic.

Things will not prove so nice for Bob Wade, however, in his game against Jon Speelman.

Wells and Chernyaev look to be the last to finish.

Soon there'll be nothing for organizer Ray Keene (in the background) and arbiter Eric Schiller (foreground) to do for the night.

Except of course outside there's London, where there's always things to do!

Thanks again to Vad for these great photographs. The homepage for the tournament is here. Today is a rest day, but the tournament continues from Thursday until Monday from 2pm each day (except on the final day, when they start at noon.) Entry to the venue on the Strand is free and highly recommended.

Three Aphorisms and an Explanation

I've been spending a fair amount of time at the 6th Staunton Memorial over the past few days.

Bughouse may be the least spectator friendly game known to humanity but classical chess tournaments can't be much better. At Simpsons-in-the-Strand the demonstration boards are too small/too far away, it's frequently not possible to see through the thicket of players and arbiters to see the boards at all and even when it is without any kind of commentary patzers such as myself are left largely clueless as to what's going on*. Still, perverse as it may be, I have to say I'm enjoying it hugely.

My favourite game so far was the latest installment in the decades long Short - Timman rivalry. Nosher surprised the Dutchman in the opening with an unusual queen manoeuvre then sacrificed the exchange for long-term compensation eventually reaching this position at move 19 ...

White to Play
Short-Timman, Staunton Memorial (2) 2008

... at which point he blundered.

"Nigel, alas, had neither computer chip nor soothsayer to prompt him, but it is still a little surprising that he should have missed such a tactical blow"

So says the official tournament website but I think I can explain.

Aphorism One:

When exchanging pieces it's what remains on the board that matters.**

First let's take a look at what actually happened.

Short chose 19. Qb3. I remember being quite impressed at the time. With White material down and Black suffering from a king stuck in the centre and poor development it had not occurred to me to look at lines where the White queen leaves the board.

Once played, though, it was not to difficult for me to understand why Short had chosen this path. (More or less) forcing the queen trade gives White an open a-file and allows him to regain his material as Black spends a tempo avoiding the knight fork. Moreover, getting rid of Black's queen leaves his minor pieces gummed up while White's knights dominate the board.

19. Qb3 is obviously a good move in that it increases White's advantage and leaves him clearly better. Still it deserves a "?" because there's an even better move available that kills Black stone dead instantly.

Aphorism Two:

When you find a good move look for a better one.

Now this is all very well on paper but applying it at the board with the clock ticking is a different matter entirely. After lobbing in the exchange Short had used up a lot of time, particularly on moves 14, 15 and 16, trying to figure out how best to place his pieces to take advantage of Black's temporary difficulties. It seems that at the critical moment he chose to make up some time by playing a good move quickly.

It was Short's great misfortune to have two promising ways to proceed. One good move and one extremely good move. I'm sure that if Timman had a better way to defend against 19. Qb3 Nosher would have looked deeper into the position and found the winning idea.

A surprise he missed it? Perhaps, but understandable I think. What I find harder to fathom is how a player of Short's experience allowed himself to lose the game on time - but that's another story.

Perhaps you've already seen this position and know how Short could have won. If not, today's final maxim may help you.

Aphorism Three:

Loose Pieces Drop Off.

* Although it was a different story yesterday when Andrew Stone, having watched England polish off South Africa at the Oval, turned up and helped me get a grip on Short-Cherniev and Wade-Adams in particular.

** As T.C. is fond of saying

Improve Your Chess VI: Join a Club!

There are lots of reasons to join a chess club, mostly not directly linked to chess improvement. Drinking buddies with a similar interest to you. Something different to do on a Tuesday night. A way to be more involved with the local community. Or less, if you choose one away from your local area. Pure love of the game. The extra competition. Pragmatics: you can easily pick up chess news, gossip, information about tournaments, and so on. Maybe even, via your club you get to indulge a pet-project, like a newsletter, or a website or . . . a blog! Lots of reasons.

However, being a part of a club offers unique opportunities for chess improvement unavailable elsewhere. Today's piece is about what these opportunities are, and the overarching advice is simple: join a club suited to your chess improvement. Or if you're already in a club, orientate your club-based activities toward chess improvement. And finally, if it's impossible for you to join a club because the nearest one is too far away, then why not start yourself up a chess club closer to home?

Practical opportunities to play more
There might be some players who play too much chess, but not many. Regularly playing over-the-board (otb) chess in serious competitive games - rated games under reasonable time-controls - is one key way to improve. It is the only way we really test ourselves, the only way we really come to feel how real our limitations are - and more importantly what they are, the only way we start to look the reality of chess in the face - the difficulty, the confusion, the practicality of the thing. Tal put it succinctly: “Minutes of play and years of analysis are not the same thing.”

And joining a club will always provide more opportunities to play than not. Many clubs have internal competitions (I played 12 rapid-play games in ours this year.) Many clubs are members of several leagues. For our part, for instance, we have a twelve-board team in the London League Division 1, a ten-board team in the London League Division 3, and an eight board team in the London League Division 3; four-board teams in each of the three Croydon Leagues; a four-board team in the Stoneleigh Trophy (although admittedly this is a rapid-play league); a team in the Lauder Trophy; and, an eight-board team in the Surrey League. We also frequently enter teams in Cup Competitions, that is, knock-outs - and we also have links to the Surrey County sides and the 4NCL team the Celtic Tigers. I myself played around 30 games this last season for my club. Not only that, via your club you might hear news of upcoming individual tournaments, get offers of lifts to venues, and so forth.

