Archive for 2017
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- Keeping the king close to the pawn was sucessful for a while. It took a lot of moves to drive the king away.
- Once the king is driven away then head for the side of the board furthest away from the pawn so that the knight blockading it is unable to attack the king.
- A common mistake by the attacker was to move the blockading knight before the king was trapped in the corner. In that case push the pawn. It is very hard for the knight to get back in front of it and he will probably have to just capture it and draw the game. If you are ever not in check and can push the pawn then push it.
Back in Action at the Munster League
The Munster League started back up again in Charleville last weekend. The B team were in action and in the first game lost 4 1/2 to 1/2 against the Cork A team. In the second game we shared the spoils with Charleville.
For the first game we were treated to the luxurious conditions that the A team expects - leather seats, wooden boards and pieces. No expense spared! I had a mixed game in a Rubinstein French. I was well prepared and only used the increment for the first 20 or so moves and built up a huge time advantage against my much higher rated opponent. This was especially useful later once I started to make my customary blunders as my opponent didn't have a great deal of time to find the best moves! I got a comfortable, equal endgame position and then hallucinated that my opponent was winning a piece. I made some terrible moves and ended up losing most of my pawns giving my opponent had an massively winning position.
Luckily for me he failed to find the win and I managed to trade into a Rook & split a and c pawns against a Rook endgame. I had done a great deal of work on my endgames recently with Jesus DeLaVilla's 100 endgames course on Chessable so I was fairly confident here. I held out for 50 moves and only gave one winning chance around move 85. Again my opponent failed to find this and I escaped with a draw.
For the second game we were back slumming it with the typical B team standard. No more leather chairs, plastic sets! I got a bit confused out of the opening against my opponent and ended up in a blocked position. I decided to swap my bishop for his knight as I felt that an extra knight would be better suited to the position. I ended up getting a really strong position - probably winning as I was up a piece. However then it all fell apart for me. My opponent got a really strong attack with his queen and my pieces were forced into awkward positions. I missed the fact that I could get my queen to e7 via a check on c7. If I had found that I think I would have converted the game. My opponent offered a draw but I felt that as the match result was hanging on this I should try to play on. Naturally I blundered into to a losing position but fortunately got back to draw in the end.
→ posted on October 15, 2017chess
Some great videos on rook and pawn endings covering rook pawn + 3vs3 and rook pawn vs 4vs4.
→ posted on October 3, 2017microposts
Excellent article on Checkers World Champion Marion Tinsley and Jonathan Schaeffer's quest to solve the game.
→ posted on July 25, 2017microposts
Evening Echo Clubzone Feature on Cork Chess Club
The Evening Echo did a piece on the Cork Chess Club recently for its Clubzone feature. I've posted it here (with permission from the Echo). For pdf format go here and here.
→ posted on June 4, 2017chess
The Bongcloud opening. I love this.
→ posted on June 2, 2017microposts
Two Knights Checkmate
Last night in the club we had an entertaining attempt at trying to mate with two knights against a king and pawn. This is a really tricky mate. You have to blockade the pawn, drive the king to the corner using just one knight and king, almost stalemate him there and then bring your blockading knight over to mate just before his pawn queens.
It seems impossible. I played it out on Shredder tablebases and some of the moves seemed very unintuitive - e.g. moving the knight away from the king. You would never find them over the board.
However I did see some common mistakes from people trying to win this and here are some plans for the defending side.
Based on the our attempts I feel confident in saying that if I was defending this position, I would be happy for my opponent to consult the entire room and still still bet on him not mating!
→ posted on May 30, 2017chess
Munster League Division 1. Round 14.
My results in the Munster League since Christmas have by and large been terrible and I finished up in the final round in the same manner by losing as black.
Looking back on the game I made some bad strategic mistakes that I thought I'd dealt with in these types of positions. I went back to aimless developing moves instead of urgent action on the queenside. I need to do some work on memorizing opening plans so that I don't make similar mistakes in future.
The AGM after the game was very interesting. I'd never been at one of these before. There are big changes planned for the league in the coming years with a shift to two six team divisions. This will be a positive change for us as I think we will enjoy more challenging in a competitive division 2 instead of bringing up the rear in division 1.
→ posted on May 21, 2017chess
Club Championship Roundup
I ended the club championship with two walkover wins. This was a fairly disapointing conclusion to the league for me. I'm going to drop rating points as I lost my games against higher rated opponents earlier in the league but never got the chance to earn them back by facing players at my own level. I'm not sure what can be done to solve the walkover issue but I win about 20% of my games in the league via them which is way too high.
→ posted on May 19, 2017chess
Simon Williams is running a great series on his Youtube channel playing long time control games (15m+10s). Well worth a watch.
→ posted on May 17, 2017microposts
Munster League Division 1. Rounds 12 and 13. Relegation Dogfight.
A tense day in the Munster Leagues as the relegation battle came to a head. We were behind Limerick B going into our head to head match and needed a win to boost our hopes of staying up.
In the end we did win our match 3.5 to 1.5. I had a somewhat fortunate win in my game. I think I was worse after the opening and my opponent was starting to get an attack going on my king. However I managed to get an outside passed h pawn and that proved to be my saviour as it gave me counterplay. Without that I would have been in serious trouble and I'm not sure I could have won.
That gave us some breathing room over Limerick B. Our next game was against Limerick A and a result here would have put us clear. Unfortunately we lost that match. I had a shocker in my game. I was well up and about to pick up the exchange. However I played a careless pawn move, my opponent made a knight jump which I hadn't seen and then I panicked and collapsed.
If Limerick B got a result against CCYMS, we would have been in big trouble. That match came down to the final game but luckily for us CCYMS came through. So going into the final day we are half a point ahead of Limerick B and need to match their result to stay up.
→ posted on April 30, 2017chess
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