New Challenges for New Challengers

  American/Italian Fabiano Caruana won the FIDE candidates chess tournament last month which gives him a match for the world championship against Magnus Carlsen of Norway later this year. This will be the first championship between players from the Western Hemisphere since the 1937 match between Max Euwe of the Netherlands and Alexander Alekhine of France. If you consider Alekhine Russian since that is his country of birth and only left for France after the 1917 revolution than this is the first Western Hemisphere match since Jose Capablanca of Cuba and Emmanuel Lasker of Germany battled for the crown in 1921.

  Caruana was nearly the challenger two years ago when he entered the last round tied with Sergei Karjakin for the lead and playing Karjakin in the final round with an idiotic tiebreak system that was going to have another game decide the tournament winner if the players drew without a playoff. Caruana had the black pieces and as the events in the 'non-deciding' game unfolded needed to play for a win in order to become the challenger. Karjakin won the game and with it the right to challenge Carlsen for the world championship and even held a lead in the championship match with four games left before losing the match in tiebreaks.

  This year’s edition of the Candidates started as Carauana’s to lose as he took the lead in round 4 of the 14-round tournament and held it until round 12 when he lost to Karjakin. Karjakin had lost two of his first four games but with the round 12 win tied Caruana and held the tiebreak in case of a tie with two rounds to go. It looked as if the stage was set for a collapse but Caruana rebounded with two wins in the final two rounds to easily win the tournament. And if winning the candidates tournament wasn’t enough, the very next week Caruana played in the GRENKE Chess classic in Germany and won that tournament with four wins and five draws ahead of Carlsen who managed two wins and seven draws.

  Over the last month it seemed to me that Caruana’s opponents were in the habit of over pressing promising positions and falling prey to counterstrikes but that is just my impression and I am likely not qualified to judge. Winning the last two rounds of the candidates tournament following his losing the sole lead speaks volumes to Caruana’s fighting abilities and grace under pressure. It was certainly a far cry from January’s Tata Chess tournament where Caruana finished 10th out of 14 players with one win and four losses while Carlsen tied for first and won the tournament in a playoff.

  While Caruana has shown flashes of exceptional form and is playing in tournament after tournament, Carlsen has seemed to be enjoying himself. He has been playing in the increasingly popular online blitz tournaments on lichess.org and chess.com. Carlsen has not been beaten in his two classical tournaments this year but has not seemed able to pull out the same amount of victories using his normal strategy of outplaying his opponents after an innocuous opening. I wouldn’t say he seems bored but I don’t seem the same level of effort on his chess than the past.

  In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors do not have the NBA’s best regular season record for the first time in four years. The Warriors have seemed unmotivated all season long with enough talent to still win 70% of their games but the Houston Rockets with their 65 wins have captured the best record in the league and conference and the Toronto Raptors won 59 games to give both teams the home court advantage in a conference finals or NBA finals against the Warriors. In addition to their disinterest, Warriors' two-time MVP Stephen Curry has suffered a series of ankle sprains and will miss the first round of the playoffs with a ligament sprain in his knee. The Warriors have made the last three finals and won two championships which could have been three if they hadn’t had a meltdown for the ages in losing a 3-1 series lead to LeBron James' Cavaliers in the 2016 Finals and it seems the grind of 100+ games per season has gotten to them.

  Will Caruana be the man to take the championship from Carlsen? He is certainly the only one with a chance this year. Caruana has beaten Carlsen in the past and outpaced him in tournaments like the 2014 Sinquefeld Cup and this year’s GRENKE Chess Classic. Caruana has shown the ability to string wins together so the possibility exists that he could just take two or three early games against Carlsen and draw his way to the championships in the current era of 12 game championship matches. Two years ago I felt that the only person that could beat Carlsen was Carlsen himself. This year I think Caruana has a chance of taking the title if he plays at his top level no matter how Carlsen is playing with the big question being whether Caruana will be able to retain the tremendous form he has shown over the past two months.

  Can the Rockets win the NBA title? They seem like a hungry team to me, scapping for wins long after clinching the best record in the league. They also carry a lot of baggage. Superstar James Harden disappeared in last years playof loss to the Spurs with what was purported to be ‘a mysterious illness’ while celebrated new addition Chris Paul has never been to the conference finals as his Clippers teams seemed unable to maintain their poise for more than one playoff series per year. Head coach Mike D’Antoni went to the conference finals twice with the ‘7 seconds or less’ Suns and was seen as being outcoached twice. The team reminds me a lot of the 2011 Dallas Mavericks team that had a crew of hungry experienced players that came together to win a championship but they also remind me of the Maverick teams from the mid 2000’s that consistently underperformed in the playoffs. I tend to think these Rockets are for real and the Warriors will have trouble flipping the switch but the Rockets' collective past failures makes them far from a sure thing although still the favorite.

  The Rockets have much more to prove than Caruana. While Caruana has only one (large) step before claiming the championship, the Rockets have to win four playoff series. The only thing their regular season record has earned them is the right to open each series at home and play a deciding game seven at home is a series comes down to a single game. Caruana has earned a level of immortality by becoming the challenger while the Rockets are only an asterisk at this point.

Review - Garry Kasparov's MasterClass

Garry Kasprov's MasterClass was made available on YouTube recently. This is merely the preview.

  Once I had finished my review of the “Revolutionize Your Chess” Master Method course by Ginger GM Simon Williams I went to You Tube and found myself watching videos of the best fight scenes of Steven Segal and Jason Staham. You Tube (a Google company) keeps track of what I watch and on the sidebar it offers up selections of movie fight scenes, a sampling the seemingly unending number of You Tubers that make a living reviewing the Walking Dead television shows and comics (including full releases of the comics), and chess videos. Once I had finished watching some of Statham’s incredible fights from his “Transporter” series I looked on the sidebar and saw that the seven hour Garry Kasparov chess course from the MasterClass series was available and recommended for me.