In short: joining a club should enable you to play more chess; playing chess regularly is important for improvement.

Chess events
Sometimes clubs will arrange events directed toward chess improvement. For instance, a few years ago we held a day of talks about openings. Several strong players each researched a different variation, and each gave talks on their findings. After each talk we played practice games in the variations given. I vividly recall being intrigued that day by the Hedgehog, whilst also being appalled at my lack of comprehension of the mainline of the Scotch. The contrast was confirmed by my results in the practice games and subsequently the former has joined my repertoire, the latter left it.

Of course one shouldn't be merely a passive recipient in these kinds of activities. This is just not for reasons of fairness, although I myself gave a talk about the games of Greco a while back. It's that in getting ready to talk about chess to others, we have to really be sure we know what we're talking about. Often our chess studies aren't like this: we think we've prepared some super-sharp line, we sit down at an actual game and half-way along our opponent varies, disorientated we blunder and bang we're mated five moves later. Back we go to our private preparation, telling ourselves we'll be really sure we've learnt it for next time . . . but not so when you're talking in front of people. You really have to know you know what you're talking about - else the humiliation isn't just a loss under twenty moves, but a flustered silence and red cheeks in front of twenty bemused friends from your club. This is different to putting a chess video on-line, when you can answer any critical questions via Fritz. (There is some overlap here with my advice to coach others.)

In conclusion, at chess clubs you can both organize chess events that force you to work on your chess, and learn from those that others put together.

Chess buddies
There are some people who learn best entirely on their own, but even amongst chess players not many. Most top Grandmasters have seconds, and during top one-on-one matches both competitors will often have teams of players assisting and advising them. And even in this computerized age, some top players even play training matches against human opposition. For instance, Grandmaster Morozevich recently played GM Navarra in an unrated match, the moves of which have been kept secret. (And not over the internet either, but face to face.)

It is unlikely that you and members of your chess club will be quite able to emulate all that. However, even tiny things can help - like extended postmortems with your club-mates after in the pub. However, there is more than that that club mates can do together. I regularly have lunch with team-mate and fellow-blogger Jonathan B, for instance, and we've recently decided to work through the exercises in Jacob Aagard's Excelling at Chess. We take it in turn to set out the pieces, and after some thought talk about how we think about the position. Then we come to a decision: a move and the idea behind it. Sometimes we're bang on, sometimes close but no cigar, sometimes only vaguely thinking about the positions in the right way. Having someone else there helps in several ways: the focus, the impossibility of cheating, and the sheer competitiveness! Although there is a loss in realism due to talking, there is a corresponding gain in tension which brings the experience closer to the ideal of simulating otb chess. (As an aside, I should add that I think the positions in Aagard's book are appropriate for the kind of simulation exercises I talked about previously.) I certainly feel a flutter of nerves much closer to otb chess as we reach for the solutions than I do when, say, playing a few games on www.chesscube.com at lunch.

Personal advice
Shared activity is one thing. However, for all-but-one member of every chess club, there will always be at least one stronger player, and usually stronger players prove good sources of advice. In fact I would say the ideal person to give a player chess advice is a person who (1) is a stronger player and (2) knows the player and their play personally. I don't think that (1) is a particularly controversial claim, but I think that (2) is. I am saying that it is better to follow chess advice from someone who knows you and your play personally than from any other expert - even Grandmasters who write books, even World Champions who produce DVDs, even from the works of undoubted world-class trainers. Indeed, I have benefited this way myself, following advice from club-mate and fellow-blogger ejh about my opening repertoire, that I detailed here. ejh knew me and my play, and knew my openings needed fixing, and went about it in a way that worked for me. No book has had anything like as powerful effect on my repertoire or indeed my overall attitude to the opening in chess.

Having said that, I do still stand my advice to read Rowson. There is not really a contradiction here. As I explained in my previous article, I find Jonathan Rowson's two books about chess improvement confusing and badly-written - but because of this, they are hugely provocative, shake up our assumptions, and are a stimulus to change. And they contain only one or two pieces of truly direct advice anyhow - practice concentration, simulate otb chess - so they hardly can be considered a surrogate for the personal touch.

On which note, in my article on Rowson I compared his work favourably with Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess. Again Nunn's book provides a contrasting example to the kind of thing I'm talking about here. One piece of advice Nunn gives is "DAUT" which stands for "Don't Analyze Unnecessary Tactics". Undoubtedly true, good advice, and when we have a clear-cut positional option we should not plunge headlong into muddy tactical waters for the sake of it.

One question Nunn doesn't ask, though, is: what's a necessary tactic to analyze? Instead he assumes the reader errs on the side of tactical analysis. I think it's fair to say this preference for tactics is a part of Nunn-the-chess-player, but there is a tacit assumption it is part of his readership too. This makes him a bad source of advice for players not like him.

