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.

More One Minute Madness

  After obtaining my all-time Internet Chess Club peak rating of 1620 in one-minute chess on my 56th birthday in October I turned my chess-related pursuits to earning the right to pay 30 Euros (or $33.73 USD) for my FIDE Arena International Master title which I did in November on my aborted vacation. With that accomplished in the first week in November I switched my attentions to the relatively peaceful realm of three minute chess where each side gets to think three times as long for the tradeoff of possibly being able to get only one game played in a 10 minute span instead of the possibility of playing 5 games of one minute chess. I primarily played on the FIDE website until the around 7 in the evening of Monday November 14th when I decided to play a game of three minute chess on the Internet Chess Club.

  I find three minute chess to be vastly different than the one minute variety with the biggest difference that is the games are decided mostly by the position on the board as opposed to the clock situation. Generally the more time each side has for a chess game the less mistakes are made – this means that each mistake has more influence on the final result when the mistake’s beneficiary has more time to consider their moves and keep from reciprocating. My first ICC three minute game in more than a year was going quite well. I took my time and played three minute chess instead of one minute chess until I got panicky in my opponents time trouble and choked the game away!

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  As you might imagine I was pretty ticked off at myself for throwing away an easily won game by reverting to a one minute chess mindset. I wanted to remove the stench of the defeat as soon as possible so I clicked the little ‘3’ button to start a new three minute game but when my game against ‘RX-MEN’ started I saw I only had one minute and I had hit the little ‘1’ button for a one minute game instead of the ‘3’ for the three minute game I wanted to play:

  And there went my one minute all time high rating on ICC without even a whimper. Whenever this happened to me in the past I would keep playing and lose so many games that my rating would fall so far that I couldn’t possibly make it up in one session and I would finally give up and wait months (or years) to reach a new all-time rating. So what did I do this time? I kept on playing but every time I lost a couple of games I’d win a game or two to prevent the downward spiral. At around 9:15 I got my rating back up to 1620 right where it was before I ever heard of ‘RX-MEN’. I could have stopped but like any addict I decided this time would be different and kept playing.

  Unfortunately, I hit a losing streak and resumed bouncing around tantalizingly close to either giving up or steadfastly believing I was moments away from a huge turnaround. Eventually I found myself playing Almirante with my tating at 1567 or 53 points below my high of 1620:

  Hall of Fame baseball owner Bill Veeck wrote in ‘The Hustler’s Handbook’ that in his experience hitting slumps start by some hard hit balls turning into outs when they were hit directly at a fielder and end when a dribbling ground ball or lame pop fly finds a way to avoid fielder’s gloves for an undeserved hit. This game was my dribbling ground ball and I was overjoyed to find myself matched up against Almirante again when I pressed the ‘1’ button:

  A decent enough game that I spoiled but ultimately was another weak ground ball that found its way past the infield for a base hit. It was getting around 9:30 and I was starting to feel a bit tired and then I got matched up with brandtje who is a real International Master and probably didn’t have to pay the World Chess Federation for his title:

  Another game where I outplayed my opponent, spit the bit, and recovered to win in a time scramble. It wasn’t the way I’d choose to win but in the end I would choose to win. Of course I'd have little to no chance of beating an International Master in three, five, of ninety five minute chess games but the quicker the time limit the more random the results. Look at the recent World Chess Championship between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin where there were two wins and 10 draws in the 12 games where the players started out with 2 hours each and two wins and two draws in the tiebreak games where the players got 25 minutes apiece. Anyway after almost two hours of playing my rating was back at 1612 within one game of my all-time high. I was pretty sleepy but hit the little button with a ‘1’ on it and once more tilted at my own personal windmill. Standing between me and my all-time high was ivanzug:

  This win pushed my rating past 1620 to 1624 which is a new personal best and will remain so until I once again click the little button with a ‘1’ on it. I was overjoyed at only having to spend only a few hours instead of a month or a year to get a new high rating and happily clambered off to bed. The last game I played was the best of the bunch but still not very good even for a one-minute game. Luckily I didn’t have to be a world beater – I just had to be a little better than my opponents.