  MasterClass is a series of online learning courses that is distinguished by the quality of the presenters. You can learn comedy from Steve Martin, tennis from Serena Williams, writing from James Patterson, singing from Christina Aguilera, etc… There was an acting class by Kevin Spacey that I can no longer find but that is beside the point. A MasterClass course costs $90 for a lifetime viewing pass but for the price of two courses ($180) you can watch all the courses for an entire year.

  If MasterClass was going to have a chess course there would only be two possibilities for the presenter : Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen who in their time were both considered the greatest player of all time much like Bobby Fischer was in the 1970’s when he was world champion. Since Kasparov has been retired from competitive chess since 2005 and Carlsen is an active reigning world champion, Kasparov was the likely choice. Kasparov was not only the world champion for 15 years, he is a prolific chess writer, and occasionally tries to insert himself into the world of chess politics and the politics of the world. As an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin he has found himself in exile in the West where he has a foundation that supports chess around the world.

  I knew the Kasparov Masterclass course on YouTube was pirated and it didn’t include the workbook but since YouTube recommended it to me I decided to take a look. I’d hate for anyone to think too harshly of me for viewing copyrighted material so will note that You Tube is protected from copyright claims based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as long as the copyright infringement is not intentional. This means that You Tube must take down copyright violating videos when alerted but is not breaking any laws by allowing the videos on their site and more importantly I am not breaking any laws by viewing the videos. As best I can tell the video has been taken down in the last week.

  I ended up watching the entire seven hour course in over a week. The course has incredible production values. While the GingerGM Master Method course shows 15 hours of the presenter in his best t-shirt with a white backdrop, Kasparov looks like a million bucks in a suit and is seated in front of a chessboard in a couple of spacious rooms in a mansion. Kasparov starts the course by pointing out that his goal is to inspire the students to be as passionate about chess as he is which will inspire the student to further their chess studies.

  Kasparov then goes over many different tactical elements one at a time – pins, double attacks, skewers, etc. When Kasparov sets up the pieces on the board in front of him, the screen splits and a full length board appears on the right of the screen showing a 2-D version of the board and moves. I noticed no missteps between the 2-D and 3-D boards unlike the ichess.net offerings where the visual chess board are irritatingly overlaid by ChessBase popup windows with no editing to remove them. I expect that the MasterClass was done in multiple takes much like a movie or television show and likely scripted to some extent. Each section is prefaced by a simple graphic with some music which gave the production a classy look and feel..

  Each section follows a familiar theme. Kasparov explains a simple position to illustrate the tactic and then proceeds to more complex positions which includes examples from games in his career or other famous games. Each section concludes with a composed study that is meant as a “challenge” for the student to pause and examine before Kasparov explains the solution. The tactics section takes up the first three hours of the course and then Kasparov moves on to the endgame.

  Kasparov only spends about 45 minutes on the ending and tries to demonstrate how endings require precision by showing seemingly simple endgames that contain many twists and turns. He pays special attention to the concepts of king position and the king shouldering his opposite number aside to queen a pawn. Then Kasparov moves on to the opening. This section is mostly philosophical in nature with his examples showing more of the psychological thinking behind openings and his opening choice in his must win game against Karpov in his 1987 championship match and even mentions in passing that his failure to break Krammnik’s Berlin Defence cost him his championship but that he beat the famous Berlin Wall easily after the match.

  The openings section took 45 minutes and at this point it appears the Masterclass ran out of content. The next hour has Kasparov giving a simul against three players of varying strengths – an expert, a class player, and a player that is a level above beginner. We have 45 minutes of Kasparov walking between the three boards leaning, grimacing, and thinking while his opponents try to match wits with the ex-champ. Not only does the pace of the video slow to a crawl, the boards are hard to see from the overhead and side angles (no 2D board on the side). After the simul, Kasparov goes over the games with each of the players and then gives them some lessons in the opening and ending. Having the presenter engage with the participants is a feature of the MasterClass lessons but in the case of chess it seemed artificial and a time waster. The simul and group lesson took about an hour and 45 minutes and the MasterClass concludes with Kasparov talking about his chess carreer, post retirement activities, computers, and other subjects for about an hour.

  I think that any aspiring chess player will get more instruction value from the Simon Williams’ Master Method that I looked at last week than Kasparov's MasterClass. The video did give me a better appreciation of the geometry of the chessboard that is not explained elsewhere and the value of composed studies that seemed to be a staple of the Soviet Chess School. This piece attempts both instruction and a glimpse into the mindset of a champion chess player. Unless the workbook that comes with the course is the best workbook ever the lessons come off more as an introduction to chess which to be fair was part of Kasparov’s stated goal to whet the students appetite for chess instead of hardcore instruction. Since the piece attempts both instruction and a glimpse into the mindset of a champion chess player I would have liked to see more Kasparov interviews from the past mixed in to his reminiscences. All told the excellent production values make this more of an incomplete historical view of a great chess player than an instructional video.

Master Method Review - Revolutionize Your Chess by Simon Williams

The first chapter of Simon Williams Master Method 2 is available for free on the ichess.net You Tube channel...

  With some spare time on my hands as I decompress from a year of working 50+ hour weeks and begin the search for my next job I started watching Simon Williams’s the Ginger GM) Master Method 2 : Revolutionize your Chess offering from ichess.net. If you clicked the link you may have noticed that the price of this 15 hour chess course is listed at $149 and you may think that is a little pricey. I would agree with you but will also point out that if you are on the ichess.net mailing list you will not only receive free samples of the ichess.net offerings (in addition to the course samples on their YouTube page), you will also receive massive discounts on all their offerings if you exhibit a moderate amount of patience. I purchased the Ginger GM Method at a 70% discount in November which meant that the ‘$149’ course only cost me $43.50 which works out to be less than $3 an hour which is just a little more than renting a DVD from the nearby Family Video in Marshalltown, Iowa.

