January 4 NCL

I played at the 4NCL last weekend, for the first time this season. I had to miss the first weekend (two rounds) of the season due to the European Team Championship in November. I think I've already mentioned that my team has been re-named from Betsson.com to Blackthorne Russia because our new sponsor is the company called Blackthorne which specialises in exports to Russia. We even got our sponsor's t-shirts to wear, but I found out that my "small" size t-shirt was way too big for me, probably 4 sizes too big. In fact, it fitted my partner IM Simon Ansell rather perfectly, and he normally wears "medium" size t-shirts. I decided to stick with wearing my own clothes. Although it did cross my mind that I could possibly get away with wearing the t-shirt as a short dress, since it wasn't just big in the shoulders but also quite long!

So, what about the results? Simon and I did rather well, each gaining 1.5 out of 2. But our team narrowly lost both matches 3.5-4.5. This means that it would be near impossible for us to get into the championship pool after 7 rounds and instead we'd have to fight off relegation in the relegation pool. To get into the championship pool we'd probably have to win 3 remaining matches and in one of them we'd have to beat Wood Green who are currently top of our pool and very strong. In the 4th round they fielded GMs on all boards beating their main rival Guildford 1 in the process by 5.5-2.5. Here I am playing against John Sugden rated 2180 last Sunday.

Although I had a nice win on the Sunday, it was more of a technical win with a pawn up rather than something exciting to show. Instead, I'd like to show you how I managed to miss a clear win in my recent London League game when I was playing for Hackney 1 against Drunken Knights 2. I got into time trouble again! This was partly because I was trying to remember the theory in the gambit that my opponent played and partly because I was out of practice. In any case, it seems that this game served me well as I handled my clock rather well over the 4NCL weekend. White to move.

M. Yurenok (ECF 179) - G. Leyton (ECF 167)

London League, 9th January 2012

My opponent has just moved his queen from e7 to e8 which was a mistake. He should have played Bd6 instead. At this point I still had to make 9 moves to the time control while I had maybe 1 or 2 minutes left without increment. I was in desperate time trouble but managed to find the right move:

21. Rxc7! my idea was that if black plays 21...Kxc7 then I win some material with 22. Qc2+ Kb8 23. Bd6+ Ka8 24. Bxe5 +- and there are still more threats as f6 knight is pinned and hanging. It seems I didn't notice that I can actually deliver a typical checkmate in this variation with 24. Nb6+ axb6 25. Qa4# I guess this is not too important if I'm clearly winning anyway. And in any case, black didn't have to retreat with the king on the 22nd move, but could give up the same piece differently with 22...Nc6 avoiding the checkmate. So, my opponent played:

21...Bxb5 I expected this move as I mistakenly thought it was the best reply, so I pre-planned my answer worrying that my flag might fall before I can make it to 30 moves. I immediately replied with:

22. Rxb7? =/+ this gives up all of my advantage. When you're short of time, simple and obvious moves are missed. I didn't think of moving my rook the other way, now that the bishop has left d7. The correct move was 22. Re7 At this point my computer announces +8 winning advantage for white. Oh dear :( Black can respond with 22...Bxa4 attacking my queen in return, and here the simplest for white is just 23. Rxe8 Bxd1 24. Rxh8 Rxh8 25. Rxd1 emerging with a clear piece up. My game eventually ended in a draw and my team lost 5-7. Strange that we beat the stronger Drunken Knights 1 team with 9-3 score earlier in the season!

For the past couple of days I've been following some of the Tata Steel Chess live tournament games on their website and I discovered something. They have Houdini engine giving evaluation of every move made, and it seems that even grandmasters sometimes go passed +8 advantage! Ok, not super-grandmasters but still strong players. For example, look at the GM Brandenburg - IM Grover game from round 3 in group C, which ended in a draw and where each opponent had +8 advantage at some point according to Houdini! I don't feel so bad after all :) There are lots of serious mistakes in other games too which can be fun to watch, but then anyone is clever with the help of a computer. I actually prefer listening to commentary by strong players who don't use computers, like they had in the World Cup with GM Shipov for example.