The Vacation That Wasn't

  I had it all planned out. I normally use up my vacation time at the end of the year but at my new assignment a person I am backing up is taking the month of December off which left me taking the first week in November off along with Thanksgiving week and a couple of days the following week in order to use up my vacation time. Matt and Ben are coming home from school for Thanksgiving week but Kathy and I planned to take a short trip to Chicago this week. We were going to visit the famous Shedd Aquarium, take a boat ride on Lake Michigan, and visit my friend Wilson. I even found a Tuesday night chess speed chess tournament to play in 5 miles away from the Holiday Inn in Skokie we were going to stay in.

   We had arranged for Daisy and Baxter to stay in the Happy Tails facility in Marshalltown. Happy Tails allows all the dogs to hang out in a large common area and in order to stay there, Daisy and Baxter had to pass a ‘sociability’ test. Kathy and I thought Daisy and Baxter would be rejected since they are always so yappy around other dogs but they passed with flying colors which both surprised and delighted us. One of our friends was going to watch Harry and the rest of the pets and we were on our way or so we thought.

  On Tuesday I was petting Daisy before going to work and I noticed that she had some dark goo in her ears. It looked like when Tuffy had ear mites a long time ago. Kathy took Daisy to the vet, who said that it was just an ear infection and would clear up in a few days with the right medicine. The trip was still on and we were scheduled to leave on Saturday but on Friday morning Daisy had some yellow goo in her eye and was back at the vet. This time the vet said that Daisy had an eye infection and sinus congestion and shouldn’t be boarded because she was contagious. And that was the end of our trip to Chicago.

  I still had the week off and suddenly I had a lot of free time on my hands. I planned to write a couple of blogs, eat at some local places I don’t normally get to, take Kathy to see the Jack Reacher movie 'Never Go Back' (an OK action flick better left for Redbox), and play plenty of 1 minute chess. When I set my personal best on the one-minute chess pool on the Internet Chess Club on October 8th, I switched my attention to the FIDE Online Arena chess site. Why the FIDE chess site instead of chess.com, lichess.org, and the many other chess sites that are available? Since FIDE is the official world chess federation the ratings in the FIDE Online Arena are official and so are the titles they give out for online chess achievements. The titles are called ‘The Lower Rating Band’ which means they are meant for lower rated players like me. I liked the idea of getting an official FIDE title and thought it would be a fitting meager accomplishment to my many other meager chess accomplishments so last month I headed to the FIDE website and downloaded the FIDE Online arena software.

  The Arena software is written in Java by a company called Premium Chess. The software is functional enough even though it doesn’t offer features like chess variants and inspecting other players’ games that seem to be standard on most websites. One inane feature it does have is prerecorded applause that plays at a super loud level after you win a game. I signed up for the free membership and played a few sample games. There are only a few hundred players online at a time as opposed to the thousands on other websites so it is slightly harder to get a game. While playing I noticed I couldn’t premove (make a move in advance to save time). I went to the preferences page to allow premoves and found out saving preferences was restricted to paid members. This is quite a disadvantage since premoving and automatically promoting a pawn to a queen (instead of picking the queen from a menu) saves important seconds on the clock in a one minute game. After a few days of playing with this disadvantage I paid for an Online Arena membership on October 12th and had access to the full features of the Online Arena. Once I was able to auto-promote pawns to queens and make premoves my Online Arena results improved noticeably and with my new membership I was able to play official FIDE games and go after one of the lower rated titles. My rating in the unofficial (or training) games was around 1850 which told me that the level of competition in the Online Arena was a cut below that of the Internet Chess Club where my all time high rating is 1620 and a cut below lichess.org where my one minute rating is nearly 2000.

