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Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #113

Written by Robert Jamieson on 3rd Feb, 2012

Welcome back to Jammo’s chess puzzles for 2012. I’ve collected quite a few interesting positions to show you over the next few weeks. It’s certainly been a great Summer of chess with the Australian Championships in Geelong, the Australian Junior Championships in Melbourne and then the Queenstown Chess Classic in New Zealand.

I only attended the Junior, where I had to give a speech at the opening ceremony to give a bit of advice to our young players, but I avidly followed the other events on-line each day. The prize for the silliest play of the Summer goes to Max Illingworth against Yi Lui at the Australian Championships (see diagram). A close second is Max Illingworth (!) for his draw in NZ with GM Zhao Xue where Max went from R+B+4P v R+N+1P to R v R+N. Yes, he lost his B and 4 pawns for just one pawn! Not to be outdone he played on for 79 moves without a pawn move or capture before finally claiming a draw under the 50 move rule. Now that’s fighting spirit!

Anyway, in the diagram Max has White and his has played a nice combination to win a rook for a couple of pawns. Now 1.Qe1 would quickly bring about a comfortable victory. Instead Max played the worst move of the tournament which allowed his opponent to immediately turn the tables. What was Max’s blunder and his opponent’s devastating reply?

rn5R/pp2kpp1/4p1p1/3p4/1q3Pn1/3Bp3/PP2K1PP/2BQ3R w – - 4 9White to play a huge blunder and lose!

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #112

Written by Robert Jamieson on 16th Dec, 2011

Tonight is the Chess Kids Xmas Party! Yes, all the Chess Kids coaches and staff get together at the Guru’s house for a lavish party with gourmet catering by the Guru’s lovely wife, Kate. And what do we do at the party? Play chess of course! I particularly like catching up with Frank Meerbach, who coaches in the Doncaster area, as Frank always has a few chess puzzles to challenge and enthral his audience. It’s also good because he is the only person there who is older than me!

This year I’ve been preparing some puzzles of my own to try and catch Frank at his own game. My method is simple. I go onto “Chess Tempo” and find the most difficult puzzle that I can’t solve and make that the one that I give to Frank. I must warn you, the one I have chosen is pretty hard, though not very deep, so you can have a go at solving it yourself if you like. I only ask one favour. If you do solve it, please don’t tell Frank!

8/1P1RN1PP/3r1PK1/4q3/2P1p3/4bp1Q/1p2kp2/8 b – - 0 1Black to play (moving up the board) and win

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #111

Written by Robert Jamieson on 9th Dec, 2011

Short v Anand

There is a very big chess tournament in progress at the moment – the London Chess Classic 2011 which features four players rated in the 2800s (plus 5 others), namely Carlsen 2826, Anand 2811, Aronian 2802 and Kramnik 2800. Anand is the World Chess Champion and Kramnik is a former World Champion. You can follow the games live on the internet but unfortunately they don’t start until about midnight Melbourne time. One commentator called it the strongest chess tournament ever held in Britain. I’m not so sure.

In rating terms it may well be the highest rated ever but everyone knows that ratings have inflated over time and there have been a few strong tournaments in Britain before. Hastings 1895 apparently wasn’t too bad, but it was a bit before my time. My choice would be Nottingham 1936 which featured Botvinnik, Capablanca, Lasker, Alekhine and Euwe (plus others) who between them held the world title between 1894 and 1957 inclusive! I think that I’d pick them in a match against the current mob.

There has however been some very interesting chess being played in the current tournament. Nakamura v Howell in round 5 was a nice tactical skirmish which I may well publish in “On the Move.” Meanwhile for today’s puzzle place yourself in the shoes of the current World Champion, Anand, as Black to play in the diagram against Short. He can play 1…Qf4+ to swap off queens but that gives him isolated and doubled pawns. Would his extra pawn then be enough to win? You decide.

8/5p2/5qk1/6p1/1Q5p/7P/6PK/8 b – - 0 1Should Black play 1...Qf4+?

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #110

Written by Robert Jamieson on 2nd Dec, 2011

Allen Yu v Luke Li in the final round

I’ve just come back from an exciting three days of chess at the Campaspe Downs Resort (near Kyneton) including the final of the RJ Shield for 2011 and the National Schools Open featuring teams from all over Australia and New Zealand.

Auckland Grammar brought across a very strong team of players over 2000 rating and ran out easy winners but Glen Waverley Secondary also did well to finish second and be the top Australian Team. The full scores are available on the tornelo website.

