So after my game was done on Thursday I wanted to play some blitz with Garingo and he started talking about how he was bored with the club and he wanted to play matches instead of tournaments. I'm pretty much in the same boat, as shown by the effortless games I have posted so far from this tournament. I've spent only 20 minutes on both games so far this tournament and I don't even get any pleasure out of finishing the game, I get lazy. Anyways so we decide to play a match because I'm pretty sure I can beat him. Once you neutralize his tactics, he goes wrong, this is easily done through good opening preparation, and a match is the best place to show off good opening preparation. So I say I want white first because I haven't had white against him in a longer game and we decide on the time controls and we go straight into a dragon. We spent very little time on our first 13 moves, and then started making mutual mistakes. I built up a very large advantage saw a very promising continuation but rejected it for the safer continuation and the blundered a few moves later squandering my advantage. I will not post any notes at this time for obvious reasons, but I will post my analysis after the match is complete.



I had fallen behind two pawns to expose the black king, but I had not been able to find a tangible solution and indeed there is none as long as Garingo does not get too excited. This seems to be his fatal flaw, he gets too wrapped up in his own attack. Until he played b3 he had not seen a glimpse of mate the whole game, as soon as I allowed him to take on c2, which I could have easily prevented with Rg2 instead of Rgg1, he overlooked Rxh7 and started his mating attack. I had not lost hope as I knew that his win was a very difficult technical endgame away and my win was always only one big mistake away. It is interesting to note that Fritz only awards Black four-tenths of a pawn after the move Rgg1 instead of Rg2, agreeing that the pawn sacrifice is not completely without compensation. The problem with Rg2 is that after the Queen captures on f5, a Queen trade is forced because of the weakness of the f1 square. But with the rook on g1, the f1 square is not weak, so after the Queen takes on f5 i can play Qg2 threatening Qg8 and forcing Rc8 and then Qb7 threatening the a6 pawn and retaining the Queen and some initiative.

He claims that he won the game, it is true that at the end he was winning and he just blundered. But I was winning by a larger margin earlier in the game and I blundered, so really we both made mistakes. I got ahead early and failed to capitalize, but I was hardly outplayed. Then in desperation I started throwing some complications in the mix and he slipped. Same as I did against Parreira, same as Pearson did against Garingo himself. Chess is a game of mistakes. I hope to make Garingo's serious mistakes a theme of this match and minimize the damage of my own.

I haven't posted for a week for a reason, I've been looking at more games and I was in Vegas for work Tuesday through Thursday with limited access to the internet (I didn't feel like paying $12/day when I know things to do in Vegas...). So yesterday was game day at the club and it was an interesting one, although I failed to bring actual effort into the building (perhaps a result of the fact that my flight to Reno landed at 6:50; I was 25 minutes late; I caught up on move 12 or 13). I had been looking at the games of Botvinnik on Saturday (Sometimes I just decide to look at a random book that I have, in this case Botvinnik's 100 Selected Games; definitely a great read as it is written by Botvinnik himself; his reign is almost as impressive as Kasparov's). Anyways, this led to me reading Botvinnik-Tal 1961 while I was in Vegas. There is a very interesting history during Botvinnik's reign of the chess realm. There was a rule in effect that said that he was entitled to a rematch one year later if he lost the championship. This rule helped him regain the championship twice, he lost in 1957 to Smyslov, and then lost in 1960 to Tal (he had almost lost in 1954 to Bronstein and there is some speculation that Bronstein threw the match, although Bronstein denies this in several sources); regaining the title the following year in the return match. I haven't actually read Botvinnik-Tal until this point and I was looking at the games and much like the first time these two met, nearly every game that Tal played white was a Caro-Kann.

So when I arrive I am due to play David Parreira who I murdered the last time we met in a Caro-Kann:



I decided to play e4 and go into the Caro-Kann again, but then I decided to play a more exciting line from the Advance Variation:



There is some explanation necessary here. Filipas-Garingo had just ended in a draw and so I was going over some lines because I could not believe that there was a draw there. I was spending very little time at the board because I had a crushing position and he was spending a long time at the board. Then I went to play Bc5 and had already grabbed the Knight when I realized that the f3 square was covered by that pawn and I was mated. Another advantage of the earlier Bb5 tells as the f1 square would have prevented the embarassing mate.

After this Nathaniel and I decided to play a 10 game match with G/40 time controls. I won the first game with a mate however he had a very large advantage when this happened. I'll post this game later as these two games took some work. At least something came out of my poor performance.