  I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to get rated challenges and how tournaments worked as far as ratings and when I had a question I would send an email to the Premium Chess company and would receive a detailed response the next day. I quickly found out that the players in the FIDE rated pool are stronger than the training section I was restricted to before I paid for the membership as my 1850 training rating translated to around 1600 in the ‘bullet’ section for games with less than 3 minutes per side.

  The guidelines for getting a FIDE online title are very clear. You need to maintain a rating in Bullet Chess (under 3 minutes), Blitz Chess (3 to 10 minutes), or Rapid Chess (10 minutes or more) for a consecutive number of games. The titles (and ratings) are Arena Grandmaster (2000), Arena International Master (1700), and Arena Master (1400) and the number of games are 50 for Rapid, 100 for Blitz, and 150 for Bullet. It seemed I would easily be able to maintain the level of 1400, need serious improvement to get to much less maintain a rating of 2000, but the 1700 level would be something I could attain. I managed to nudge my rating over 1700 on October 15th and the counter started on my title chase. It looked to be smooth sailing as my rating climbed to 1779 after 27 games. I wasn’t playing especially well but no matter how inept I played my opponent’s surpassed my ineptitude. These two games are a prime example.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  One attractive feature the FIDE platform has that the other platforms don’t is the ability to request a match instead of a single game. I found that issuing an open challenge for a 2 game match brought a greater response than a request for a single game, probably due to the inherent fairness of playing both White and Black against the same opponent. I had a couple of instances where lower rated players would win the first game and then cancel out of the match. I just put those players on my ‘ignore’ list and moved on. An added bonus was that a tied match was broken by an Armageddon game where White had 1 minute and 5 seconds while Black had 1 minute but would win the match in case of a draw. The cool thing was while the Armageddon game didn’t count for rating it did count towards the 150 games needed for the title. I was holding my own and staying well above the 1700 mark until I hit a slump thanks to my opponents failing to match my ineptitude like these two games that pushed my rating down to 1731 with 61 games still to go.

  On Saturday morning my rating was at 1734 with 36 games left and with no trip to Chicago on the schedule I started playing more one minute chess. I played a few games in the morning and after lunch got into a bad groove that dropped me to 1706 with 12 games needed for the title. I started a match against Leonardo Datola from Italy who was rated 60 points less than me. I won the first game of the match but lost the second game and after winning the tiebreak game I had lost 2 points to leave me at 1704 with 9 games left. Leonardo wanted to play another match and I agreed. I again won the first game but lost the second game. I lost the tiebreak game and was now down to 1702 with 6 games left. Leonardo wanted another match and I went for it. With no margin for error I managed to win both games on time and got my rating up to 1710 with 4 games left. Leonardo wanted another match and since I was now on a winning streak I agreed knowing a sweep would clinch the title for me.

  Two sloppy games but two wins nonetheless. Leonardo wanted yet another match. I needed 2 more games for my title so I agreed and played my two 'best' games of the day and won both to get my Arena International Master title with 26 points to spare!

  Well, almost get my title. While the lower band titles are ostensibly meant for lower rated players to ‘provide motivation to local chess communities with important activity’ (as stated on the FIDE web site) I suspect it is primarily a money-making idea for FIDE since the price for my ‘title’ was 30 Euros (or $33.73 in US dollars - the price list is here) and there was a convenient link right in my profile to click on. I clicked on the link and 30 Euros (or $33.73 in US dollars) later I was officially a FIDE Arena International Master with an entire week of vacation left.

  I don’t feel very much different with my new FIDE Arena International Master title except for feeling 30 Euros (or $33.73 in US dollars) lighter in my wallet. I don’t consider it a waste of time or money either since by the end of the 150 games I had to stare down the prospect of failure which is always a fun thing to look back on as long as one is successful in the staring down and at least I can say I did something on my vacation. The FIDE title is one of those things like the Broken Pawn’s Chess Journalist of America award that sounds really good in casual conversation with non-chess players as long as I don’t provide too many of the details (like the self-nominated aspect of the CJA award with only 2 nominees). Similarly if the topic of being a FIDE Arena International Master comes up I doubt I’ll be showing off too many of the games I played in the three week journey to the title.