At the other end of the room, on the bottom boards of the Primary Competition, play was not quite at the same level. I watched one game (which I then included in my lecture on blunders) where, in 13 moves (for White and Black) White missed capture of a rook, a stalemate chance and allowed mate in one. Black in turn blundered his rook, allowed a stalemate chance, missed mate in one then stalemated his opponent when a rook and pawn ahead. It’s hard playing chess when you don’t look even one move ahead!

There was some good chess played on the top boards however. My favourite game was Kingsley Chung v Allen Yu which will be published with Allen’s notes in the next issue of “Knight Times”. I glanced at the game whilst walking past and ended up standing there for five minutes trying to work out all the complications. Allen played like Mikhail Tal (fondly dubbed the “Magician from Riga”) to finish on top in the complications. Here is a position from the game with Black to play. He is ahead on material but the position is still a bit messy. What is his next “killer” move that wraps up the game.

1k1r3r/ppp2ppp/2P5/7B/1b2p1Q1/2P1B2P/PP3PPq/2R1K3 b – - 1 17Black to play

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #109

Written by Robert Jamieson on 25th Nov, 2011

Have you ever considered what part memory plays in chess skill. The public certainly think that chess players must have a good memory to “remember all those moves” however this is not necessarily the case. Perhaps chess players just have a good memory for chess positions.

I did an interesting memory test last Sunday when I was giving a lesson the Bobby Cheng and Laurence Matheson. I showed them a chess position, with all 32 pieces on the board, and gave them 10 seconds to try to memorise as many pieces as possible in their correct positions. The results were terrible! Bobby got 4 or 5 pieces correct and Laurence got hardly any. How is this possible you ask? The position was not a “proper” chess position but one where the pieces were placed randomly – hence they had no patterns to recognise. By contrast I gave them 2 seconds to memorise another position with all 32 pieces on the board and they got it 100% correct. The position was the starting position of the Sicilian defence which every chess player would instantly recognise. It just proves that pattern recognition is a big part of chess skill.

Pattern recognition also comes in handy when trying to solve chess puzzles “if you’ve seen one knight fork you have seen them all.” Today however I have a position for you that is probably not in your mental “database.” It’s from the game Karjakin v Svidler at the recent Tal memorial tournament in Moscow. Black is two pieces ahead but his king is in danger either of checkmate or perpetual check. The puzzle is to find White’s best move and Black’s best reply, then tell me the result.

r2q1r2/1p1n1p2/p2p4/2bbpP1k/8/2P3Q1/PPB2PPP/R4RK1 w – - 6 22White to play - what result?

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #108

Written by Robert Jamieson on 18th Nov, 2011

We have an exciting couple of weeks coming up with the RJ Shield and the National Interschool Open being held near Kyneton from 27 Nov – 29 Nov. Playing at a country resort instead of Monash University will be a bit of a change, but New Zealand are sending over four strong teams to challenge Australia’s best teams so it should be a great competition.

Meanwhile, over in Brazil the World Youth Championships start today. The Australian team includes Victorians Justin Tan (in the U14) and Karl Zelesco (in the U/12) whose results I will follow with great interest. Karl in particular is very good for his age and must have a chance for a high placing. I watched his games at the State Finals recently and he played like a master for most of the time.

To compete successfully at that level you have to have a keen eye for tactics. The basic advice that I give students is to “examine all checks and captures” but at a higher level that is not enough. Some combinations are based on themes such as “overloaded piece” which do not involve either check or captures and so are much harder to spot. Let’s see how you cope with this harder sort of problem in today’s puzzle.

2k5/2p5/1p1rn1p1/5p2/q2b4/6P1/P2RQPB1/3R2K1 w – - 0 1White to play

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #107

Written by Robert Jamieson on 11th Nov, 2011

World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik thought that lightning (5 minute) chess ruined your normal chess so he advised his students against playing this fast form of the game. I love lightning chess, but I find myself fighting a losing battle trying to persuade the players at Chess Kids On-Line that 2 minute chess is a waste of time. “It’s a test of who can blunder fastest” is my usual comment.

Indeed chess is a strange game in that a player can have many fine wins in a tournament, yet one bad loss will be so painful as to erase the joy of many wins. I remember stories of one Melbourne player whose initials are DH who allegedly, after a big blunder, would walk outside the Melbourne Chess Club and keep hitting his head against a lamppost!

No doubt this is how Denmark’s top player, GM Sune Hansen, must have felt after his game against world #3 GM Lev Aronian in the European Team Championship. Hansen was White in the position in the diagram below and he has a crushing attack, but is in time trouble. He must chose between 1.Rxg7 or 1.Rg6 or 1.fxe8=Q or 1.Ng5 or 1.Kh2. All of these moves win except one. Your task is to find the one losing move played by Hansen and his opponent’s reply.