Last night after posting a game in my pet line, the Accelerated Dragon, I faced a very similar position over the board at the Reno Chess Club. This game is the type of position I am at home in, and I played a pretty accurate game. I couldn't help feeling maybe there was something more there for White, but as the notes confirm there is hardly anything. I played pretty well, I'm happy with it.

(14) Clifford,John (1591) - Gafni,Kevin (1916) [B34]November (2), 08.11.2007[Gafni,Kevin]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6 5.Nc3 Bg7 6.Be3 Nf6 7.f3?!

[7.Bc4 0-0 8.Bb3 a5 9.f3 d5 is the main line]

7...0-0 8.Be2 d5! 9.Nxc6 bxc6 10.e5 Nd7 11.f4 e6 12.h4 c5 13.Nxd5? exd5 14.Qxd5 Rb8 15.b3?

[15.0-0-0 Qa5 16.h5 Nb6 17.Qxc5 Qxa2 18.Qa3 Qxa3 19.bxa3 Bf5-/+]

15...Bb7-+ 16.Qc4 Bxg2 17.Rh2 Ba8?!

[17...Nxe5 I had a feeling this move was better during the game but I chickened out 18.fxe5 Bxe5 19.Rxg2 Bxa1 20.Bxc5 Rc8-+]

18.0-0-0 Qc7 19.h5 Nxe5 20.Qxc5

[20.fxe5?? Qxe5 21.Rh3 Qb2+ 22.Kd2 Bd5-+]

20...Qxc5 21.Bxc5 Bh6! 22.Rf2 Rfe8 23.Kb1 [>=23.Bxa7 Rbc8] 23...Rbc8

[23...Nc6 24.hxg6 fxg6 25.Bc4+ Kh8]

24.Bb5?! [24.Bxa7 Nc6] 24...Ng4 25.Bxe8? [25.Rfd2 Bc6] 25...Nxf2 26.Bxf7+ Kxf7 27.hxg6+ Kxg6 [27...hxg6 may be better] 28.Rd6+ Kh5 29.Bxf2 Be4 30.Bxa7 Bxc2+ 31.Ka1 Bxf4 32.Rd5+ Kg4 33.Kb2 Be4 34.Rc5 Rxc5 35.Bxc5 And it's just technique from here... 35...h5 36.Be7 Bg5 37.Bd6 h4 38.Bh2 h3 39.b4 Bf4 40.Bg1 Kg3 0-1

After the game I was playing with Nathaniel, who is probably the best player at the club right now. I get frustrated by our games, I know that if I wait I can just beat him but I can't help attacking which really allows him to show off his style. Either way I really regard our blitz as more of a preparation for a real game. We're 1-1 right now in tournament play but I have yet to have White and I have a nasty line prepared if he plays his usual Dragon. In blitz last night he played the Taimanov, which was weird, and provoked me to sac a knight for nothing, which led to more sacs and me just running out of pieces. Then I played black and used under a minute for the game but actually got a pretty good position for the speed with which I was playing. Then I blundered and lost. Oh well. Blitz is blitz.

So I figured I would post some games from the summer of 2005. I thought they might take a while to dig up but today while I was waiting for my wrinkled shirt to get out of the dryer (I'm much too lazy to use an iron) and writing some notes for my first post today I picked up an old book of games and sure enough all my games from the first half of that summer were there (a happy coincidence) including the ones I can remember best. My rating that summer went from 1584 to 1787, over 200 points in a mere three months. I had always felt that I was underrated, but my performance that summer was when I started proving myself over the board (My quick rating also got a 332 point boost that summer, in only 8 games! I had only played 24 quick games until that point so that helped). This game is not a very well played game but it features a highly entertaining finish.



I still remember this game. The game before I had also lost the exchange from a won position and I had also won convincingly. I was extremely surprised to find out, much later, that 18...d4 is actually the best move. I was going over some games with GM Shulman last winter, I only saw him 5 or 6 times but it was pretty helpful, and I showed him this game and he liked 18...d4 a lot. I had thought that I had miraculously recovered from a severe blunder when in fact I had simply crushed my opponent. I was also surprised to find out when preparing this game to be published that 22...dxe2 (which in the game I thought was the turning point from being behind to regaining the advantage) actually squanders a lot of my advantage if he simply takes my queen on b6 and plays with the rook against the two bishops. The mate is unbelievable, it was very hard to sit still when my opponent picked up his king and slowly placed it on e1. I had seen the mate when I played dxe2 but considering if he takes on e2 he loses his queen by force I did not think I would actually be able to play it. Many more to come just a nice miniature to give you a taste.