Everything Old is New Again

This song was released weeks before John Lennon's assassination in 1980 and never fails to leave me more than a little depressed.

   Less than 10 days after my friend Bill passed away at the age of 96 I had to confront my own advancing age when I turned 56 the Saturday before last. I didn't really do much confronting because I don’t spend a lot of time considering how old I am. I’m older than some, not as old as others, and that’s about the extent of my thoughts on the subject. One thing I’ve gotten better at as I’ve gotten older is not wasting time. I'm gotten quick to hang up the phone and close the doors on salespeople and I patronize businesses largely based on how little time I have to spend to get what I want. I even try to save time on social media. I like using Facebook but when one of my ‘Facebook friends’ starts posting items or opinions that I find disturbing or people that annoy me start popping up in my feed because of their comments in these posts I just click the button to not show this person's posts in my feed. I save time by not getting annoyed or disturbed and there's a lot less to look at that way too.

  And what do I do with all this time I save by not wasting it? Play one minute chess of course! Not only is a game of chess with each player having one minute to make all their moves incredible fun it also doesn't cost nearly as much time as a game where both sides have 90 minutes for all their moves PLUS an extra 30 seconds for each move like when I played at the Twin Ports tournament in Duluth a couple of months ago. The last time I wrote about my one minute chess escapades on the Internet Chess Club was in March of 2015 when I set a personal high rating at one minute chess of 1619. I then set my sights on trying to better my personal best ICC 3 minute rating set in 2010. That attempt was unsuccessful and on November 1st I was back playing 1 minute chess on the Internet Chess Club. I proceeded to drop my first 6 games to lower my rating exactly 100 points to 1519 and my quest for a new 1 minute rating high was on.

  I was made no progress on getting my one minute high until late September when I suddenly started winning a lot of games on time. This was a sure sign that my normally crummy Mediacom internet service was better than usual. I took full advantage of my blazingly fast internet in this game against NAVARRO-GO that pushed my rating over 1600 for the first time in 18 months.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  In addition to winning games on time I also won a few well played games like this one against NC3-4Me.

  Having fast internet and playing well is a great combination to get a high online rating because in addition to the games I win by outplaying my opponent I also get plenty of undeserved wins when my opponents run out of time in winning positions. Both factors combined in my game against macuco.

  I thought that this game would have given me my new high rating but it left me at 1619, exactly where I was on March 10, 2015. Two days later I woke up on my birthday and since it was a Saturday Kathy and I took Daisy and Baxter on a long 5am walk to the Casey’s for coffee and a beef stick treat. We were home by 6 and I spent some time watching chess on ICC with Harry the cockatiel and then I hit the one minute button.

  A good game that I could have won with more time and could have lost with crummier internet. The draw was good enough to give me the solitary rating point I needed to get to get to 1620 for a new personal best after 1 year, 6 months, 28 days, and 7,372 one minute games.

19 months in the making but well worth the wait!

  After setting my new personal best I headed to Grimes, Iowa to run the latest of my youth chess tournaments. I used to hold the tournaments at St. Francis of Assisi school in West Des Moines but a funny thing happened on the way to summer last spring. After spending a year working with some private students I came up with the idea of a twice a month Saturday afternoon chess class/club with a lesson, homework, and chess play without the pressure of a tournament. I went to the parish office to reserve dates and the person who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments told me how busy the summers were with weddings and other functions. When I mentioned I only needed a small classroom and that I was going to make this activity free for St. Francis students while charging everyone else the person who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments told me it was “parish policy not to have the facilities used for activities that charged fees.” I said I didn’t see how that could be the policy since it was no secret that I charged entry fees for my tournaments and besides every activity I’ve ever seen at the gym next to my tournaments had a cash box. Then the person who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments told me that the parish was doing an audit and I needed to fill out a form for a background check (I had already had one when I started at St. Francis) and my helpers needed to fill out the forms also (even though my helpers were parents paying thousands of dollars a year to have their children attend the school). That made things a little more clear in my mind and I figured that something happened that was being hushed up that made the parish less interested in outside activities. I wrote to the school principal and head of the PTA about my summer activity idea and didn’t waste any more time thinking about it.