  Simon Williams is an English grandmaster with a popular You Tube channel and is known for his hyper aggressive style. I had watched his first Master Method course (purchased for 50% off in July) which was billed as containing ‘Chess Improvement Secrets for the Busy Player). The course was 16 hours and gave an hour on each subject that Williams deemed important to get a player up to speed quickly – openings that can be played for both white and black, the main endings a player should know by heart, defensive play, attacking play, etc.. The production values were similar to most of ichess.net lessons – the left side of the screen is taken up by the board and the right hand side of the screen is mostly a backdrop with a small inset of the instructor on video giving the lesson. The ‘Master Method’ lessons are generally prefaced by a few minutes of the instructor in some exotic locale like the view from a high rise office building, a garden, and in Williams’ case in front of some amazing architecture in Barcelona. Williams’ master method course was entertaining enough but with few exceptions boiled down to the boilerplate ichess.net lessons which are loosely themed topics explained by the presenter going over Grandmaster games. The main takeaway I got from Williams Master Method was that even the Secrets for a busy player take a lot of effort in order to get real improvement.

  In Williams second course the introduction takes place in the setting of an exotic rock garden but the location is not used to preface the rest of the lessons which has Williams in his ‘GingerGM’ t-shirt going over his material (although the last three lessons are prefaced with Williams in a dress shirt sitting at a desk. This course is subtitled ‘Revolutionize Your Chess’ and Williams is serious about this subject. He gives a tight opening repertoire that aims for isolated pawn positions with White and the French and English (e6 and d6) as Black. Williams then gives hours of examples of typical attacking plans with the isolated queen pawn and black positions but instead of going through entire games he breezes through the openings and doesn’t show the end of the game if the attack leads to a material or overwhelming positional advantage. This allows him to go through more examples than the 3 to 4 games typical to ichess.net lessons.

  The rest of the Ginger GM Master method 2 goes into getting into an attacking mindset. There are chapters on being aware to attacking possibilities, not attacking prematurely, and the nuts and bolts of attacking and calculating variations. The chapters on attacking are very practical and as tight as the opening repertoire and middle game plan section. The examples were clearly thought out to build on each other. One attacking example leads to another similar but slightly different pattern that allows Williams to challenge the view to determine whether the same attacking idea will work or not. All chess courses end up having some contradictory advices and this course is no exception. After spending four hours recommending an opening repertoire based on getting an isolated queens pawn and how to use the isolated pawn to generate an attack there a more than a few examples in the attacking and calculating section where Williams breezily claims one side is better because the opponent has an isolated queens pawn or some of the same positional defects that the isolated pawn brings like more pawn islands. It just goes to show that it in chess it all depends and I suppose by learning to play with the isolated queen pawn one will certainly learn the shortcomings of the setup whjich will come in handy when facing the isolated pawn.

  I think this course explains a philosophy of attack better than any of ichess.net’s other offerings. The material is well thought out and not sugar-coated in any way. Williams continually says the course is meant to be viewed more than once and insists that the viewer will reap better results from practicing his principles of attack in long time limit games. He asks the view to pause the lessons to determine a plan or calculate a line on multiple occasions and repeatedly points out that his course is only the signposts and the road to chess improvement is paved with hard work.

  The only quibble I have is that while the content was obviously carefully thought out the presentation seems to have been rushed to get to market. The videos are full of annoying interruptions of Chessbase popups or blank screens that could have been edited out or done in another take. The inset of Williams talking seems pixelated and blurry and there is even a part in the final chapter where Williams’ pet cat makes an appearance. Williams takes great pains to be seriously professional in the course and forgoes most of the ‘entertainment’ (singing, cursing, shouting, etc…) that is a staple of his YouTube channel but the presentation has a certain sloppiness that doesn’t match the sterling content. Again this is only a quibble and I think that Williams’ ‘Revolutionize Your Chess’ Master Method delivers a product that made it a bargain at $43 and probably worth the full price of $150 for the devoted student.

2017 Twin Ports Open - Anchors Aweigh

  After a reasonable night’s sleep I once again woke up in Superior, Wisconsin at 4am for the second and last day of the 2017 Twin Ports Open chess tournament. I woke up at 4am even though I was in a hotel room with my Troy (my roommate for the weekend) instead of at home with two beagles whose 6+ years of training made them insistent on eating and walking by 5am. Troy was still sleeping while I washed and spent a couple of hours doing some work on my side job of monitoring and maintaining the software I wrote for my previous job that interfaces with a government entity.

  Once I was done working I took a nap and reflected on my Saturday of chess. Even though I wasn’t seeing a lot at the chessboard I was still sitting at 2.5 points which was only a half point behind the three leaders: Brent Gudowski (who beat me in last year’s tournament), Alex Braun (who I drew in last year’s tournament), and my roommate Troy who was still fast asleep. The pairings posted the night before had me with the white pieces against Troy this morning. I could probably have asked not to be paired against my traveling companion but since I hadn’t known Troy 48 hours before I didn’t think it was a big deal. A bigger deal was that Troy was playing well above his provisional rating. I was sitting at the next table when Troy just destroyed my friend Destiny Jorenby in round 2 and talented youngster Uri Moon-Rosha in round 3 the day before.

Troy Curfman

  Before I could really focus on my morning game I had one task to attend to. Since it was Sunday I had 100 or so pet pictures to post onto Facebook like I have been for the past 6+ years. Normally this takes just a few minutes but the Barkers Island complimentary wireless internet had troubles posting to Facebook all weekend. I was only able to post the pictures five at a time using the very basic Facebook picture uploader so a task that should have only have taken a few minutes took over a half hour. Luckily the wireless internet was flawless in allowing me to log into my work computers which would have been more of a concern than an inconvenience in the realm of first-world problems.

  I figured I would just play the same way against Troy that I had been playing in the tournament which was to attempt to be aggressive and hopefully not make any mistakes of commission which I had avoided on Saturday although there were plenty of sins of omission in my first three games. I knew he would play the Benoni defense since he and Tim had been talking about it on the drive up before they had an idea we would be playing. I’ve never had good luck against the Benoni but as Troy and I sat down to play I reminded myself to try to play aggressively and be on the lookout to break open the center with e5.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  A pretty gross loss and a well-deserved one. I once again left an hour on my clock and made most of my moves within a minute. By comparison Troy spent 30 minutes on the key moves Rac8 and Qa5. I was thoroughly outplayed and kind of annoyed that I didn’t put up a better effort. Most lower rated players that beat me in long games end up having much higher ratings than me after a couple of years so I’ll be keeping an eye on Troy’s progress as he balances his chess with his studies at Drake University.