More From My Games

I played a few games in the past couple of weeks. First of all, I played at the first weekend of the 4NCL 2010-11 season (British team league). My team Betsson.com did very well as we won both matches. If we continue like this we should end up in the top half of the 1st division after 7 rounds. For the past two years we were the winners of the bottom half and felt we could do better. I did ok by drawing both of my games against similarly rated opponents, but I could have posed more problems for both of my opponents. Unfortunately, getting into the time trouble didn't help - I need to sort that out!

I also played a game for Hackney 1 team in the top division of the London League. We were outrated by our opponents Wood Green on every board (apart from the bottom borad 12 which was unrated), but somehow we managed to draw the match! Unfortunately, I lost my game against strong IM Mohamed Tissir on board 5 but not without missing some winning chances on my side. The time limit is fairly fast in the London League - 1hr 15mins for 30 moves followed by 15mins to finish and that again proved to be the deciding factor for me. With maybe a minute left on the clock I managed to miss an easy draw and a less easy win in this position - how annoying! Think about how you would have played in this position, black to move. I will provide the solution in the next post.

M. Tissir (226 ECF/2474 FIDE) - M. Yurenok (178 ECF/2071 FIDE)

Wood Green - Hackney 1

London League, 10th November 2010

There' been a lot of exciting chess going on recently with the Tal Memorial and the blitz afterwards. I'm glad that Sergey Karjakin got a share of the first prize with Levon Aronian in the main tournament. Aronian did very well to win the blitz tournament as well. I wish I had more time to watch the games - but can't do that during working hours! Currently I'm following the Russian Women's Superfinal Championship. Nadezhda Kosintseva is leading with 3.5 out of 4.

Now it's time to reveal the solution for the position published in the last post. Some of you might have noticed that the correct solution was already suggested in the comments to the last post. So here is the position again:

N. Relea (2193) - M. Yurenok (2071)

Cap d'Agde, 27th October 2010

I should have played:

52...Kh5! - it's not easy to let go of conventions and see that attacking with the king wins here even with queens and rooks present! White has two options:

53. Rg5+ Qxg5! 54. hxg5+ Rh4 55. Qxh4 Kxh4 and this pawn endgame is winning for black because white can't do anything with his extra pawn on the queenside. For example: 56. Kg2 Kxg5 57. Kg3 Kh5 58. Kh3 g5 59. Kg3 g4 60. Kg2 Kh4 61. b4 g3 62. Kg1 Kh3 63. Kh1 g2+ 64. Kg1 Kg3 65. c3 dxc3 and black checkmates in two.

or

53. Rxf4 Qxf4+ 54. Kg2 (or 54. Kg1 Qg4+) Qxh4 55. Qf3+ Qg4+ and white can't avoid exchange of queens leading again to the won pawn ending for black.

I also promised to show you an interesting double rook endgame  from another one of my games in Cap d'Agde. I know a lot of people think that endgames are boring, but double rook endgames are notoriously complex. This example is no exception, besides I think it's quite entertaining as both sides are trying to queen their pawns. Have a look at this position, black to move:

S. Pham Guerrero (2199) - M. Yurenok (2071)

Cap d'Agde, 29th October 2010

Earlier on white's endgame was quite a bit better, but he was probably trying to win too hard and allowed me to have substantial counterplay on the kingside. Here I played 42...Re3! White thought for quite a while as I guess he realised that he was now in trouble and he responded with the only move 43. b6 But even after this move black is winning. Try to find black's next move and the supporting variations leading to a win. I suggest you analyse it with the board as there are several rather complicated variations, but if you can calculate it all in your head - well done! I wasn't able to find the correct continuation and only drew the game. I hope you'll enjoy analysing this and I'll tell you what should have happened in my game in my next post.

Home and Away

In the past week I've played two league games. I've won both times and I think I can get used to this :) My Surrey League opponent was significantly lower rated than me at 122 ECF, so the game wasn't particularly challenging. However, I decided to have a bit of fun with my black pieces and played an unusual variation I've never played against the Torre Attack. So that kept me entertained as I wasn't quite sure what I was doing. That line certainly surprised my opponent enough to give me a lasting advantage out of the opening. My Sandhurst team also won easily 4.5 : 0.5.