  That was in May and I never heard back from anyone. I had an agreement to coach the chess club at St. Francis for free and in return use the facilities for chess tournaments. Given the ‘fees’ policy I felt I could coach at St. Francis and have free tournaments (meaning I needed sponsors), not coach at St. Francis and not have tournaments, or coach at St. Francis for free and still not have the tournaments. As much as I enjoyed working with the kids at St. Francis the reason for my coaching there was to have a place to hold tournaments. I didn’t want to spend time looking for sponsors so in mid-July I wrote to St. Francis to let them know I wouldn’t be available to coach their chess club given their ‘fees policy’. St. Francis then wrote me back to tell me there was no policy about charging fees and that I could still have the tournaments if I would coach the chess club, I gave it some thought but ultimately decided not to continue. I think that once the people who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments start making policies as a way to say no it wasn't going to change because I happened to be the beneficiary of some political infighting – I would just have to deal with more made-up policies in the future.

  I told the parents of my students and anyone who asked that I wasn’t planning on having tournaments but within a couple of weeks I had inquiries about holding tournaments in the fall at different sites. One of my students’ parents had an in with the Grimes Community Center and we easily settled on three dates in the fall as a trial run. I normally wouldn’t have had a tournament on my birthday but it just so happened that it was also National Chess Day. I’ve always tried to have a tournament on National Chess Day so I had the tournament on my birthday. It also helped that having the tournaments so early in the month will keep me away from Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends where a lot of players tend to be traveling.

  So after setting my personal best in one minute chess on the Internet Chess Club I opened some of my birthday presents one of which included a pack of Old Trapper beef stick treats from (and for) Baxter and Daisy and headed 60 miles southwest to Grimes, Iowa to run my first chess tournament there. The Community Center is located in the middle of Grimes (a suburb of West Des Moines with 8,500 people) in an old school. The tournament room has space for at least 50 players and there is plenty of room for parents to hang out either in the tournament room or a nearby cafeteria. I can see a long run at the Grimes Community Center. The middle school is starting a chess club which should provide a base of players. The only problem I can see is that even though the Community Center is located just 7 miles away from St. Francis, West Des Moines chess parents tend to not travel outside their own neighborhoods. But that isn’t really my problem and certainly not worth spending any time thinking about.

A great new tournament location in Grimes!

  The tournament itself was successful with 28 players over the day and everyone seemed to have a good time, including me. I hadn’t run a youth tournament in six months and forgot how much fun they are. I also forgot how much energy it takes. I got home at 5, did my after tournament stuff, walked my beagles, and gave my now 56 year old body a well-deserved nap. A few months after saying goodbye to a chess association of six years and ten days after going to my oldest friend's funeral (oldest in terms of age, not in terms of how long we were friends), I have a brand new high one minute rating and a brand new place to hold youth chess tournaments. My best birthday presents were getting new beginnings to take the place of some old endings...

This song was also released weeks before Lennon's assassination yet never fails to encourage me.
A fitting song to commemorate turning the page to 56 years old!

2016 Jackson Open - Déjà vu

  “It's like Déjà vu all over again” - Yogi Berra

  I headed to Jackson, Minnesota last weekend to play in my friend Sam Smith’s Jackson Open for the 5th year in a row. The first two years I played in Jackson I was so tired after the first three rounds that I skipped the last round of the tournament. I managed to play all four rounds the next two years and accomplished one of my Jackson goals last year by tying for second place and collecting a cash prize. Now that I finished in second place I had one unfulfilled goal in Jackson which was to take first place, a lofty goal that would require a lot of good play and a lot of luck but not entirely out of the question.