Let me make this concrete for anyone not convinced. Even if you've read the book, try this test. The test is: come to a conclusion about the tactics in the diagram position after 16...Nxe4, analyzing for several minutes at most.

This is from page 91 of the book, the chapter on Middlegames. Nunn is discussing how to play bad positions - whether to try to hang-on with grim defence, or try to create confusion in complications. What are the necessary tactics you need to analyze here to make that decision? The answer is implied in Nunn's annotations. After 16...Nxe4 Nunn writes how he was "dumbfounded" and that "for several minutes I just couldn't see the point of it . . . Then I suddenly saw the idea." The game continued, 17.Qxe4 Bb7 18.Rd5 Rc8 19.c3! Qc4 20.Qxc4 Rxc4 21.Bg2 Bxd5! 22.Bxd5 and then black played 22...Rxh4! to which Nunn comments: "This moves is the key point which it took me several minutes to see at move 16."

Several minutes to see 22...Rxh4 at move 16?

Frankly, I can barely visualize the variation and resultant position now, despite having played over the line several times. DAUT is all very good advice - provided you're at the level where you can see sequences like the above after several minutes; that is, provided you're a Grandmaster with excellent tactical vision, or at least a player with a far superior command of tactics compared than your positional sense. Incidentally, I think it's rather a shame Secrets of Practical Chess wasn't written twice: once in its current form by Nunn - a Grandmaster with strong tactical leanings - and once with the same chapters but by a positionally-orientated GM with relatively weak tactical abilities. It would be interesting to see the overlaps, more interesting to see the potential inversions.

Anyway. My points is that Nunn's advice is going to be a poor-fit for some players, because he doesn't know them personally and so his advice is not tailored to them. A team-mate who knows you well will certainly not advice you to analyze less tactics if they watch you blundering into two-movers every other week!

Which club is right for you?
Obviously, you can't just roll up to a chess club and demand free lessons. That's not how the world works. My point is more than many chess clubs are conducive environments for learning, especially through the friendships you make there, which often prove mutually-beneficial from a chess point of view.

Sometimes whether a chess club is likely to be right for you is pretty obvious from just the name of the club. The membership of London Deaf is self-explanatory, whilst teetotalers might feel somewhat out of place at Drunken Knights. Other times it's not so obvious, so the best thing to do is find out. Nowadays, first contact is frequently through the web:


View Larger Map

For our part for instance, we're on google maps as you can see. However geography nowadays isn't as crucial as it might seem: our teams in the London League play in central, not south London; our team in the Surrey League plays as far away as Guildford. We also have a website with the essential facts about our club here. Forty members is a healthy number, and it should be clear from the ECF grades that we have players of widely varying strengths. After that, second contact might be in person on a club night, or phoning or emailing a club official. For instance, the contact details of our captains are available on our website who can be contacted as appropriate. Incidentally, if you're not improving, want to improve, and are a member of a club - I don't mean to imply this is the club's "fault"! More, that being in a club is an opportunity to set-up situations suitable for improving, even if this kind of thing is directly structured into the goings on of the club itself.

Conclusion
There are lots of reasons to join a chess club not related to chess improvement. However, there are several ways to improve your chess from within a chess club that are not readily available elsewhere. One is that they increase the opportunities for you to play competitive chess. Also, you can be involved in chess events orientated around improving. Less formally, you can make chess friends who can help you train and vice versa. A special example of that is the situation where stronger players give weaker players advice. I argue this advice is more likely to be apt than that found in books. Finally, it's not necessarily obvious what the right club will be for a player, so it's worth exploring the options. (And do drop us a note if you think Streatham & Brixton Chess Club might be the place for you!)

[Index]

And so it ends

White to play and win the British Championship

So the British is now over and regardless of whether you consider him to be 'Champion' or strongest-amongst-those-who-bothered-their-arses-to-turn-up it would take a particularly curmudgeonly fellow to deny Stuart Conquest praise for winning the thing. You can only beat the guy in front of you after all and to remain unbeaten after facing seven GMs and an IM (Conquest's 11 opponents elo average was 2457) is a pretty special feat that few could match.

As EJH predicted on Friday, a play-off was eventually required to establish the winner. While this is never truly satisfactory justice was done when Conquest overcame Keith Arkell in a pair of rapid games played on Saturday morning. I've nothing against the latter but he'd only played a couple of GMs on his way to 8/11 and his opponents elo average (2403) was notably lower than Conquest's. Conquest, moreover, had been at the head of the field from round 4* while Arkell took the swiss gambit approach and was always just off the pace and only hit the front at the very end. The reason why Arkell spent the tournament just behind the leaders? That would be his loss to Conquest himself in round 4.

Conquest was a worthy winner then, and this morning you can see for yourself how he did it. The position above is from the second Conquest-Arkell play-off game. It's move 17 and although Arkell, playing black, won't resign for another 30 moves or so, it's here that Conquest gained a decisive advantage.

White to play and win the British Championship.


* the sole exception being round seven which Conquest ended a half point behind EJH's beau Bogdan Lalic.

Chess in Art IX

The Chess Players

Cornelis de Man (1670)

[Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest]

[Chess in Art index]
[Chess in Art collected]

Whither the British?