York Marlowe

  Tim, Ty, Troy, and I had a breakfast\lunch at the hotel’s salad bar which also had a separate breakfast bar for Sunday brunch. My tournament was over as far as winning a cash prize was concerned and as it turned out I was the first of our foursome to lose a game. I took a quick rest after lunch and at 3pm it was time for the final round. There was no pressure and no hurry to finish because we were staying over Sunday night and driving home Monday morning. My opponent was York Marlowe, a late 20’s – early 30's EMS worker who was playing in his first tournament in a couple of years. I saw York play Destiny in the first round and he seemed to be a careful player. I had nothing to lose in this game and decided I was going to go all out for an attack.

  What a shame. If I had finished this game off the way I started it I could have had a Mt. Rushmore (top four) game. I took no more than two minutes on any of my moves. I had over an hour to find what York was trying to do but used none of it and allowed a draw. I had the same result in the 2017 Twin Ports Open and last year – 2 wins, 1 loss, and 2 draws but my play was so much worse this year. I missed chances all over the place and had no self-discipline to take my time even though I reminded myself before every game. It was a great tournament and I had every chance to get a better result than last year which was undone by my lack of training, practice, and patience.

  When I signed up for the tournament, organizer Dane Mattson promised me an anchor burger. I had never had an anchor burger and was looking forward to it. The Anchor Bar and Grill was featured on a food show called ‘Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives’. Slowly my traveling companions finished their games but as I know all too well the tournament organizer has to stick around until the last game is over and there were still a few games left. Tim, Troy, and Ty were getting pretty hungry and I was too so we decided to head on over to the Anchor Bar and Grill and let Dane and the crowd catch up with us.

The Anchor Bar and Grill menu along with the famous $6.25 Anchor burger. After a photo of the Anchor Bar's Anchor with tournament organizer Dane Mattson, tournament winner Bryan Smith, and my last round opponent York Marlowe we headed to the VIP Pizzeria to close the place down...

  With the help of Google Maps we made it to the Anchor Bar and Grill which is located in what looked to be a pretty seedy looking section of Superior that was covered in seedy looking bars and the Anchor Bar and Grill fit in perfectly. There was a big bar full of memorabilia and a patio which smelled like stale beer with dozens of used food trays hanging out over the garbage cans. There was a classic 1942 video game in the bar so I played that for about 10 minutes, The rest of the group were figuring out what to order so it was OK if I spent some time at the video game because I knew what I wanted – an anchor burger. The anchor burger was just what I expected – a huge pile of meat and cheese on a bun. It was a great burger with lots of lettuce and onions and juicy but not greasy but at the risk of disappointing my friends from the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior it is not close to being the best burger I’ve ever had. That distinction belongs to the White Rose of Roselle, New Jersey (which is still in business) whose meat is as good as the anchor burger and overtakes it with their amazing Kaiser rolls! What the Anchor Burger has going for it is a low, low price of $6.25 which a super low price for 2/3 of a pound of meat and if you were really hungry there is the Galleybuster with a pound of meat for only a dollar more. With dozens of beers on tap I can see why the Anchor Bar and Grill is legendary.

  After we had all eaten (and eating a two thirds of a pound anchor burger is no small task) Dane arrived to tell us that there was a group of players meeting at a local pizza place called VIP Pizza (VIP standing for Vintage Italian Pizza). We left before Dane was able to tell us so he made a special trip to let us know and even paid for my anchor burger besides! We headed over to the VIP Pizzeria and the chess players were in a huge room in the back playing chess, telling stories, and mostly getting very much lubricated on the giant glasses of beer from the large selection of beer on tap that every place in Superior, Wisconsin seems to have. I’ll keep the details private since I believe that what goes on in Superior, Wisconsin should stay in Superior, Wisconsin but I will say it was the best chess after-party I’ve ever been to.

  It didn’t matter how late or early I got to bed. I was still up by 5am on Monday and worked for an hour or so monitoring my program. We left at 8am, were back in Marshalltown, Iowa by 4pm, had the rental car returned by 5pm, and was walking a pair of enthusiastic beagles by 6pm. It was a great mini-vacation even though I worked more than I wanted to and played chess less well than I wanted. After reading my 'Superior' posts and comparing it with my Duluth posts from last year's tournament it is obvious that one contributing factor to my subpar play was that I worked every single morning whether I was playing or traveling whereas last year I still got up early but napped the mornings of the tournament. The second job is great for 'making hay while the sun shines' since it is a temporary situation until the companies I work for find a more permanent solution but it was a mistake to think I would be as sharp as normal at the chessboard. Maybe I could get away with this burning the candle at both ends half a lifetime ago but it is clear that as I hurtle towards 57 years of age I need to make sure my responsibilities are at a minimum when I try to play in a long tournament.

2017 Twin Ports Open -The Saturday

   The Barkers Island Inn’s room was quiet and comfortable and I had a good night’s sleep. Even though I had no beagles to walk I still woke up at my normal time of 4am. Tim’s student Troy was rooming with me and being a college kid was still asleep and after washing up I had six hours to kill before the 10:30 first round start time. Even though it was Saturday I still had plenty of work to do on the program I was supporting that interfaces with a government entity. I checked to make sure the morning reports were downloaded and reconciled the accounts like I do every day and worked on some programming assignments.