And in the London League I won against 206 ECF - nice achievement for me! I was playing QGD for white quite well and had a slight advantage throughout the game. However, I messed things up in the endgame when I started getting short of time (quick play finish has some downsides!) Nevertheless, my opponent was the last one to make a mistake as he missed a checkmate in one instead of winning rook and pawn endgame. Well, we both had about 1min left on the clock (without increment) and luck was on my side :) My Hackney team did very well and lost only 7:5 against much stronger opposition. Unfortunately our last board defaulted, otherwise maybe we could have drawn...

I've been watching the World Cup every day as I seem to be addicted to it, but I think it's probably good chess training for me anyway. There are very interesting interviews on the World Cup website as well, and only a fraction of them end up on the Chessbase website, so it's definitely worth checking out. They've just published an interesting interview with GM Tkachiev. Unfortunately, it's only in Russian at the moment, so watch out for it to be translated - probably in the next few hours, as the World Cup website seems quite efficient. Also a few days ago GM Ivanchuk got knocked out of the Word Cup and he gave a very interesting interview threatening to quit chess. Thankfully, he seems to be feeling better now as he said he'd be back. Chess can be just as dramatic as any other sport!

I was very impressed with Judit when she won her second slow play game on demand against GM Gelfand in a very nice attacking style. Unfortunately, she lost in the rapidplay but not without creating significant complications out of nothing in the last game, in what looked like a totally hopeless position for her. That woman has amazing fighting abilities and imagination! Anyway, it's very interesting to see how grandmasters realise their advantage or make mistakes and miss their opportunities. I try to guess their moves and on occasion I find better ones than the players, so they are human after all :)

Chess Addiction

The line-up for the women's round robin alongside in the London Chess Classic festival has been confirmed as follows:

Susan Lalic (England) IM 2310
Arianne Caoili (Australia) WIM 2206
Arlette van Weersel (Netherlands) WIM 2193
Elena Winkelmann (Germany) 2119
Maria Ikonomopoulou (Greece) 2065
Sabrina Chevannes (England) WFM 2042
Olivia Smith (Wales) WFM 2026
Camille de Seroux (Switzerland) 1989
Maria Yurenok (England) WFM 1968
Denise Frick (South Africa) WIM 1920

The webpage for the tournament is here: http://www.londonchessclassic.com/festival_events/womens_invitational.htm

Well, last week I played for the second Hackney team on the second board and I won against the King's Indian in 26 moves. My opponent had the same ECF rating as me and that was my first attempt to play against the King's Indian in a slow play. I think I can get used to it :) My team won as well :) And after that it was nice to have a couple of drinks in a pub and have a chance to analyse my game with chess players much stronger than me (from the first Cavendish team). My next chess game will be in the Surrey league on Thursday.

Also last week Simon and I went to the Arctic Monkeys gig in the Wembley Arena. The gig was ok, but quite far from amazing entertainment by Green Day. Our side seats unfortunately had an obstructed view because of huge speakers hanging from the ceiling. So, I couldn't see the lead singer during most of the gig. But at least I couldn't complain about the loudness of the sound!

I did one more thing last week, I went to the National Gallery with my friend Sheila. Can you believe it, I've never been there before despite living in London! It's certainly worth seeing and it's free. I think we went around everything in 2.5 hours, although we got a bit tired towards the end and raced through the 15th and earlier centuries section. Anyway, I find paintings from later centuries much more interesting and realistic. I didn't notice any Russian paintings though, so perhaps the National Gallery should think about buying some.

Back to chess. The Chess World Cup is in progress in Khanty-Mansiysk in Russia. Incidentally, that's where the next year's Chess Olympiad will be held as well. I've been watching some games online and it's rather addictive. There are a number of chess players that I support (mainly Russian in absence of any English ones in the tournament), and I find it hard to stop watching and walk away from my computer, especially during tie breaks! It makes me feel a bit guilty, as I'm supposed to be doing something productive... Do you think watching the World Cup classifies as chess training?? I am, of course, supporting the women as well. Sadly, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk and GM Hou Yifan are out and only GM Judit Polgar is remaining. However, Hou Yifan did put up a very good fight against much stronger GM Arkadij Naiditsch. Come on Judit!