This afternoon, give or take a possible play-off, sees the end of the British Championships. When I say "the end of the British Championships" I mean, of course, the last round, but the phrase does have a more baleful meaning and given the decline of the Championship, over the past twenty years or so, there is surely every reason to ask how long it can survive in its current form.

The British used to attract, as a matter of course, pretty much every top player eligible to enter: but now, by my count, we're down to two of the top ten - and maybe half of the top thirty. Given that the top echelon of British chess is not what it used to be either, we're talking about a smaller selection from a weaker pool.

The long-term reasons for this decline have been discussed elsewhere: they exist and they're not anybody's fault. Chess is short of cash in a world where money matters: chess is never going to pay, say, Luke McShane what Goldman Sachs are paying him. Besides, the world has changed from the days when every leading British player could be counted on to turn up at a seaside resort for two weeks to enjoy the company of the rest of the chess community (as they would not have called it then). Most of our leading players are professionals: people say, quite rightly, that Short and Adams would be expensive, but even below their level there are plenty of players who expect to receive "conditions" and can quite likely get better conditions elsewhere. London, for instance.

The world has changed in other ways. A number of our leading players live abroad, and can get to a international open with attractive prizes as easily as they can get to Liverpool: indeed, even for the rank-and-file it's no novelty any more to go abroad to play in a strong open tournament. Not so long ago the British used to be the strongest tournament most people were likely to see, let alone play in, all year: but now, it seems like just another open tournament, and not as strong, by a long chalk, as many. And this is the problem. The British is no longer special.

It needs to be special: it's our championship. It needs to be the best we can make it. Something is badly wrong when a player of my strength can find twenty players in the tournament lower-graded than myself. I'm a decent enough player sometimes, but I shouldn't be playing in a national championship. It's reaching the point of absurdity and I think there is a strong case for a drastic change.

I want to make a proposal here for how I think the British could be revamped. As with all proposals, it'll have strengths and weaknesses. As with all proposals, there will be much that I have overlooked. And as with all proposals, it is easier to make than to put into practice. Nevertheless, easy as it is to say it, I think that from 2010 onwards the open, Swiss format for the British Championships should be dropped.

I think instead that

• the tournament should be an elite one, a twelve player all-play-all.

• the top eligible players should be invited, in order of strength, and places filled on that basis until all were filled.

• it should continue to be a part of a wider festival of British chess, with other tournaments running alongside, most significantly what would, hopefully, be a strong Major Open.

I don't want this piece to run for thousands of words, so I won't deal with all the details, all the justifications, the arguments for and against, all the possible variations on the theme. Hopefully these will be discussed in the comments box*. I have, hopefully, set out above why I think the present arrangement is no longer satisfactory. I'll briefly, here, add some detail and discuss some of my reasoning.

(a) I think the national championship needs to be an elite event. When all the top players played, it didn't matter if a few weaker players took part and scored 2.5/11: no problem, the best players were all there fighting for the title. This no longer applies. So if we're going to pretend that it's anything more than just another open, much more than a weekend tournament, we have to select the best of those who enter and show that to the world.

If we can't get Short and Adams, well, that's something we can live with. The top ten (I'll explain later why I say ten rather than twelve) at Liverpool are Jones, Nick Pert, Conquest, Bogdan Lalic, Hebden, Haslinger, Gordon, Arkell, Gormally and Williams: that's a good tournament. But it's a far better tournament if there's only two players weaker than Williams than if there's sixty. And I think that an elite tournament might well, even if gradually, attract the stronger players.

(b) The top ten would be picked in grading order: from which particular list, I care not, whether it be ECF or FIDE, so long as the rules are set out clearly and stuck to. Players 1-10 invited, made an offer. Then number 11, and so on until ten places were filled.

I am aware that this is a complex and difficult process. Inevitably some players will ask for more than can be offered: inevitably some players will be offered more than others. Inevitably there will be accusations of favouritism.

Moreover I have said nothing about where the money is to come from: and this is plainly a difficult problem, since if you do not know what your budget is, you cannot make a firm offer, while sponsors are unwilling to commit sizeable sums until they know who is likely to be playing.

People who know far more than I about these things, and who have experience in the field, would have to manage the process. But I hope it could be done.

(c) My proposal would be to allow two other places: one for the winner of the Major Open and one wild card, to be used as the ECF saw fit: perhaps a promising junior, perhaps a popular veteran, perhaps a player who's no longer active enough to have a rating, perhaps a player of notably interesting or aggressive style, perhaps a strong local player. I know that this, too, is fraught with difficulty (as anybody who follows golf will know) but it does provide the organisers with some genuine discretion to make the tournament even more attractive.

The qualifying place from the Major Open is an old tradition and a good one: it should be maintained. Other than that, I've made no provision whatsoever for qualifying. I know this goes against what many people want. I'm sorry about that. I like the idea in principle. But I also like the idea of an elite tournament and the two conceptions are simply not compatible. Qualifying belongs to the era of a strong open British, when it was hard to get into and you were playing for a once-in-a-lifetime chance. If the open goes, I believe qualifying, the single Major Open place apart, has to go too. (I hope, in fact, that qualifying through the Major Open would be much more difficult than it is now: because it would be a much stronger tournament.)

