Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! This year has started with a big change for me as I've left my job. No, I'm not going to become a full-time chess player, but I'd like to see what I can do outside of the corporate world. I would like my new activities to be connected to chess in some way or another, so I may explore chess teaching, chess publishing and anything else I might find interesting. If you have any ideas, suggestions or even chess-related business opportunities then please let me know! Apart from my chess and Russian skills which you already know, I have worked in small and large companies in a variety of industries, ending up in a fairly senior management position in my last job. With my wealth of experience I can safely say that I have a good understanding of all aspects of running a business.

As you can imagine, this big change in my life has kept me very busy in the past few weeks since the European Team Championship in November. Now I have some time to update you on what happened to me at that tournament. As you must already know, Germany surprisingly won the Open tournament while Russia won the Women's tournament. The Greek hotel and food were very nice, but I have to agree with comments from other chess players that the playing hall was too stuffy. It wasn't great for  keeping a clear head, especially if you have long games like me :) English women's team performed at their seeding by getting 23rd place, while our star performer was IM Dagne Ciuksyte on board 2, gaining 6 out of 8 points. It's especially amazing as she had both of her little children with her. English Open team unfortunately didn't perform as well as expected, but the Open tournament was very strong and full of surprises. However, our GM Michael Adams had a fantastic result and won gold on the top board! I got 3.5 out of 8 points on board 3 of the Women's team and performed a bit better than my rating, which I thought was fairly satisfactory for my first performance in the English team. Here is our team in the last round against Netherlands (from right to left): Jovanka, myself, Kanwal and Sarah.

The tournament was quite tiring for me as all of my games except one were over 40 moves long, with two games close to 80 moves. With this sort of pattern emerging, I think I should revise endgames! I really enjoyed my rest day in round 5, as I could observe all the top teams and grandmasters playing. I probably found that day even more tiring than playing, as I had a headache by the end of it, probably from trying to assess many positions while walking around! Of course, I support England first but continue to support Russia as a second choice, so I was delighted that Russian women won the tournament. And I was disappointed that Russian men didn't get the medals. But I found it very fascinating watching the Russia-Ukraine Open match in round 5 which Russians won. I still remember how positions unfolded in the match. Here is the match as it started, you can see the Russian men GM Svidler, GM Grischuk, GM Morozevich and GM Nepomniachtchi. On the Ukrainian side you can see GM Ivanchuk, GM Ponomariov and GM Moiseenko, while GM Efimenko is completely obscured.

Svidler-Ivanchuk was the first to finish but it was rather exciting with castling and attacks on the opposite sides ending in perpetual. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what was going on there! Then my attention switched to Ponomariov-Grischuk game as I struggled to clearly see the lower boards from behind the spectators' rope. It looked to me that Grischuk had nerves of steel because he grabbed a pawn with black while lagging in development and with uncastled king. Soon he was in his usual time trouble in what looked like a very complicated position. But what do I know? He managed to simplify into a worse endgame. And while I thought Ponomariov could have made it a bit harder for Grischuk in the endgame, I was glad it quickly ended in a draw. After the end of that game I could see the games on the lower boards much better, especially since it was easier to make out the few remaining pieces in their endgames. It looked like Morozevich had a winning endgame but I think I would have found it tricky to convert. Of course, no such problem for Morozevich. And Nepomniachtchi looked in a lot of trouble with an exchange down. I really thought he was gong to lose even though I wasn't quite sure how to win if I was his opponent. It just looked like there must be a way and Efimenko would figure it out. However, Nepomniachtchi kept very active with his pieces and pawns. This posed technical problems to Efimenko who eventually started running out of time and had to agree to a draw.

Unfortunately, my photos of the English Open and the Russian Women's teams didn't come out as well. I have just bought a new and much better camera, so I will hopefully be taking some great photos in the future. I had some interesting games which I'd like to share with you. It was the case of missed opportunities against three players over 2300. First of all, in round one I was close to winning but squandered my advantage in the time trouble. Here is the critical moment in the game, white to move:

M. Yurenok (2106) - E. Djingarova (2309)

The European Team Championship - Women, 3rd November 2011

Right here I had to make one more move before the time control. Of course, I saw 40. Rc6 and thought it looked like the right and active move to make. But with few seconds left on the clock I decided to go for the safe option and defended my pawn with:

40. Bf3? Rb3+ 41. Ke2 Rb2+ and here I couldn't see how to make progress so I agreed to a draw after two more repeated moves.

Instead, 40. Rc6! is winning, for example:

40...Nxd5+ 41. Kf3! (it's important not to play 41. Kf2 to avoid the pin, I think this is partly what I missed when looking at this line during the game) 41...Rxb4 42. Rxd6+ Nf6 43. Bd3 Kf7 44. Rxb6 Ne4 and here even simple 45. Bxe4 +-  wins. You can see why I was annoyed with myself!