4nr1k/5Pr1/b1p2p1p/p3pP1Q/P3N2P/2P1q3/2B2R2/6RK w – - 0 1White to play and blunder

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #106

Written by Robert Jamieson on 4th Nov, 2011

We have just finished the first week of November which, in Melbourne, means only one thing. Yes! It’s a public holiday long week-end so that we can all enjoy the Melbourne Cup …. of Chess! This annual event, played at the Melbourne Chess Club attracted a very strong field including some of Australia’s better juniors plus IMs Solomon and Rujevic representing us oldies.

Unfortunately I could only follow the event from afar as I was in Mildura (playing tennis against some other oldies). My iPad refused to get on the internet (must be too far away) but my iPhone fortunately kept me in touch with many of the better games being available on Tornelo.

The top seed, George Xie, played like a budding GM to score 8.5/9 and edge closer to that elusive 2500 rating which will secure him the the grandmaster title. In second place was Bobby Cheng who scored 7.5/9 (including a half-point bye) who played like a budding IM for most of the time. He drew with George and faced a tough game against Max Illingworth who had Bobby tied up for most of the game. Bobby (as Black) managed to swap off into an endgame and to create chances with the following position arising after Black’s 55th move Nc7. Now Black’s N is trapped on c7 to stop the White “a” pawn whilst White’s B is trapped on g1 to stop Black’s “h” and “c” pawns. Perhaps it’s a draw? Perhaps one side can get a pawn home? I’m not sure so I need your help. White to play. What is the result and what do you think were the next couple of moves? That is today’s puzzle.

8/1Kn5/P1pk4/5p2/5P2/7p/8/6B1 w – - 5 56White to play ...what result?

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #105

Written by Robert Jamieson on 28th Oct, 2011

As noted in my blog last week, it was a big week of chess at Monash University from Saturday to Tuesday with the Vic. Youth Championships followed by the Interschool State Finals. I’ve finally learnt how to set a digital clock, but it was hard work – 4 days of non-stop walking around as a arbiter. The compensation was seeing some really good chess and every player came away with a trophy or a certificate. 7 year-old Yoni is pictured proudly displaying his trophy on the left.

My support for “Bubblegum” in the Vic Youth worked reasonably well as he quickly zoomed to the lead but unfortunately faded a little against some of the stronger players. Karl Zelesco (the “Z-Kid”) as expected crushed everyone. I watched some of his games an he already plays like a master even though he is only 11 or 12 years old. Even in the State Finals, which was the strongest field for some time, Karl gave Bobby Cheng a hard game before blundering a rook, and Karl won all his remaining games to finish in second place, half a point behind Bobby. Bobby of course is already a veteran at 13 years of age and has the FM title and the Victorian State Championship under his belt.

For today’s puzzle I have a position from Bobby’s game against Ari Dale. Bobby is White and has a better position, but how did he finish off the game quickly with a neat idea?

r1r3k1/p1p2p1p/1pnbp1p1/8/3PP1N1/2P1BPPq/P3Q2P/1R1R2K1 w – - 9 32White to play and win

Jammo’s Chess Puzzle #104

Written by Robert Jamieson on 21st Oct, 2011

This week is an exciting time at Chess Kids as we have the Vic. Youth Chess Championships on this weekend at Monash University followed by the Primary Interschool and Middle-Years Interschool Finals on Monday and Tuesday. Four days of chess fun!

There are 91 players entered in the Vic. Youth to date, so my big problem is who should I barrack for? I’d like William Maligin to do well as he is very good for his age, but I think I’ll end up barracking for “Bubblegum.” “Bubblegum???” you say? That is the Chess Kids on-line handle for one of the players who is only 11 years old but has raised his on-line rating to around 1400. He plays a lot and is very keen, but still has a few “rough edges” in his play. One of his recent games (as Black) for instance started 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 h5?? Hopefully Bubblegum will attend one of my lectures at the Vic. Youth and find out why such moves are not the best.

He needs also to work on his tactics a bit. I was playing through his game (as Black) against “Tomahawk713″ last night which Bubblegum duly won, but which included a big mistake which his opponent failed to spot. From the diagram play continued… 38…Kf5 39.h4 Rxe5 40.Rxe5 Rxe5 41.Rf1+ Ke6 42.Kh3 Re3+ 43.Kg2 Rxd3 44.Rf3 and Black eventually won. Today’s puzzle is can you spot the big mistake.

4r3/4r3/6p1/p1p1P1kp/PpPp4/1P1P2KP/4R3/4R3 b – - 0 38Find the big mistake

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