(d) If elitism is in some ways important, so is inclusivity. It's crucial that it should be part of a chess festival and not a single tournament, held on its own with the rest of us only attending as spectators. All that would achieve would be to replace "just another open tournament" with "just another all-play-all".

I believe this proposal is worth thinking about: thinking about hard. I love watching the British Championships. But they're not, really, the British Championships. I don't believe, in the current format, they can ever properly claim that title again. The world has changed, the world of chess has changed, and I think the British needs to change with it. Is it not, manifestly, time for a rethink?

[* although my particpation will be limited as I am packing today and on holiday from tomorrow!]

The Real British Championship?

Once upon a time, way back at the beginning of the 90s in fact, I played in a weekend tournament in Swansea. It was a pretty unremarkable affair but for two things: the presence of David Bronstein (he mentions it in his List of Results at the end of Sorcerer's Apprentice, I just looked it up and apparently he scored 4/5 finishing just behind GMs Hebden and Ward) and the name.

Bronstein describes it as an "International Tournament". That's pushing things a bit but I suppose technically his presence alone makes it true. The organisers, however, really went for broke and declared their event to be The British Isles Open. I suspect it was the desire to attract sponsorship (at which they'd been pretty successful if memory serves) rather than delusions of grandeur that was the motivation behind their decision. Either way in reality a provincial weekend five round swiss remains exactly that whatever you choose to call it - a point, I'm quite sure, that was not lost on a single one of the participants.

I'm taking this stroll down memory lane because the start of the sixth Staunton Memorial at Simpsons in the Strand this afternoon has me wondering whether the event going into its penultimate round in Liverpool today is anything other than a two week tournament with a poncey name.

Certainly nobody will claim whoever it is that ends up crowned as 'champion' is the best player in the country this year or even the strongest player active this week. The Staunton Memorial alone has snaffled four leading English GMs who would have expected to have done well in the Championship had they chosen to play there. Mickey Adams and Nigel Short share a ratings superiority over the leading competitors in Liverpool that runs into 100s of elo points while Peter Wells and Jon Speelman, ranked in the bottom third of those playing in London, would have been seeded fifth and sixth respectively had they preferred to head North.

Last year (see the comments box here) EJH noted the clash between the Staunton Memorial and the British Championship and implicitly, it seeemed to me at least, raised the question of whether this was deliberate. True or not the juxtaposition of the two events does rather underline the fact that the tournament to determine the official champion of our country is simply not an attractive proposition for the leading players. I know this is not an original observation and I know, as I mentioned in last year's comments box, that this problem is not unique to chess, but still I think it's a great shame.

Turning things around is no doubt not an easy matter but I'd start by working towards making the championship a twelve participant all-play-all. In the meantime I'd stop calling the winner 'British Champion'. It might not be as pretty but 'Strongest-amongst-those-who-bothered-their-arses-to-turn-up' would at least be more honest.


PS:
Not that winning the whole thing is the only reason to enter a tournament. Congratulations to Jack Rudd who, EJH tells me, achieved an IM norm with his victory over Yang Fan Zhou yesterday. I wonder if he'll go on to match the exploits of my other hero of the week Phillippe Petit. Perhaps a tight-rope walk between the two towers of the Royal Liver Building is in order Jack?

Half forgotten

Funny what slips your memory.

A few weeks ago I wrote this posting concerning a blunder - or a pair of them - made during the last round of the 4NCL in my game against Philip Bonafont. In a completely won position, I missed a simple reply - also unseen by my opponent - which would have forced a draw.

I say completely won - perhaps that underestimates just how "won" it was. At the time, I wrote:

Had my opponent seen it, it might have beaten all previous contenders for the most completely won position I had ever failed to win.

The previous contenders are pretty strong, good competitors in almost any field for won games that were not won: and yet they may not be the best, or worst, in my chess career.

A couple of days ago I was looking through some old scorebooks and noticed a game from Ilford in 2002, the score of which I'd failed to copy up correctly, there being a move missing in the early middlegame. So I played through the game to find out what the move played must have been, in order to enter it. And I was horrified to find, when I reached the end, that I had agreed a draw, inexplicably, in a position where I was overwhelmingly winning. The draw was agreed in the position given below, which shows the state of play after Black's 37...Kg7-g8 (which position had already been reached once before, on move 35).


It's a real shocker. Astonishingly (or not) we were past the time control, which came on move 36: missing the win on move 35 or 36 with seconds to go is one thing, missing it again on move 37 absolutely unforgiveable. Black is winning, easily, with 37...Kh8 (or 35...Kh8) and would also be winning if the game continued from the diagram position, since 38.Qd7+ is met by 38...Kh7 and if 39.dxe6, Black mates in two. (36...Kh7 would of course have been the same position and the same win.)

Other than that, the two lines come to the same thing, since if, after 37...Kh8, White continues 38.Qe8+ then Black plays 38...Kh7: whereas if 37...Kg8 (as in the game) then 38.Qe8+ Kh7 and we are in the same position, shown below.