  I had an excellent warm-up at the Twin Ports Open in Duluth two weeks ago and spent the time between tournaments doing tactics puzzles and reviewing my games from Duluth. As usual the Jackson tournament had one game on Friday night and three games Saturday, all at a time limit of 90 minutes per player with a five second delay instead of the 30 seconds added to each move like in Duluth. Not wanting to drop $131 at the EconoLodge like I did last year I booked a room at the Earth Inn Motel online. There was the possibility that Sam’s friend Joel was going to be sharing my room on Friday so I picked the ‘Queen Room’ which had a picture of 2 beds for the incredibly low rate of $49. I also asked in the special request section of my order to have 2 beds in the room.

  I left the house at 10am and started the 240 mile trek to Jackson. To the delight of my beagles I made a bologna sandwich to take with me as well as some excellent red grapes from the Wal-Mart which were underpriced because they inconveniently were not seedless. I stopped for gas at Albert Lea where gasoline cost $2.15 a gallon which was 6 cents more than Iowa on Friday but 4 cents less than Iowa’s tax inflated gas prices by Saturday afternoon.

Welcome to Albert Lea!

  I made good time and arrived at the Earth Inn Motel in Jackson around 2:30. The Earth Inn Motel isn’t the kind of place with a front desk so I rang the bell and was soon greeted by Joe Manger (who was wearing a shirt that said so). Joe Manager gave me a room key. I headed to the room and found there weren’t two beds in the room as I had requested so I headed back down the hall to talk to Joe Manager. Joe told me that I needed to have ordered a room with two double beds from the web site or better yet that I should have called the Inn directly because if I had called him he would have 'had control'. I didn’t want to discuss control issues with a guy whose shirt said ‘Joe Manager’ so I asked if I could switch rooms and Joe said that was fine as if I hadn’t ‘dirtied up’ my room. Joe Manager said I was lucky that he had one room with a double bed left and switched me for an extra 10 dollars. I thanked Joe and moved my bag over to the next room.

If you have a problem at the Earth Inn Motel in Jackson, Minnesota Joe Manager will take care of it!

  The Earth Inn Motel’s room was just fine. It had a little microwave and refrigerator, exceptional wireless internet, a big television, was spotless, and best of all cost only $64 after the taxes and all were figured in. I settled into the room and took a nap until around 6:00 and headed over to the church where the tournament was being held for the 7:00 first round.

Steve Heinisch

  The church was less than a mile away from the Earth Inn and the only two people there were Sam and his wife Ana. There were only six players signed up in advance for the tournament but 13 more players decided to travel to Jackson to play on the day of the tournament with six players taking a half point bye instead of playing on Friday night. Sam doesn’t charge extra for not registering in advance and while that practice encourages people to make a last minute decision to play it also encourages long distance travelers to wait until the last minute in case bad weather makes the trip impractical. One of the late arrivals was Joel so I knew I was going to have a roommate at the Earth Inn Motel.

  Some late signups and pairing problems caused the first round to start about 20 minutes late. When I arrived at Jackson I was the highest rated player but by the time the tournament started I was the fourth highest rated player and had the White pieces against Steve Heinisch. My more avid readers may find that name familiar and it should be because I played Steve in the same Friday night game of this same Jackson Open with the same White pieces in 2013. Three years ago I drew Steve despite being rated over 300 points higher than him and I was lucky to get the draw. As it happens I had reviewed our game in the week before the tournament and felt fairly prepared as we sat down to play.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  A long game but not especially draining. Steve used all his time and never got up from the board even once. After losing the pawn on move 7 Steve hung tough with his two bishops but the less time he had on the clock the more inclined he was to trade down until he had no pieces left. I was pleased with my play but now I think I could have made things a lot easier on myself by keeping my two bishops and using my extra pawn as a battering ram instead of an endgame trump. All in all I was pleased to have beaten someone who outplayed me three years ago.

