Thursday 18 March 2010

Challenge at the Top

My birthday is over and now it's only a nice but distant memory! I wouldn't mind a birthday once a month :) However, there is still something to look forward to - my present from relatives in the U.S.A. is still on its way. I hope it didn't get lost as it's been travelling for a long time now! I'm pretty sensible these days when I go out, but this time I must have had one too many cocktails and lost my camera. But before I even realised what I'd done, I had a call from the restaurant to tell me I left my camera - that's amazing customer service I think! Photos were worth retrieving as now I can prove that I wasn't the only one drinking cocktails :) Here I am with my good friend WFM Meri Grigoryan.


Meri told me that she recently met GM Karpov and had a picture taken with him. Apparently he's a nice and friendly man. Unfortunately, I've never met him. Why am I saying all this? Well, you must have heard by now that Karpov is running for the FIDE President. It would certainly be interesting if FIDE had a change at the top. When Karpov played his World Championship match against Kasparov back in the 80-s, lots of  people in Chelyabinsk supported Karpov because he grew up very near Chelyabinsk and was considered the local talent. I was still in Russia when the match was played and I was also supporting Karpov. Although I really admire his chess I have no idea what he would be like in the management position of FIDE President, but I do like change and I'm looking forward to the FIDE President elections!

Not much is happening in my chess world. I played a London League game for the second Hackney team on Monday and had a straightforward win in the Closed Sicilian with black. Quite amazingly for me I also finished with half an hour to spare compared to my opponent. Perhaps I should continue this trend as it's great to have lots of time in the middlegame! My team also won. I've also been following some of the Amber and European Championship games on the internet. And I have been playing quite a bit of blitz and getting a bit better at it, but perhaps I should concentrate on more useful chess learning activities!

5 comments:

Alberto Santini said...

I observed the following games of the Amber tourney: Kramnik - Gashimov and Carlsen - Svilder.

In the first game I learned how to fight against the Slav defence with White: I saw a4 reply vs. a6 and the delay of the 'e' pawn push, developing an active bishop c1.

In the second one I saw a Qb3 and e4 line (for White) of the Gruenfeld defence: interesting way to fight for the center, neutralizing g7 bishop and c5 break of the black.

Karpov for president! :) I was young and I was his fan between Karpov - Kasparov match too.

Maria Yurenok said...

Hi Alberto,

Yes, watching games on the internet gives me some opening knowledge and ideas too. The trouble is, without the commentary sometimes it's difficult to figure out what exactly players have in mind so it's important to look up those lines in books for better understanding. That's what I find anyway :)

Anonymous said...

Hello Maria,

i just discoverd your blog yesterday and today i see the thailand results. After all your efforts the desired success is coming now. Gratulations for your great Thai performance and beating an IM in round 1 !

CS from S

Maria Yurenok said...

Thank you very much for your support CS! I've finished the tournament very well and posted a story about it on my blog - I hope you'd read it.

Claus S. said...

The comment from april 22nd was mine.