  That took a couple of hours and after heading to the hotel lobby for a free cup of coffee (sadly there was no free breakfast) I headed back up to the room for a nap. I felt I played good in the 2016 Twin Ports Open except for settling for a quick draw in the Sunday morning round so my goal this year was to fight in all my games. I’ve had very little time to play or study chess since I took on my second job in April and had no idea what to expect from my play since my chess work has been limited to doing tactics puzzles on my amazing iPod’s Chessimo app and the occasional bursts of one minute play. I was considering purchasing Grandmaster Simon Williams Master Method series titled ‘Chess Improvement Secrets for the Busy Player’ but I was just too busy to order it much less download or study it. I’m not complaining about not having any time to work on my chess, mind you. I am merely stating fact and the fact is that I am taking a financial windfall now and letting everything else take a back seat. Anyway I’ve won tournaments days after playing some of my worst chess so it wasn’t inconceivable that my relative inactivity would lend itself to having the ‘beginner’s eye’ and a fantastic result.

Josh Denton

  As I mentioned there was no free breakfasts (continental or otherwise) at the Barkers Island Inn but I did bring some apples and granola bars on the trip so I had an apple for breakfast and headed down to the tournament room. This year the open section was in its own room and the reserve section for players rated under 1800 and the section for players rated under 1200 were in a separate room. The time control was 90 minutes for the game with 30 seconds added for each move. Except for the first game which gave us only 60 minutes for the game and the extra 30 seconds per move. I was the fifth seed in the reserve section and my first round opponent was Josh Denton. Josh looked to be in his 30s and was wearing an impressive array of new looking golf apparel which made me think he was either a golf fan or a golf apparel salesmen or perhaps a golfer. I was attired in black pants and a Punisher skull t-shirt as I sat down in front of the black pieces to start the tournament.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  A week later this game looks smooth as silk – fight off the attack, win a pawn, and grind to the victory. At the time it seemed very touch and go with my opponent seeing more than I was. During the game I didn’t understand why Josh was giving me the pawn but in hindsight it was clear by his reaction that he had counted it out better than me. Josh’s 7.Ng5 got me wrong-footed and I never saw his attack on f7 until I had to defend against it. My Qd7 was a big concession but I was pleased with aggressively grabbing the center with e5. Overall a workmanlike effort in a game that took a little over two hours. I grabbed a quick nap in the room and with about an hour to go before the 2:00 second round start time headed to the hotel restaurant for lunch.

  The Barkers Island Inn’s restaurant has a full menu with some reasonable prices. There was a $10 pizza buffet and an $8 salad bar in addition to the giant prime ribs and bottles of wine that I saw other people dining on. The salad bar had some tuna and herring for protein and beets for filler in addition to the normal vegetable type salad bar stuff. I had three plates from the salad bar while Tim, Troy, and Ty had pizza and then it was time for the next game.

Allen Hanm

  I had the White pieces in the second game. My opponent was Allen Hahm, an older well-dressed guy with a suit jacket, cane, and a large amount of jewelry including a giant class ring on his hand. I looked up Allen after the game and saw that he is a member of the Twin Ports Chess Club that plays in their events at least twice a month. I don't have any strategy for playing against older players but if I did it would be to try to stay away from the endings and not be afraid to mix up the position, which is exactly the opposite of my strategy against younger players. The only problem with this strategy is that I am getting to be an older player myself and I am as likely to make a mistake as anyone. Almost as soon as I sat down I felt myself getting tired from my third plate of salad at the Barkers Island all you can eat salad bar so I chugged two cups of free coffee during the first four or five moves and perked right up.

  This game took a little longer than two hours. I never took more than two minutes on any of my moves and only took a minute a move when it became clear that my opponent was never going to resign. I could have saved myself an hour and a half if I had spent a couple of extra minutes on the follow-up to Qh7. Someday someone will have to explain to me why people who are losing trade off all their pieces. In my first two games my opponents could have kept pieces on the board to keep swindling chances but instead traded down to completely lost endgames. I do have to admit that if Allen Hahm had seen the early checkmate that I missed he may have been encouraged to keep playing to see what else I would miss.

My traveling companions Tim, Ty, and Troy with a typical plate from the Barkers Island Inn salad bar...

...and here is Tim with our server of the day Brody or with our Brody of the day the server along with a view of the harbor from the restaurant.

  I got in another nap and then took a walk along the island with my traveling companions. I like walking my dogs but am not big on walking for walking’s sake. There were some geese and seagulls around and a few people swimming in the water despite all the signs mentions that there have been drownings on Barkers Island. After the walk it was back to the salad bar where we were served by someone who said “I’ll be Brody your server today!” I wanted to ask him who he was going to be tomorrow but thought the better of it and instead struck up a conversation with the teenage girl that was sweeping the floor. The restaurant was facing a harbor with lots of massive expensive looking boats. I asked the sweeping girl if the people parked their boats here all the time or only when they stayed at the hotel. She didn’t know but we came to the conclusion that the people who stayed here had a lot of money since none of these boats looked cheap.

Marcus Gardner

  At 7:00 the final round of the day was starting. I was expecting to play one of the higher rated players in the field but was instead matched up against 13 year old Marcus Gardner who defeated the third seeded player in the previous round. I didn't know this at the time but Marcus is pretty serious about his chess - he has a chess coach, went to Nashville for the youth Supernational tournament this year, and plays a tournament a month at the Chess Castle in Minneapolis. I have always had good luck playing youngsters by taking my time and trying to win in the ending and was hoping this game would be no different. I had noticed that I hadn’t used much more than an hour in either of my first two games and tried to remind myself to take my time.

   Like my previous two games I barely used an hour of my almost 2 hours (including the increment) but this time it cost me half a point. For the third game in a row I was outplayed in the opening but Marcus made no obvious errors and I had to dig my way out to equality. I felt like I missed some chances so I took advantage of the free analysis that was being given out by organizer/master chess player Dane Mattson. Also in the room was Bill Harrison, another master chess player and Marcus’s coach. Dane is in the mental health profession and immediately saw that I was playing by very basic guidelines instead of challenging myself to think ‘outside the box’. He pointed out that by taking on d5 with my c pawn I don't get pushed backwards and instead of trying to hang on to the d file and trading off I should have been working on getting my queen to e5 where it could do damage behind enemy lines. Of course Dane saw that 29…Bd3 wins the game as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I spent three minutes on what I was going to do after I played Qe1+ but my only thoughts were how to not lose my queenside pawns after White played Qc8+ or at least how to win as many of White’s pawns. This tournament had a $60 entry fee but when I count the lesson with Dane it was the best $60 I’ve spent on chess in many a year.