  My game was the second to last to finish and it was a little after 10 when Joel and I left the church. Two years ago Joel and I roomed together and headed to the SuperAmerica convenience store for a snack but Joel said he needed a meal this night. Joel’s legs don’t work so he gets around using stick braces that hook over his arms. This puts a lot of stress on Joel’s back and he had to undergo back surgery last year and is still on pain medication that has to be taken with a full meal. The problem I had was trying to find somewhere to eat in Jackson, Minnesota after 10pm. The only place still open was the Burger King drive thru so we ordered some food and ate it at one of the picnic tables outside the restaurant. At 11 even the drive thru closed and the Burger King staff turned out the outside lights. We finished our meal in the darkness and headed back to the Earth Inn Motel for a good night’s sleep to prepare for the next day’s three long games.

A late night dinner in Jackson...

  I woke up at 4am like normal but forced myself back to sleep until 7am since I had no beagles to walk at the Earth Inn Motel in Jackson, Minnesota. The low priced room at the Earth Inn Motel did not provide for a free breakfast so Joel and I checked out and headed to the Embers restaurant next door. Joel had this big breakfast of eggs, toast, and bacon. Eggs tend to get me sick so I decided to have a Reuben Sandwich with hash browns. For the uninitiated, a Reuben is a corn beef sandwich with swiss chess, sauerkraut and Russian dressing (which I skipped). I must have been pretty hungry since I devoured my sandwich and hash browns in record time and had a couple of cups of coffee and then it was back to the tournament for the second round.

Dan Voje

  I was the fourth seed out of 19 players but with six players taking a half point bye instead of playing the Friday night game I found myself having the black pieces against top seed Dan Voje in the second round game that started at 9am on Saturday morning. My more avid readers may find that name familiar and it should be because I played Dan on a Saturday game in this same Jackson Open with the same Black pieces in 2014. In that game I was getting crushed by Dan until his attack went wrong when I found myself a pawn ahead. Dan had less than a minute left on his clock but I made several substandard moves to cost myself the game and a chance at the championship. I got myself a big cup of cold water, squeezed a lemon into it, and sat down for my second round game.

  What a disgusting game. Two years ago I lost to Dan by making a bunch of substandard moves at the two and a half hour mark and two years later I cost myself a game against the same player at the same tournament with the same color pieces in the same opening by making the substandard moves at the same two and a half hour mark. If it wasn’t so similar to the game two years ago I would blame my play on the combination of my lemon water and the Reuben sandwich making me as sick as I’ve ever been at a chess tournament but I know better. Starting from when I took on b4 I never saw the board as an entire unit. Dan’s capture on a7 came as a complete surprise and I never even noticed that I was going to lose my bishop until he took it. This poor play will never get it done against a tough as nails type of player like Dan.

  After that game I was sick of my playing and sick to my stomach and sick that I had no chance to win the tournament. There was an odd number of players so I decided to call it a day and withdrew from the tournament and headed home around 1. I made the long defeated drive home with another gas stop in Albert Lea at which point my stomach started feeling a lot better and at 5:30 I was greeted by an enthusiastic pair of beagles that were delighted to see me and couldn’t care less about whether I lost to Dan Voje or beat Steve Heinisch or anything else unrelated to the refrigerator or an afternoon walk.

  I felt kind of crummy bailing out on Sam and the tournament but ultimately I go to any chess tournament to have a good time and if I’m not feeling good I’m not having a good time and if I’m not having a good time there’s no reason to stick around. In reviewing my games in Duluth and Jackson the two trends I noticed is that my play got noticeably weaker into the third hour and I used way less time than my opponents. There’s a good reason for using less time – I run out of things to think about. The poor play late in games is more worrisome, especially if I continue to play in these longer time control tournaments. If I’m not spending time thinking I should have more energy later in the game and I don't. These aren’t new problems – they’re as familiar as the people I played in Jackson last weekend and it is a little discouraging to see that I have made little to no progress in solving them. I don’t have any more tournaments on my schedule and after a decidedly lackluster 2016 I should have plenty of time to work on these problems.