In the next game I was defending for a long time and eventually got to this peculiar and complex endgame, white to move.

M. Yurenok (2106) - M. Ohme (2361)

European Team Championship - Women, 6th November 2011

Here I was going to play 54. Rg4 so as to start pushing my pawns forward. Ok, it looked a bit tricky with black's moves like 54...Nf4 or 54...Rg2. But I couldn't see much else I could do, until sadly I noticed 54. Rc4 and played it because I thought it was a better option. For some reason I decided that I'd win a pawn but it turned out that I wasn't able to calculate clearly. Of course, this move is just bad and possibly loses the game. My opponent played 54...Ne3 55. Re4 Ng2+ 56. Kf1 Nf4 57. Rc4 Ng2 and here I just blundered as I was getting short of time 58. Ne2?? Ne3+ 0:1 At least I could have repeated with 58. Re4 and let the opponent work on finding how to win this. Lets go back to how I should have played on the 54th move.

54. Rg4!= Nf4 another main option for black is to play 54...Rg2 55. h5+ Kh7 56. g6+ Kg8 57. h6 look at those white pawns! They look menacing.  57...Ne7 seems to be the only defence for black. 58. h7+ Kh8 59. Kf1 Rh2 60. Ne4 Rh6 61. Nxd6 Rxg6 62. Nf7+ Kxh7 63. Nxe5 =

55. h5+! the point being is that after 55...Nxh5 56. Nxh5 Kxh5 57.g6! +- the white pawn queens

55...Kg7 black threatens 56...Ng2+ followed by 57...Ne3+ winning the rook on g4, so white should play

56. Kf1! d5 57. g6 Ra1+ 58. Kf2 Ra2+ 59. Kf1 =


And finally, in the last game of the tournament I had a very unusual position because by move 50 we still only exchanged one pawn and one piece each! The position was pretty closed and eventually my opponent sacrificed a piece for three pawns. After that it was still pretty level for both sides but I managed to lose at the end. It seems I need to get better at keeping enough energy to the end of a long game so as to continue making quality moves at a decent pace. Earlier in the game, however, I went passed an easy way to an advantage. I simply didn't notice it. White to move.

M. Yurenok (2106) - T. Lanchava (2320)

European Team Championship - Women, 11th November 2011

Once you know there is tactics, it's fairly easy to find:

16. Nxf4! exf4 17. e5! the f6 knight cannot move as white threatens 18. Bxg6#

17...Ne7 18. exf6 Bxf6 and here white can continue with either 19. 0-0-0 +- gaining a nice positional advantage or go after the pawns with 19. Qxf4 +-

My next tournament is in Gibraltar in 2 weeks time. I'm looking forward to it as I've never been to Gibraltar and because there will be many strong players to watch if I manage to finish my own games earlier than usual. I have to speed up a bit! :)

Back to Blogging!

I think you may be wondering what happened to me as my blog hasn't been updated in a long time. I have some excuses like too much work and other important things, but that's probably not good enough! So I'm back to writing and the important thing is that I have played quite a lot of chess this year and I have a lot to write about.

First of all, I have to share some very good news with you - I have been selected to play for the England women's team in the European Team Championship in Greece in November! I'll be on board 3 with the full team as follows:

IM Jovanka Houska - 2427
IM Dagne Ciuksyte - 2327
WFM Maria Yurenok - 2106
WFM Kanwal Bhatia - 2087
WFM Sarah Hegarty - 2051

It will be my first tournament playing for the England team and it will be tough, so I have started preparing.

Now back to what I've been doing over the past months. I have to take you back as far as February when I played in Italy in the Cento Open. I did fairly well, gained a bit of rating and even got a small rating prize. I was also close to getting WIM norm - I just had to win in the last round for that. Unfortunately I lost, mainly because of my bad clock handling. The last round was quite early in the morning unlike all other rounds, so I think I wasn't awake enough! I don't like early mornings!! The other interesting thing was that in the first round I was paired against the legend of the Soviet Chess School - GM Oleg Romanishin. I lost but we were one of the last games to finish. It's a bit unfortunate that because the game was so long, there was no time or energy to analyse the game with Oleg - we had to rush to dinner which had already started!

Now lets have a look at some interesting moments from my games in that tournament. Can you find the winning move that I played (white to move)? The solution is below the diagram.

M. Yurenok (2092) - S. Lagrotteria (2183)

Cento Open, 12th February 2011

I didn't have much time left but I noticed the right move, I played:

28.Rxb4! using the weakness of the black's king. E.g. 28...Rxb4 29.Qxb4 Rxb4 30.Ra8+ and checkmate two moves later.

