Bob Brooking Round Robin Round 5

The final round of the Bob Brooking Round Robin had me paired against Sylvester Urban, with four players potentially in contention for first place in the division, depending on other results. Although I liked my position early, Sylvester managed to generate some counterplay on the king side & I felt I was in a bit of trouble for a while. The critical position arose on move 21, where I chose to play Rxg4, going into somewhat complicated territory, which I further complicated by playing 22.Rxg6 (rather than bxc3 immediately) preferring to give up an exchange than have two pieces for a rook & a pawn or two, as I would have lost the initiative. As it happened, I misplayed a few later moves & allowed my e pawn to be taken, after which Sylvester had a definite advantage. After some further exchanges, I tried to generate some play, but seemed to be making little progress until Sylvester played 44...Rb2+. Once his rook left the back rank, it allowed my pieces to get somewhat active & after Sylvester played 46...Kg7, the game should have been over very quickly. Of course I managed to miss a simple win with 54.Qd8+, but thankfully I was able to avoid Sylvester's attempted perpetual check & eventually win the game.
David Beaumont won his game to win group B, with my 3/5 enough for outright second in the group. Final cross tables for all divisions are on ChessChat.
David also managed to win the MCC Grand Prix as a result. It is good to see someone who is a regular at the club, who played in most (if not all) MCC GP events during the year, win the top prize!
That was the final tournament for the year at MCC ... so bring on 2013!

Bob Brooking Round Robin Round 4

Round 4 of the Bob Brooking round robin event saw me play a decent game against 'Firegoat' David Beaumont, which has meant that top honours in that division are still well and truly up for grabs! Although I was slightly worse out of the opening I managed to hang in & eventually began to generate some threats. After an exchange of minor pieces, the position was fairly balanced, until David played 35.Nd7 in an attempt to generate winning chances & unbalance the position. Although the silicon monster tends to think the position is still equal after 39.Bf4, David's choice of 39.d5 allowed me to take the initiative, although d5 does seem like the most logical move to continue the attack, or at least to try and create an attack. After getting my queen active, I was definitely better & managed to win David's b pawn. With David's knight out of play on the king side, I was able to use my bishop pair & rook to further improve my position, ultimately pushing home my own b pawn to finally win the game.
In the top division, the only game played was between Karl Zelesco & Malcolm Pyke. Although Karl appeared to have a slight advantage out of the opening, Malcolm was able to exchange pieces & ultimately with a level rook ending in sight the players agreed to a draw.
In other divisions division C is between Peter Fry & Michael Addamo, division D has Gary Bekker at least equal first, although Felix Wyss can tie for first if he can beat Gary in the final round, while division C is once again up for grabs with Joel Kamer beating Michael Hain to leave Michael in equal first with Jason Chew.
As usual, results are on ChessChat.
This should make for an interesting final round next Monday!

That horrible feeling when you lose to Richard Voon ...

Unfortunately I officially became part of the club tonight, when I lost my postponed round 1 game from the Bob Brooking Round Robin to Richard Voon. Once again I had a promising position, or at least I thought I did (the computer thinks it was marginally better at best), until I decided to try to complicate things & play for a win, so I sacrificed my knight for 3 pawns & a scary looking attack. Perhaps some signs from earlier in the game should have told me otherwise (I didn't see Richard's 14.Nd4, which was awkward to deal with, nor did I notice that 14...Qd7 actually lost an exchange) & I should have gone for the safe option of 32...Nc7 (which Fritz sees as 0.00) rather than the speculative 32...Nxf4 that I decided to play. Of course I also missed a number of defensive moves that Richard played, in particular 40.Kh1. I was of course hoping for the spectacular 40.Qxd8? when after 40...h3 41.Qxc7+ Kh6 there are no more useful checks & I have a forced checkmate, in spite of being 2 rooks & a bishop down! Alas, this loss leaves me with just 1/3 so far, with the top 2 seeds (David Beaumont & Sylvester Urban) to play in the coming weeks. Let's hope something improves for those games!