So what on Earth happened there? I can only speculate that I thought it was a forced perpetual, since if 39.Qd7+ Qg7 White has 40.dxe6 with a frightening passed pawn. It is, however, nothing: Black could easily win with 40...Ra8 (41.Bb6 is no threat) but in fact has a much faster win - and not one hard to find - with 40...Rd3!


since now if 41.e7 (or indeed nearly anything else) Black wins very easily with 41...d5!

Of course if I really started looking there might be worse still (this, for instance, comes to mind). Odd, though, that I should have failed to remember this game when writing about a blunder against Philip Bonafont. Because - as you will already know if you've scrolled to the bottom to play through the game - my opponent, at Ilford in 2002, was also Philip Bonafont.

Stones

Who would you say is the ballsiest man alive?

May I respectfully nominate Phillippe Petit? He must have nadgers the size of space hoppers. 35 years ago he decided to run a wire between the towers of the World Trade Centre and do a tight-rope act 110 floors off the ground. I saw Man On Wire, the story of that little caper, last Sunday and I have to say it's a great film ...

... but anyhoo, let's get back to chess and return once more to the British Championship.



In the fifth round, as you may have seen in the comments to this thread, Jack Rudd turned down a draw against Boggie Lalic on move 29. He had the chance of a half point against a Grand Master rated 200 points higher than himself but rather than bank it he played on for the win against a guy whose last defeat in the tournament came at the hands of Julian Hodgson in 1999. OK, Jack got beaten in the end but at least he died with his boots on.

There have been all too many examples of the bigger cheeses not showing quite the same spirit. It's easy to criticise from the sidelines of course but sometimes it seems that several of the guys who are close to the top of the pile don't actually want to win the thing.

On the other hand, it can't be easy playing eleven games in a row with one solitary rest day in the middle. Perhaps a quick draw here and there helps to save energy for later rounds? Ultimately, it's hard to argue with the fact that with four rounds to play it's the Bogster who's wearing the yellow jersey.

Short draws then ... indicative of a lack of balls amongst some of the leading challengers or a legitimate tournament strategy.

The choice is yours.

Improve Your Chess V: Annotations versus Statistics?

The advice to study one's own games, defeats especially, is common - and the usual medium through which to do so is that of annotations. Kotov:

A considerable part in chess coaching in the USSR is played by writing notes to games. The best notes are published in magazines and newspapers, but this is not the main aim. A developing player has to write notes to his games in order to develop the habit of having a self-critical approach to his play. By spotting the flaws in his play, he will more easily eradicate them.

Similarly Kasparov in his Preface to his first book The Test of Time:

My chess philosophy has largely developed under the influence of Ex-World Champion Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik . . . Especially important, in my opinion, was the assimilation of Mikahil Moiseevich's main "axiom" regarding the necessity for constant analytical work, in particular the thorough analysis of one's own games. By strictly observing this rule, with the years I have come to realize distinctly that this provides the foundation for the continuous development of chess mastery.

The point is that annotating your games isn't meant to be an end in itself, but that it should function as a means for improvement. Annotating your games should mean that a "self-critical approach" becomes a "habit" whereby "flaws" are identified in order to "eradicate" them; thus there can be "continuous development".

Unfortunately, I myself have never been able to satisfactorily annotate my own games, something I will discuss further later on. But I have found that studying them using basic statistics via a spreadsheet extremely useful. Today's article, then, is about two things. Firstly, I describe my use of a results spreadsheet integrated with advice to those wishing to employ similar. Secondly, I discuss my problems with annotations with the hope of opening the subject up for debate in the comments. For clarity's sake there are two large-font subheadings to separate these two things out, and a number of other subheadings in the first section. Those not interested in reading about how to use a spreadsheet to study their own chess results might skip to the section on Annotations, which can be read independently.

Statistics

I first discussed my use of statistics here and today I want to expand on that and say how my use of statistics has changed. However the basic set up is essentially till the same today. I have a spreadsheet,
and after each game I add the information required for each column. I then analyse these results for information that may or may not be hidden there. Before that though there are some basics to establish.

The Essential Columns
The following columns are essential: opponent's name and grade; the date (including round if appropriate), venue, opening and result of the game; your colour. Why? Your opponent's name is important because you may have cause to recall them and the game for future use. For instance, early this season I lost a game to a William Linton. Then looking at a match fixture ahead toward the end of the season I realised from previous team-sheets that I was likely to face on board 1 a certain Mr. Linton again. Thanks to the spreadsheet I was able to recall who he was and how the game went. I drew the second game but had chances to win it; an improvement. It's also useful to place your results in a fuller context later. How you feel about surprise wins against higher-graded players or bad results against lower-rated players might be modified a year later if you choose to look up their new grade the next season and find it's radically different.

Date and venue are both important because there may be patterns in your results linked to them. For instance if you lost all your games in January, it's a good bet you were suffering from post-Christmas rustiness. The season after you might then choose to play some practice games in the New Year, for instance, to try to resharpen. Or if your grade turns out much higher at home venues than away, you might try arriving at away venues earlier in future so you can get used to them and "settle in" before the game starts.

Result, colour and opening are all important for far more obvious reasons. You need to study how you do as black, as white, and in different openings, and if there are radical differences this will give a good indication of where your strengths and weaknesses are. For instance, if you do very well in the Sicilian with both colours, but poorly as black when you defend the Stonewall, it's a good bet you need to either focus on your understanding of closed positions, or change your repertoire against 1.d4 to something more dynamic.