The London League

Yesterday I won my game for Hackney in the London League against an opponent of the same ECF rating as me. It was especially nice to win because I was on the white side of Benoni for the first time in my life, without any preparation. Basically, I'm fed up with boredom playing the Torre Attack or other similar non-main lines with white. I've only been playing those because I haven't been spending any time on learning chess in the past 6 or 7 years. Now that I'm being serious about chess - it's time to play more ambitious main lines! So, my coach Simon Ansell told me just to play d4 and c4 and not to worry about not knowing the theory. It turned out to be a very good advice as I managed to figure out the first 12 moves of theory anyway at which point my opponent deviated from the theory by making an inferior move and made a losing mistake the move after. Maybe my memory isn't as bad as I think if I remember how to play Benoni without ever learning it. Unfortunately, my team lost but I'm sure we'll win next time.

What really puzzles me about the London League is why it is still possible to adjourn the games. Chess has speeded up and we need to keep up with the current trends to allow our players to get used to the faster time limits to be more competitive in the wider world. Probably only in England we still use adjournments while the rest of the world has got rid of that rule a long time ago. Perhaps I should start a campaign to abolish adjournments in the London and other English Leagues! While I'm on the subject of time limits for a game, I also think that 4NCL games should be speeded up to at least 2hr for 40 moves + 1 hour to the end, abolishing additional 30 minutes. And if 4NCL could obtain enough electronic chess clocks, then we should move to the incremented time limit like most international tournaments.

Bob did bring me whole 4 books about the "mystery" opening that I'm going to learn. Simon's advice is the same - just play it and learn from books afterwards... That may not be very scary with white, but with black there is more chance of getting into serious trouble! So, perhaps I'd test it out on the ICC and in the rapid plays before using in a long play game.

I'm currently making plans for my future tournaments. My next tournament would be the women's invitational alongside the London Chess Classic in December, and at the end of December I'm off to Hastings. Beyond that I'm struggling to make my choice as I have several options. I could go either to Gibraltar or to Moscow. There is the Moscow Open starting at the end of January which is directly followed by the Aeroflot Open. It's a rather good deal because I'd have two tournaments and would fly to Moscow only once. But I haven't experienced Russian winter for 16 years and might not enjoy the cold weather... The other dilemma is whether I shouldn't be playing so much chess and should be training instead. I think I'll see how my November training is coming along before deciding what to do about February.

Home at Last!

I'm so happy to be back to my lovely home in London! And very happy to be re-united with my cat who is expertly using psychological extortion to get as much tuna from me as she can possibly eat, because she knows I feel guilty for leaving her at the cattery for a month. I arrived on Saturday but still feeling jet-lagged. Despite that I have been very productive - I couldn't wait to get on with things! It was very nice to see my grandparents and other relatives in Russia. I nearly got into a very embarrassing situation as my granddad nearly beat me at chess. He's almost 80 years old and always very keen to play when I come to visit. At the end I managed to win but had to think very hard for it!

Last night I went out with my friend Laura to the Green Day gig at the Wembley Arena. It wasn't appreciated that Transport for London decided to close down all tube routes to the Wembley Arena for engineering works, but hey - I'm not as easily confused as a tourist! The gig itself was just amazing, one of the best gigs I've ever seen! Billie Joe Armstrong doesn't just sing great live, he entertains the audience all the time as well. And they did that for over 2.5 hours without a break - so that must have been the longest indoor live performance I've seen by a band. I wonder what these guys are on and if it's legal ;) The sound quality was brilliant as you'd expect in the Wembley Arena. The only slight disappointment I had was that I felt the music wasn't loud enough for me because the seats were at the back of the Arena. Although, that was probably a good thing for my ears. I should have got closer and more expensive seats, as this gig was worth two gigs of any other band. Actually, seats were pretty useless this time as I ended up standing pretty much throughout the gig. I was also a bit surprised to see a little girl on the seat next to me, she was about 10-12 years old. Billie Joe certainly gave her an alternative English lesson which demonstrated that a certain four letter word should be used no less than 3 times in every sentence! As I was writing this I got an e-mail advertising that Green Day will have a Wembley Stadium gig in June. Should I get the tickets or shouldn't I? What if I end up going to some chess tournament at the same time? Hmmm... I think if you haven't been to a good live gig - you haven't lived! It's so much better than listening to the music at home!