Bob Brooking Round Robin Round 3

Its been a while & I was definitely struggling for a while, but I finally managed a win in a tournament game (my first since June - albeit that that was when I last played a tournament game, but that's not the point). My game against Justin Penrose had quite a few twists & turns. I decided to deviate from my 'standard' 1...g6 as black & played 1...e5, mainly because I knew Justin played the Ruy Lopez as white & I am reasonably comfortable playing either side in that opening. I decided to play the Berlin Defense (3...Nf6), although I was probably not going to play it in the 'usual' manner as seen in the Kasparov-Kramnik match in 2000. Anyway, after Justin played 4.Qe2, I was out of any sort of theoretical knowledge I may have had of the position & just had to play chess. Although I didn't think my position was that bad, the silicon monster didn't like my 14...Na7 or 16...Nh7, in spite of their aesthetic symmetry & thought white had the better position for a decent part of the middlegame. Although I wasn't convinced that 17...f5 was the best move in the position, it seemed like the obvious pawn break to make & I didn't want to wait for Ng3, which would have further hindered any plans of expansion I may have had. Ultimately its a blunder that should leave me with a worse position, although apparently I had a few opportunities to play a timely Ra8, which would have neutralised some of that advantage. Justin held the advantage until he played the seemingly natural recapture 37.Qxf5 (Bxf5 was better), which allowed me to play 37...e4 & start to turn the game around. Ultimately it was the combination of playing R1a6 & Bb3 that left Justin with problems in the centre & on the back rank, which I was able to convert into a win.
In other games, Mirko Rujevic has taken a temporary lead in division A after beating Karl Zelesco (with the help of the 'get out of jail free' card after getting into trouble in the opening), moving to 2.5/3, joining Justin Tan in the lead, although James Morris is on 2/2 with a game in hand.
David Beaumont continues to find ways to win from difficult positions & leads division B with 3/3. Peter Fry has taken the sole lead in division C after beating Jack Puccini in a tactical struggle to move to 2.5/3. Gary Bekker beat Anthony Harris to take the outright lead in division D with 3/3, while Michael Hain won again to keep his lead in division E with 3/3.
Results from last night's games are on ChessChat.

Bob Brooking Round Robin Round 2

Round two of the Bob Brooking Round Robins saw a number of clear leaders emerge in some of the groups. James Morris leads Group A with 2/2 after another comfortable looking win, this time against Malcolm Pyke. David Beaumont leads group B with 2/2 after escaping from a difficult position against Justin Penrose. Group C has Michael Addamo, Peter Fry & Jim Papadinis all sharing the lead on 1.5/2. Gary Bekker & Anthony Harris share the lead in Group D with 2/2, while Michael Hain is the sole leader in Group E with 2/2. Although some of these leaders were the pre-tournament favourites, there are a few surprises in there, particularly Michael Hain leading group E after beating the pre-tournament favourite Jason Chew in round 2.
My own game in round 2 was like many other games that I have played throughout my chess career ... a promising start becomes a good middlegame, and I then proceed to stuff up an attack, miss a defensive move by my opponent & lose horribly. I played the opening a bit unusually, but managed to win an exchange fairly early. I then played aggressively & got a good attacking position, but rather than exchanging some more pieces off, I saw some ghosts & missed a strong continuation, so rather than playing 28.Nxd4, I went for the complications of 28.Qg5, which allowed black to have connected passed pawns in the centre. This made my attack need to be precise, so although Ng3 would have been better, Nf4 was also OK, but Qh5+ needed to be played before f6, as I missed the defensive resource Qc5, which turned the game around & made the central pawns a real threat.


The game of the round in the A group once again sees James Morris playing very logical chess to slowly dismantle Malcolm Pyke's position.