The Openings Column
How you fill in the Openings column needs some thought, however. For instance, if you always reply to 1.e4 with the Sicilian and play it yourself as black, there is not much point merely recording those openings as just "The Sicilian", because this will cover 75% of the games you play in a season and so you won't be able to slice the data in a very meaningful way. You would be better off writing the variation, or ECO code, or even sub-variation. However, if you never open 1.e4 and only play 1...c5 against much weaker players, who you rarely get to face anyway, you might as well record each game of yours that you start with 1.e4 c5 as "The Sicilian" and nothing else, since it will only account for a handful of games so any further subdivision would be meaningless.

Which Games?
You should only in your spreadsheet record rated games played at a slow-play time-limit over-the-board (otb). This is partly because of the ethos of centring your training around otb-simulation, but there are other reasons, specific to the alternative forms of the game.

For instance, my last tournament was in the Surrey 125th Birthday Celebrations, a rapid-play event, and I have not recorded the results of this tournament in my spreadsheet. A description of each game should make it clear why. In the first game my opponent was sixty or so points rated lower than me and playing black, but he held his own in a slightly-off-beat Sveshnikov Sicilian amidst enormous complications to reach a position where I had a passed pawn that he was firmly blockading. By rights it was either a difficult win for me or a difficult draw for him; despite matching me blow-for-blow in the most complex parts of the game, he then blundered into a basic back-rank tactic. My second game against FM Steve Berry graded 16 points higher than me you can play through here and so judge for yourself whether or not I deserved the full-point. My third round victory versus a 182 was certainly not deserved, however, because I blundered a piece for a pawn with no real compensation and had it not been a rapid game I should have resigned - yet I kept it tense, he defended poorly, and eventually he fell apart in chronic time-trouble. My fourth round game, by contrast, was against an IM rated much higher than myself, and shortly out the opening we reached the position to the left. I have the white pieces, and it's my move, and your computer can tell you just how winning this should be - but if you've seen 17.fxe5 dxe5 18.Be3! then you probably don't need it to. I hadn't and despite winning a mere pawn with 18.Bxe5 and maintaining various advantages, I was still completely outplayed in the subsequent position and I think lost around move 30. My final round game was against someone rated forty-four points lower than me, and somewhat dejected and distracted we reached an approximately even middle-game. I then launched an unsound attack which he promptly refuted outright to reach a won endgame, where he immediately offered me a draw. I accepted, of course.

In short, the games were all odd, higgledy piggledy affairs, frequently with quite random results unrelated to large stretches of the game itself. Such is the nature of rapid-play chess, and there's not much point subjecting these games to statistical scrutiny, or polluting the pool of games played at slow-time limits, where there's a lot less randomness involved.

When to analyze?
You should analyze your results when you have enough of them to do so, is the simple message. There is no point doing so after just, say, two games. I have tended to analyze mine after around thirty games, a little less than I play in one season (a season being approximately nine months followed by a summer break.) Another factor to remember is time-span. It might be more meaningful to analyze your performance over six months than six years, or, indeed, six days.

What to analyze?
This is the crunch question. In my spreadsheet, I have a column called "gpg" which stands for "grade per game". So, for victories I have my opponent's grade plus fifty, draws their grade, losses their grade minus fifty (with appropriate adjustments made for the forty-point rule.) I then sort the spreadsheet according to different criteria to see how my average grade varies according to each subset of the data. For instance, I compare things like black with white, Sicilian versus non-Sicilian (irrespective of colour), results against stronger opponents versus results against weaker opponents, and so forth.

Generally it turns out my intuition about my results is not wholly accurate. For instance, I always enjoy playing either side of the Sicilian, but statistically it is my weakest opening with either colour (albeit not by much.) This surprising finding indicates which opening I should seek to improve most urgently, contrary to my belief that it's in fact my defences to 1.d4, which statistically have been holding up really rather well, it turns out. Who knows what similar secrets lurk in your results?

One final thing to remember is that when understanding your results, grade is not everything. There is also your win:draw:loss ratio. It is worth calculating your average score between 0 and 1, because sometimes this sheds a different light on your results. For instance, last season my average grade with white was 190, and with black 181. This seems reasonable given that black begins the game with a slight disadvantage, but my average score with black was 0.75 (13W, 3D, 3L) compared with 0.68 (9W, 8D, 2L) with white! In other words, I actually scored better with black, but I faced significantly stronger opposition when I had the white pieces.

So, the main technique is to "slice" your gpgs in various ways, to look for surprises in the averages that result. With enough games you should be able to find out basic things like which openings are your weakest, to things like whether you prefer evening league matches to weekend tournaments. You can then factor these findings back into your training and approach to individual games.

The Meaningful Column
My spreadsheet has gone through several generations of columns, and one column in particular has proved particularly difficult to get right. This is the "meaningful" column where I type in some kind of summary or statement about the game, and I really don't know what to advise about it. The first such column I had was called "At what stage was the game decided?" and I thought that if I had a preponderance of things like "Endgame" crop up against my losses or "Time scramble" against my victories then I would be able to work out my strengths and weaknesses accordingly. I did learn from this that most of my games weren't decided in the opening, but little else. Chess games aren't similar enough for them all to be decided in simple and linked ways.