  After three rounds of the 2017 Twin Ports Open I had 2 wins and a draw the same as last year with the only differences being I never played a stronger player, I had 2 blacks this year instead of 2 whites, and that I missed chances in every game. I joined Tim, Troy, and Ty for a post-mortem of all our games (Tim found my mistakes as fast as Dane and the computer) and I rolled into bed around 11.

They Call it Superior

  I headed north this past weekend to play in the Twin Ports Open chess tournament. I played in this tournament last year (and wrote about it here) in Duluth, Minnesota and had a great time. I had an incredible hotel room right off Lake Superior with a giant boat bigger than the hotel just outside. The hotel was located on a tourist street so there were plenty of places to eat and visit within a block away. The chess wasn’t bad also. After defeating a pair of teenage girls in the first two rounds I drew two of the top six seeds before losing my last round game with second place money on the table. The tournament was so well run and I had such a good time that it was an easy decision to commit early to playing in the tournament again in 2017.

  The decision may not have been so easy if I had made it in February after having my department eliminated and becoming an independent contractor where a day off is cash out of my pocket. My vacation time is built into my hourly rate but it is a mental thing to know even leaving an hour early is leaving cash on the table. The decision to come to Twin Ports probably would have been a no if I had made it in late April after taking on a second contracting job keeping the interface to a government agency up and running after everyone else that knew how to keep it running had also been eliminated by my old employer. The second job takes around 10 hours a week with at least a half hour every single morning and frequently eating into my lunch time and the few hours I have in the evening. Keep in mind that I’m not complaining - I agreed to these responsibilities with the understanding that this is a temporary windfall until my independent assignment ends (likely at the end of the year) and the companies that own the interface find other companies with more resources to maintain and upgrade the system.

  Having said all that, at the moment my time is at a premium but to me a commitment made is a commitment to be honored and so on Friday I was headed to the Twin Ports Open. Like last year planned to travel with four time state champ Tim Mc Entee who is one of my best friends in the chess world. Tim doesn’t drive a stick shift so sharing the driving with my car was out last year and we rented a car with an automatic transmission. I had recently purchased a 2017 Chevy Spark complete with an auto transmission and intended to take the new car to Superior, Wisconsin (the twin port to Duluth and site of the 2017 tournament) but we were going to travel with two of Tim’s friends and students from Drake University (Troy and Ty). My 2017 Chevy Spark has four doors but not nearly enough room for 4 people and four bags so I rented a Chevy Impala from Enterprise rent a car. I performed my normal contracting chores on Friday and when Tim and Troy arrived around 8 (we were picking up Ty on the way) we headed to Enterprise.

  It took about a half hour to get the car from Luke the Enterprise rental agent. Luke was the only agent on duty and was busy dealing with another renter whose car wasn’t ready. Eventually we got to the Impala which could best be described as a couch on wheels with plenty of room, an engine that started at the push of a button, and a wireless hot spot. I took the first two hours driving until we got to Mason City where we stopped for lunch (I had an awesome Egg McMuffin, of course) and then Tim took over the driving until we got past Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Here is the very impressive Chevrolet Impala I rented from Enterprise in Marshalltown, Iowa. Among it's many features are a pristine glove box unsullied by car registrations or rental agreements...

  Since I wasn’t driving I had time to try to figure out how to use the car’s wireless hot spot. I didn’t have the password so I decided to look in the glove box to see if the information was written on the rental agreement or registration packet. The glove box was completely empty with not even a registration. I called the local Enterprise office and was on hold for 15 minutes while being told all agents were busy and my call was very important. I hung up and called the 800 number for roadside assistance. We were still driving but if we got pulled over without a registration I would certainly need some roadside assistance or at least a bail bondsman. After two minutes I was talking to Brenda the Enterprise representative. I told Brenda that I had no car registration and she told me it was in the glove box. I said the glove box was empty and she said "Really?" I thought maybe there was a secret compartment in the Impala so I checked again and informed Brenda that the glove box was really, really, REALLY empty. Brenda then said she would email me a copy of the registration. This was fine by me except I had an iPod and a computer and neither had the internet while traveling so I asked Brenda for the wireless hot spot password. Brenda told me that the wireless hotspot was only for use with the ‘travel tablet’ and since I didn’t order one there was no internet for me from my rental car. I thanked Brenda and told her if I got pulled over I’d ask the state trooper if I could use his internet to show him my registration. I then called the Enterprise office in Marshalltown and this time got Luke the agent right away. Luke told me all I needed was the rental agreement which was emailed to me and that any law enforcement agency I showed it to would then call Enterprise to verify. I don’t know if I believed Luke but it’s not like I had a choice.

Welcome to Wyoming...Minnesota, home to a quadrupling hot dog supply and perpetual lottery winner Matthew L.

  After a little more driving we took a break in Wyoming. Wyoming, Minnesota that is (population 7,751) and stopped at the same Shell station as last year. As you may recall last year the Shell station proclaimed a Matthew L. as a winner of a $1,000 lottery prize and there was one hot dog available at the hot dog station. I am pleased to report that either Matthew L. has not lost his magic touch and is still winning $1,000 lottery prizes or no one in Wyoming has won a lottery prize of note in 12 months or the 7,750 people in Wyoming that are not Matthew L. are extremely camera shy or there really aren’t any people in Wyoming, Minnesota and it is part of the Russian plan to hack our election (which would also explain naming a city after a state – silly Russians…). Thanks to the booming economy there were four times as many hot dogs in the grilling station as last year which came to a grand total of four hot dogs for me to choose from. I selected the pepperjack cheese smoked sausage to go along with a Green Machine Naked Juice drink and we were back on the road to the Twin Ports.