Back to chess. My next game is for Hackney in the London league on Wednesday. I always have a quick dinner with Simon Ansell beforehand, so it would be good to catch up on the news from the 4NCL. And our Hackney captain Bob Eames is bringing me some useful chess books from his very extensive library, since I decided to learn a new opening. Not telling you which one :) Maybe I'll manage to surprise someone with it!

Chess and Fitness

As expected, Stereophonics were great on Monday. It was a bit of a strange gig because half of the songs were very old and the other half were from their new album due to come out in a couple of months. It's always a bit harder to get into it if you've never heard the songs before as you can't sing along! All it means is that I'll have to buy the new album, learn the songs and go to their gig again :) I'm sure they'll do a few gigs after release of their album. And my Green Day tickets came through the post today - that'll be the next gig I go to.

Most chess players would agree that keeping fit is important to their success. I think that the old saying "healthy body equals healthy mind" is quite appropriate for chess players. I don't really do any sports apart from going to the gym. I never used to like it as I always thought it's quite boring, but in absence of any better ideas I started going to the gym quite regularly from last year. In fact, I found that competing against myself was a good motivator. What that means is that with every session I tried to increase weights and go faster on cardio machines. So I really enjoyed the gym to start with because it was easy to make a lot of progress at the beginning. But now I don't seem to be able to up the game against myself and I'm really finding the gym a hard work. Loss of motivation made me rather lazy and I hardly went to the gym over the summer. It didn't help that the gym's air conditioning didn't seem to make much difference in the hot weather! Well, with that kind of attendance - no surprise I'm not making any progress. I've started going regularly again, and hope to step it up a notch during my sabbatical. Starting a day in the gym definitely improves my energy levels.

It's only one week before I fly to play chess in Switzerland. In these last few days my main learning focus will be tactics. However, yesterday I spent a while listening to several lectures on the ICC. Every week I try to listen to the "Game of The Week" by GM Joel Benjamin and "Attack with Larry C" by GM Larry Christiansen. I highly recommend those. I've also prepared some new opening lines for the Uxbridge Congress, but no one played those against me! Typical! Well, I have one more chess game to play before I go to Switzerland. And if one of my new lines doesn't come up again, then I'll just have to practice on the ICC. That game will be on Monday for the Hackney club in the London league. It's the first game of the season and it will be against the Richmond club. If any of my team-mates are reading - good luck to all of them!

Cats and Birds

It's the start of the new chess season for team competitions and I'm looking forward to catching up with friends, some of whom I haven't seen since the spring. I'm also looking forward to one of the great 4NCL traditions followed by many teams - Indian curry dinners! 4NCL is the British team league in case you don't know. I currently play for two teams: for Hackney in the top London league and for Betsson.com in the top division of 4NCL. I've also been recently invited to play in the Surrey Border and Berkshire Leagues for Sandhurst CC, but won't be able to make their September matches. I wonder if I'm taking on too much!

It's still 2.5 weeks to go before the start of my sabbatical and currently I mostly work from home. Earlier this week my work was briefly disturbed by a noisy commotion in my garden. I came outside to find that my 8.5 year old slightly overweight cat somehow managed to catch a pigeon! There were feathers flying everywhere. Not quite sure how I managed to rescue the poor pigeon and lock my cat inside. But then I became very worried that the pigeon won't be able to fly again as he kept pacing around the garden not flying anywhere. He also ignored the bread I tried to feed him. He must have been in a state of shock, but after about 10 minutes he took off. He was lucky, as I'd already found a small dead bird in my conservatory earlier in the summer...

My cat is a girl called Koozya. Russian speakers among you would be a bit surprised about this because Koozya is a male name, but I liked it! She's definitely become a bit more active since I've put her on the diet a few months ago, even though her age is now equivalent to 50 human years! She's on the diet because I don't want her to get diabetes or other serious health conditions. Here she is - my gorgeous, loving cat with murderous tendencies:

She's very good at chess too - she just throws pieces off the table early in the morning to wake me up, so that I feed her. She's a bit obsessed with food, so no wonder she's trying to supplement her dinners from outside. I know what's going to be next on her menu - she's been eyeing up the local grey squirrel for quite a while. I'd rather she kills off all spiders in the flat.

And finally, I'm playing in the Golders Green rapidplay tomorrow. I don't even have a rapidplay rating because I haven't been playing in these kind of tournaments for ages. I'll let you know how I get on in a couple of days.