The second iteration of the meaningful column saw it renamed as "Summary". I've had many problems keeping this convincing, because I state details I can't remember, use it to attribute blame, boast, and generally just blurt stuff. Here is a concise example: "I positionally outplayed him I thought (Crafty is less convinced but I think I am right) only to blunder a pawn into a lost position." Pretty useless. Compare it to this, a summary of a victory: "Move order nuance and transposition confusion, messy middlegame, he blunders/sacrifices a pawn to try escape the pressure, gets a lot of compensation (at least cheapos) but eventually I am two pawns up in a BOC endgame I contrive to almost lose in a mad time scramble." Also pretty useless, but in fact the two games were thematically similar - Kings Indian type games, where I set about undermining the queenside pawn structure in the usual fashion. This isn't something my spreadsheet tells me.

This season I've divided the meaningful column into two: "Strengths" and "Weaknesses". My hope is that if I frequently see things like "calculation" or "composure" cropping up in one column and not the other, I'll get a clearer sense of what I should work on, what not. I'm not crossing my fingers, probably because the "The Meaningful Column" is really just a poor man's version of . . .

Annotations

I started this long article with advice from Kotov, Kasparov and via him Botvinnik about annotating your own games. Once I'd gotten over my own resistance to advice, I then decided annotating my own games was a good idea. I did this via a diary initially, but when that became little more than an exercise in gloating or self-laceration, as per the result of the game, I gave it up. Next I tried maintaining a file called My Chess Games, and got as far as game 1. And looking over the annotations again, I can openly admit now what I secretly felt then: I didn't do a good job, and was in some way deceiving myself.

For instance, here is the position after 11... Nc6 12. Nb3:

I annotated it as follows:

The point of 11...Nc6 is that 12.g5 can be met with 12...Nxd4 13.Qxd4 hxg5 (the order of these captures is important, it took me an age to realise, because if they are inverted with 12...hxg5 13.fxg5 Nxd4, 14.gxf6 Bxf6 15.Rxf6! wins for white) 14.fxg5 d5 and the threats of ..Qxh2+ and ..Bc5 oblige white to search for ways to bail out.

I had not realised, however, that my opponent would play the retreat 12.Nb3 automatically. Indeed it is consistent to avoid the knight exchange, thus leavning the bishop rather roleless on d7, and making sense of a4 by supporting a5. However, such subtle queenside concerns are not consistent with the shape of white's kingside pawns, as 12.Nb3 is hardly an all-out attacking move. White's inconsistency soon starts to tell, especially as he eschews g5 now entirely on move 13 and 14, allowing me time to organise my own break.

Here, I fall into two psychological traps. Firstly, there's implicit boasting about calculating a somewhat-complex sequence, and the implication I should have done it quicker ("it took me an age..."). But in fact this sort of complexity does take me time, and is probably close to the threshold of complexity that I can be confident dealing with. Secondly, the second paragraph is long-winded and over-elaborated. All that happened in this game is that white punted g3-g4 in the opening without having waited for me to castle kingside. As a result, I got to castle queenside and prize his own king open with a well-time ..g7-g5 break. However, I annotated g3-g4 earlier with a !? rather than the ? it deserved, and what I'm trying to do in the second paragraph is imply I out-thought my opponent over a number of moves based on a deeper understanding of the opening, rather than just admit the fact he muddled his move-order and I exploited it.

One final problem I have with annotations is using the computer effectively. I don't always feel confident enough to argue with it, and don't always understand what it's telling me, especially when its evaluations don't tend to settle but bob around uncertainly. Also, when staring into a position with a computer one is usually reminded of how vast and unknowable chess really is, how little we grasp of it. That the computer suffers similar problems unaware, especially to do with positional understanding, is scant consolation when you're trying to improve your chess. Nowadays, I just shrug my shoulders, make light notes in a Chessbase file, and put it on blunder-check in Fritz.

So, I know what Kotov, Kasparov and Botvinnik think about annotations. I just don't know how to do it. Any advice?

[Index]

Caption Competition

If you can't bother your arse to come up with a witty and amusing caption for this photograph you may wish to take a punt at:-

1. Which of the two participants is intimately associated with the S&BCC blog?
2. Which of us is it?

Chess in Art VIII

Le sheykh Shams ud-Din Tabrizi joue aux échecs avec un jeune chrétien

unknown (c.1500)

[BNF Paris]

[Chess in Art index]
[Chess in Art collected]

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Pin . . .

It's no secret that chess players are, by their nature, highly competitive people. So why shouldn't chess writers be the same?

And now, here in the quiet holiday month of August, courtesy of Chessvine - along comes just such a competition, uniquely for chess writers on the internet. And of course, almost anyone can write about chess on the internet, so almost anyone can enter!

The details? September the first is the deadline, you must submit your entry via a blog, and the prizes are three accounts on the website organizing the competition. And it doesn't matter if you don't have a blog already, because setting one up is almost as easy as clicking here.

Good luck and get scribbling! I mean, typing . . .