While I was waiting on a stretch of one lane US INTERSTATE HIGHWAY 35 for the second year in a row, I had time to compare the two pictures on the right from last years blog post and ponder whether Matthew L. was pictured in the Wyoming, Minnesota Shell station at least twice in a year or his likeness is so legendary it is never taken down....

  Except for a small traffic delay on the same UNITED STATES INTERSTATE HIGHWAY that was reduced to one lane in each direction for ten miles JUST LIKE LAST YEAR we arrived in Duluth around 4 and kept right on going. We kept going because this years’ tournament was across the bridge in Superior, Wisconsin. The epic site of last years tournament (the Duluth Suites Inn) had replaced the tournament rooms with office space and was no longer available so tournament organizers Dane Zagar and Dane Mattson moved the tournament across the inlet to the Barkers Island Inn. The Barkers Island Inn is part of a resort that has a marina, tennis courts, and a boatyard. It is considerably more upscale than the touristy Suites Inn and charges considerably more yet the rooms weren’t nearly as spectacular with a micro fridge and micro wave replacing the Suites Inn’s full kitchen. Because the Inn was a resort and not part of a tourist stop there was nothing within walking distance except boats, water fowl, water, and signs telling people not to swim because Barkers Island has frequent drownings.

Welcome to the Barkers Island Inn. The view of the lake is spectacular and probably even better while sailing in your giant boat!

  Having said that, the Barkers Island Inn was just fine and I can’t hold it against them that the Suites Inn in Duluth was so spectacular. There was an affordable restaurant in the Inn and vending machines that could dispense anything from soda to candy to frozen burgers to yo-yos and playing cards. And anyway while having a hotel room with a full kitchen and plenty of places to walk to I was going to spend most of the next 48 hours sleeping, working, or or hunched over a chess board. I checked in, said hi to Dane and Dane, greeted some of the other players I recognized, avoided some of the other players I recognized, and then we all drove a couple of miles to a Perkins restaurant for dinner. At that point it was time to get some sleep for a long weekend of chess.

I was spoiled by my awesome room at the Suites Inn in Duluth last year but my room at the Barkers Island Inn was roomy enough and came with a charging station, free pen, and an antique phone!

All Good Things...

  I had my last chess club at the Marshalltown Salvation Army last week. I started the Club in 2001 when I asked the Salvation Army if they had a chess club as part of their weekly game night and Major Joan Stoker told me "No. Why don’t you start one?" My kids needed people to play so I started the club on Thursday nights as part of the Army’s Open Gym. Kids would head into the gym to play ball and get a free meal and eventually wander into the chess club, some for a few minutes and others for an hour or two. None of these kids stuck with chess but most had a good time just playing.

  In 2003 AmericInn asked me to run a chess tournament at their Marshalltown hotel where the top three finishers would compete in their national tournament in Minneapolis. I held out for a dozen free USCF memberships which I gave to some of the Salvation Army kids and other local players. I was hoping that the local players would come to the Salvation Army to play which didn’t happen with one notable exception in Jon McCord who took his son Jack to the club and kept coming to the club for the next 14 years.

  The club hit its high note from 2005 to 2007 when Scott Johnson (the teacher advisor for the high school chess club) started routing players to the club and I went to the high school for some exhibitions. The chess club teamed with my sons Matt and Ben and shared three state high school championships. Unfortunately, Scott left Marshalltown and the new advisors of the school club did not have the same interest. And a year later the Salvation Army was undergoing some turnover in leadership and the new majors discontinued the open gym for kids.

  Now the club had more adults than kids and I was having trouble getting the adults to play so in 2009 I decided to have a weekly speed chess tournament with a time limit of game in 10 minutes plus a 2 second delay. It was a pretty successful idea which got the local players back to playing and attracting players from all over the area and even out of state players traveling through Iowa would stop in to play a few games of nationally rated speed chess. The Salvation Army doesn’t have guest internet so I always rated the tournaments when I got home. I was investigating someone who wanted to partner with me in holding some youth tournaments in Des Moines when I found out one of the blitz regulars from out of town was on the sex offender list. I still had some young players and even though this particular sex offender wasn’t barred from being in contact with minors I decided to stop the blitz tournaments in late 2012 since without internet access anyone could show up to play chess and I wouldn’t know whether or not they were on the sex offender list until later on.

  As it turns out this particular player that was on the sex offender list showed up at one of my Time Odds blitz tournaments in the summer of 2013 and got upset when I told him he couldn’t play. He thought he should be allowed because he had no restrictions about being around children. To me it was a no-brainer. Let’s say a parent looks this guy up and sees him on the sex offender list and asks me about it. At that point I have two choices – a) I can pretend I didn’t know or b) I have say I knew and now I’m vouching for someone on the sex offender list. Neither of those choices seemed too good to me so I just said he was not invited and that was that. It’s not a personal thing but I didn’t put this guy on the sex offender list – he did that. I asked a lawyer if I would be liable if there was ever an incident or misunderstanding. The lawyer said that I probably wasn’t liable but it wouldn’t stop me from getting sued and making a lawyer like him a lot of money so I think I made the right choice to not have this guy at my tournaments and stop my Thursday Night speed chess tournaments where I couldn’t check on the participants.

  The club had a brief uptick in 2014 when we hosted Tim McEntee’s Expert Open with world youth champion Awonder Liang in attendance. There were some returning players and some new players but within a few months they all drifted away and for the last few months more often as not the only three players at the club were Jon, Jaleb (who had been coming for 10 years with a college break), and myself.

  I knew for a couple of months I was going to miss this week’s club due to travel and as I got closer to this week the more it seemed like the best time to stop having the club. Having the club for 15+ years is something I was pretty happy with even if the ending left a bit to be desired. It would be easy to blather on about how clubs are passé and most people play online and while there is some truth to that I’d have to say the main reason the club dwindled was because the club hours of Thursdays from 5 to 7 isn’t the best time for workers or school kids like it was 10 years ago. There was some talk about trying to have the club at the library on Sunday afternoons which may be a great idea since there will be more visibility. If it happens that would be great and I’ll probably show up on occasion to play. As the saying goes ‘All Good Things Must Come to an End’. The Marshalltown Chess Club was a good thing and it has come to an end but maybe there will soon be a new beginning.