Bob Brooking Round Robins Round 1

Tonight was the first round of the annual Bob Brooking Round Robin event at Melbourne Chess Club, which sees players split into groups of 6 by rating & then playing a round robin against those players. The format of the event makes for a very competitive event, with all games being (at least theoretically) very tough.
The tournament itself is named after Bob Brooking, former judge at the Victorian Supreme Court, as well a former President of Melbourne Chess Club. He has written an interesting history of Melbourne Chess Club in two volumes, Care for a Game & Play On, which you can read about on the MCC website.

As for the event itself, there are 30 players in five groups this year, with the top division being particularly strong, with 2 IMs & all players rated over 2100! I'm on double-duty, playing in division 2, as well as acting as the tournament arbiter, but I will definitely have to be at my best if I plan to win my division, with Sylvester Urban, David Beaumont, Justin Penrose, Omar Khaled & Richard Voon all looking to spoil these plans of mine!
Full results, as well as the draw for future rounds, can be seen on ChessChat.

The best game of the round in the top division was an efficient game by IM James Morris against Karl Zelesco, where James left Karl with a bad black squared bishop & gradually improved his position until an exchange could further increase his positional edge.

The Xmas Update

Its been a few weeks since my last post & quite a bit has happened.
I'm typing this update from Sydney, where I'm visiting family & friends for the Christmas period.
In terms of chess, I've run a few tournaments - The Victorian Lightning Championships & the MCC Xmas Swiss. The links are to the results on Chesschat.
I've also played in the Bob Brooking Round Robin & finished on 1.5/5 in the top division, which sounds OK in theory, but when you consider that I was beating both Dragicevic & Urban, I feel that I could have scored more points. Having said that, I played horribly against Morris (and lost quickly), was worse for most of the game against Penrose (and drew) & was pretty even in the game with Ari Dale until he gave me two pawns and a bishop for my rook.
I'm also playing in the Australian Chess Championships (Reserves Division) in Geelong, which starts on the 27th of December. At present, it looks like I'll be around the 10th seed in the division, which will likely have 70-80 players, so I would consider myself a chance to do well in the event, although putting things together consistently for 11 rounds in such an event is always difficult, particularly given my recent efforts to throw away winning positions!
I'll try to post updates from Geelong, but can't guarantee that I will have internet access while there.
In terms of poker, the Deuces Cracked 50k Challenge has stalled significantly. I've hardly played any online poker this month & have only played around 1000 hands (down around $20 at that!), so when added to the 5000-odd stud hands I played in November, its hardly the schedule to finish off 50000 anytime soon.
Much of the lack of online poker has been the result of playing much more live poker at Crown, where I am up just over $1000 since the start of November, playing $1/2NL. Although its not a huge amount, its reasonable for the stakes & I feel that most of the time I am playing well, although there are still some sessions where I find myself either struggling from the start due to the dynamics of the table (typically when there are multiple aggressive bigger stacks at the table), or midway through sessions, due to either a run of unplayable cards, or some unfortunate results.
I also final tabled the 7-game event at the November Joe Hachem Deepstack Series, placing 5th, although that was the only tournament I have played at Crown of late.
Since heading to Sydney for the holidays, I've managed to win two APL events, both at venues at Ashfield, which has made my recent APL record look much more impressive!
In terms of making videos, I'm midway through preparing the material for episode 2 of the Broken Arrow, which will be largely PowerPoint-based, in a similar format to Episode 1. I've had some positive feedback about the first episode and the PowerPoint format used, & I feel it works well for explaining the basic concepts & ideas of the opening much better than simply using Chessbase, although it does make the preparation of the episodes somewhat more labour-intensive. Having said that, when I get to covering games in detail in future episodes, this will mean that the presentation format will be largely Chessbase-based.
I'd also like to wish my brother Michael a speedy recovery! He broke his leg playing cricket last week & has only just got out of hospital, with multiple pins in his leg, a cast attached to it, as well as crutches & a wheelchair to help him get around! Its put am end to his 2011/12 cricket season, but hopefully he can recover & play even better in the 2012/12 season!