This surprised my opponent and he started thinking, so I started thinking too, to double-check if I missed anything. To my horror I realised that things were not as simple as they seemed. I noticed that instead of 29...Rxb4 black can play 29...Qc7! and now the problem is that it's my own king who's in trouble. So if I move my queen to defend the back rank 30.Qe1, then black can just take my rook 30...Qxa5 31.Qxa5 Rb1+ and checkmate the next move. Oh dear! While I was contemplating that I might have to give up my queen for the black rook via something like 30.Qxb8 my opponent played a different 29th move and I won with an extra piece. But I shouldn't have worried anyway, because white still wins after 29...Qc7 with a clever 30. Nd7!! (30.Nb7 is also good) and black loses again because of back rank problems.

Did you see the whole variation all the way to the end? Sometimes it's easy to see the first move but it must be checked thoroughly to the end if you don't want to end up in trouble. Correct calculation to the end is hard, and that's often where stronger players outplay their opponents. Here is my photo at the beginning of that game.

The next one is an endgame which I saw coming in advance and thought was winning. What do you think? It's white's move.

M. Yurenok (2092) - E. Burani (1874)

Cento Open, 6th February 2011

After the game I asked my IM partner Simon Ansell about his assessment of this endgame. He thought it should be winning for white. During my game, more I thought - more I realised that this endgame is drawn! It's hard to believe, but white king cannot easily get around black's king to get the h pawn. As long as black king stays in the centre covering squares f4 and e3 depending on the position of white's king (because that's one of the squares white king wants to get to), then black is doing well. The game continued:

52.Kf2 Kf4 53.Bg5+ Ke4 54.Ke2 Kd4 55.Bf4 Ke4 56.Be3 Kf5 this is the position I was aiming for, but having reached it I realised that it's drawn anyway. My idea was to play 57.Kd3 here, but after some calculation I realised that black will force a draw by: 57...g3 58.Ke2 Kg4 59.Bg5 Kh3 60.Kf1 g2+ 61.Kg1 Kg3 =  There's nothing white can do to improve the position! My opponent didn't have much time left, so I decided to play some other moves before committing myself into the forced drawing variation. The game continued:

57. Bh6 Ke4 58.Kf2 Kd3 59.Kg3 Ke4 60.Bc1 Kd3?? (My lucky day! My opponent must have seen a ghost.) 61.Kf4 Ke2 62.Ba3 1:0  So it's worth playing on in drawn positions if you are putting your opponent under pressure to defend correctly.

On the last day of the tournament there was a carnival in Cento, but I missed that and instead went to Bologna where I got stuck in a taxi on the way to the hotel because there was anti-Berlusconi demonstration in the centre! Apart from that Bolgona turned out to be a very nice city with wonderful food. I even went to a great cooking class there.

Chigorin Memorial Tournament Part 2

It's nearly the end of the tournament. I've got 2 out of 7 so far with 2 games to go. GM Volkov is the sole leader in the tournament with 6 points. I'm not looking forward to Saturday because the game will start at noon as compared to 5pm on all other days. That will be a bit of a shock to the system since I'd have to get up early to prepare. Most chess players seem to be night owls. Even a lot of very strong players like grandmasters stay up until late and get up in the afternoon! Here is the promised photo of me playing in the 4th round.

I've been out in the centre of St. Petersburg twice and really enjoyed it. It's nice to get out of the hotel into the fresh air. I've walked along Nevsky Prospekt to the Winter Palace and then around Kazansky Sobor and Isaakievsky Sobor (Cathedrals). Isaakievsky Sobor is especially beautiful inside and definitely worth the visit for anyone coming to St. Petersburg. And from outside it looks like this:

The European Team Championship has started yesterday. I wish good luck to all the men and women representing England! The women's team is represented by: IM Jovanka Houska, WIM Ingrid Lauterbach, WIM Natasha Regan, WFM Meri Grigoryan and WFM Sabrina Chevannes. I'd just missed out on the selection into the team, which is just as well since I need to get better at chess first! The British team league 4NCL is starting tomorrow and I wish best of luck to my team Betsson.com! I won't be participating in the first two rounds since I'll be still in St. Petersburg.

Finally, I'd like to bring your attention to GM Alexandra Kosteniuk's chess blog. In case you don't know - she's the current Women's World Champion and a great role model for women's chess. I check her blog every time I go on internet as it's updated frequently and provides a lot of interesting material to read. It ranges from chess analysis and puzzles, to chess news and discussion of important issues in chess. I especially recommend that you read her post from 17th October called "Abolish Women's Titles? Ridiculous!" I totally agree with her on this issue.