Denials and Admissions

  People who suddenly change their minds or admit to actions that they repeatedly and vehemently denied in the past have always held a special fascination for me. I say held because eventually I realized that the ‘about-face’ is almost always part of a plan to attain a goal that was not successfully obtained by the previous position. Lance Armstrong consistently denied using steroids during his record setting bicycling career and would sue journalists and authors that dared to accuse him in print. After Armstrong’s career ended the steroid rumors and denials persisted until evidence from the U.S. Ant-Doping Agency led to his being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and his having to leave his Lance Armstrong Foundation (which rebranded itself as LiveStrong). At that point Armstrong admitted on an Oprah Winfrey special that he was using performance enhancing drugs during his amazing climb to the heights of the cycling world after beating cancer. Why did Armstrong finally come clean? I don’t know but I have to think it was an attempt to try to get sympathy from the American public since he had become such a pariah that his own foundation had to run away from his name.

  Pete Rose made an about face on his repeated denials that he never bet on sports during baseball season, never bet on baseball, and never bet for or against the Cincinnati Reds baseball team he managed but not as sudden a turnaround as Lance Armstrong. After accepting a lifetime ban from baseball without an acknowledgement of his gambling on baseball, Rose admitted to betting on football and horse racing in season. In 2004 Rose admitted to betting on baseball and even betting on the Reds ‘to win every night’. Why did Rose finally admit to gambling on sports, baseball, and the Reds? Because he was promoting his new book and finally realized that there was no way he was ever going to live to see himself inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Rose is in his mid-70’s and is enjoying a renaissance of sorts as a talking head on Fox Sports. I have no doubt that if Rose finds himself in need of cash in the future there will be yet another book and round of media interviews detailing the ins and outs of how Rose bet against the team he was managing and how he rigged the odds in his favor.

  A recent about face happened in the chess world regarding Grandmaster Tal Baron of Israel. A couple of years ago Baron started a YouTube channel and Twitch stream and has about 6,500 subscribers. Just as playing well-to-do patrons in coffeehouses was the way many chess professionals made a living 150 years ago, live streaming chess channels are rapidly becoming a way for today’s chess professionals to make extra money via donations from patrons and well-wishers.

  Having a chess stream isn’t Baron’s only claim to fame. Baron won $1200 in chess.com’s monthly ‘Titled Tuesday’ tournament in August of 2015, starting with seven straight wins before finishing with two draws. Baron’s amazing result came with many accusations that he was cheating and his account was indeed suspended by chess.com shortly after the tournament. You can see a video of his last five games here and judge for yourself.

The games...

  I’d been watching some of Baron’s videos and never heard of these accusations until I saw an interview with Baron on the Astaneh chess channel where Baron vehemently denied all accusations that he cheated on the chess.com tournament and accused his accusers of “spreading hate” and being “not the most moral people ever created”. This got me to research the accusations. I didn’t find too much except for the KchessK video and the comments in the chess.com article.

...the denial...

  Did I think Tal Baron was cheating? I had no idea and I didn’t really care either. I just wanted to see the accusations. Judging from the number of outright blunders in his over the board blitz games and online blitz matches that he has posted on his channel I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that he had computer assistance in the Titled Tuesday tournament but I also wouldn’t find it hard to believe that he had his best day ever because we all have to have a best day ever, don’t we?

...and the admission

  I didn’t give the matter another thought until Baron posted this video on his YouTube channel in April 9th where he admitted to cheating in the last game of the tournament against a player who he considered to be a computer cheater also. The last player Baron played in the tournament was top 10 player and multiple time US champ Hikaru Nakamura who is widely considered to be the best 1 minute player in the world. Baron said he admitted to chess.com that he cheated and agreed to a lifetime ban from all chess.com money tournament and special events. Baron said “other than this game I did not use any chess engine assistance and for the haters and non-believers of you – you can cite statistics all you want but this is the truth”.

  Is Baron telling the truth about only cheating during the one game? I don’t know but it sure sounds a lot like a Pete Rose piecemeal confessions and his confession on his YouTube channel seemed as honest as his denials in the interview with Astaneh. To me the entire incident is a curiosity rather than a source of moral outrage. The biggest question on my mind is what baron expects to get out of his admission? Maybe he hopes to be reinstated on chess.com or be invited to play in future big money online tournaments. I don’t know but time should give me the answer to that question.

  I’m not a hater or a non-believer (although I wonder what Baron’s ‘believers’ from before his confession think now) but I think Baron should have taken his cue from the greatest cheater of all time and admitted nothing. Barry Bonds is baseball’s home run king and was widely accused of using performance enhancing drugs during the latter half of his career and even admitted to a grand jury in 2003 to using ‘cream and clear’ steroids once and only then by accident. In his first three tries at the Hall of Fame, Bonds received less than 40% of the votes cast (75% is needed to get in the hall). But Bonds has never admitted to any steroid use beyond his grand jury testimony. Bonds received over 40% of the vote last year and over 50% this year. At this pace Bonds will end up being inducted in the Hall of Fame and his detractors can never point to any admission on his part that he used steroids except for his one admission to the federal grand jury. If Pete Rose had foregone his book deal money and never admitted to betting on baseball he may have eventually received a similar turnaround in sentiment. I think Baron would have been better served by following Bonds’ example of admitting nothing instead of embarking down the road of what I think will be continuing piecemeal confessions.

  I could have been accused of cheating or using performance enhancing drugs after this three minute game I played on the Internet Chess Club last week. The way I smoothly headed to a superior endgame and kept a grip of the center may get me in the Hall Of Fame before Barry Bonds!

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  I considered this one of the best games I ever played and denied all contrary points of view as those of 'haters and non-believers'. Well, OK. I have to admit it. I did use computer assistance but only AFTER I played the game and unfortunately after subjecting the game to the cold eye of Mr. Fritz it turns out I missed just as many ideas as I do in most of my games. Let's take another look...