London Chess Classic Tournaments

It's nearly Christmas time, so Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it! Even after years of living in England I'm still not that excited about Christmas, I don't even like all the fuss in the shops and on TV in the run-up to Christmas. However I like to have a few days off work and nice food and drink on the day! I'm also not against receiving nice presents :)

Back to chess then. London Chess Classic finished last week and, amazingly, Magnus Carlsen won the main tournament outright despite losing two games and gaining the same number of points (4.5) as Vishy Anand and Luke McShane under the usual points scoring system! Unfortunately for Vishy and Luke, London Classic used the football scoring system of 1 point for a draw and 3 points for a win. I think it's quite disappointing especially for Luke who had the best result of his chess career as in reality he shared the first place with Vishy - the World Champion and Magnus - the second rated guy in the world (whom he beat)! Nevertheless, I congratulate Luke on this fantastic achievement and wish him more of the same kind of success to come. I was lucky enough to see some of the post-game analysis presented by the players and, as usual, Nigel Short provided the most entertainment despite having a disappointing tournament. Anyway, I hope that the London Chess Classic organisers would change the scoring system back to traditional next year as it's hard to see any advantages of the football scoring system in a short tournament of 7 rounds like this.

Same as last year, Ray Morris-Hill took many nice photos of the participants in all tournaments of the London Classic. Here is the favourite one of me :) You can see more photos on his website.

The London Classic FIDE Open was won by two English grandmasters Simon Williams and Gawain Jones (7.5 points out of 9) while Women's IM norm round-robin tournament was won by WIM Arlette Van Weersel (8 points out of 9) and I congratulate all of them on their great success. English WFM Sarah Hegarty narrowly missed achieving WIM norm as she needed to win in the last round, but it was still a great result and experience for her.

I did quite well in the FIDE Open, gaining 4.5 points out of 9 and gaining about 12 rating points. I got to play against GM Aaron Summerscale and IM Gary Quillan and drew against Gary on a white side of a complicated Benoni game. I haven't analysed my games in detail yet, but will do a bit more next week to see if there is anything interesting worth publishing. It's nice to end the year on the high note, as by the end of this year I managed to gain 139 rating points from my lowest rating point of 1953 in March this year! I plan to continue working on improving my chess and now aim to get to 2150 rating as soon as I can.

Finally, there are two interesting chess tournaments currently in progress. Women's World Championship final is against two Chinese players Hou Yifan and Ruan Lufei. Hou Yifan is leading 1.5:0.5 after two games with two games to go. While I expected Hou Yifan to do well, Ruan Lufei was a surprise finalist even to herself as it seems from her interviews. The other interesting tournament is the Russian Men's Superfinal where Sergey Karjakin is leading with one round to go. I'm hoping that Hou Yifan and Sergey Karjakin win their respective tournaments and I will enjoy watching the last few games.

News and Solutions

Well, the Russian Women's Superfinal Championship was won by IM Alisa Galliamova for the second year running. She won on tie-break after finishing equal first with WGM Natalia Pogonina and GM Tatiana Kosintseva. That's a very impressive result as the championship was very strong, including GM Alexandra Kosteniuk and IM Nadezhda Kosintseva among the other top players. Now, of course, all eyes are focused on the Women's World Championship in Turkey where Alexandra Kosteniuk will be defending her title. The tournament is held as a knock-out format which sometimes produces unexpected results. England is represented by IM Jovanka Houska and I wish her all the best. Jovanka is already through to the second round (her first round opponent had problems with travel due to bad weather) where she'll meet the top seed GM Humpy Koneru.

I was asked who is my favourite to win the Women's World Championship. I think top seeds are fairly evenly matched and it's quite hard to pick the eventual winner especially in the knock-out format where just one mistake could mean that you're out. I think that GM Hou Yifan will do very well and may even win the title. However, I'm supporting Tatiana Kosinteva and hope she'd get through to the final. I think it will be very hard for Alexandra Kosteniuk to keep the title but she has an amazing fighting spirit, so never know what may happen! Of course, there is a number of other very strong players who have a very good chance of winning the title, probably anyone from GM Viktoria Cmilyte and higher. I'm sure that the abundance of very strong players will make the whole event very exciting.

Now, lets see how I should have played in the two positions I presented in the last post.

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

Wood Green - Hackney 1

London League, 10th November 2010

The simple move that led to a draw was:

42...Qf6 43. Nxa7 (43. Kg1 Rxa6 -+) Rf1+ 44. Rxf1 Qxf1+ 45. Kh2 Qf4+ with the perpetual check.

However, I could have won with a lot more effort by:

42...Rxa6! leaving the Rook and the Queen an prise 43. Nxe7 is the best defense (43. Rxa6 Rf1+ 44. Kh2 Qg5 45. Rxg6 fxg6 46. Qd7+ Kh6 47. Qg4 Qf6 -+ and it's not possible to defend against the threat of 48...Qf2 and 49...Qg1# without serious material losses) 43...Rxa1+ 44. Kh2 Rff1 (threatening 45... Rh1#) 45. Qxe5+ f6 46. Qxa1 Rxa1 and it's a won endgame for black because white king is very passive, although admittedly black has to be a little careful and patient.

Example continuation could be 47. d4 Kf7 48. Nd5 Rd1 49. Nb6 Ke7 (not 49...Rxd4?? 50. c6 +-) 50. d5 Rc1 51. c6 Kd6 52. Nc8+ Kxd5 53. Ne7+ Kd6 54. Nxg6 Rc4 -+ and while there is still work to do, it's now more straightforward to finish the game so I won't go as far as the end here.

Lets have a look at the complicated double rook ending again:

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

Cap d'Agde, 29th October 2010

As I mentioned before, I played 42... Re3! The idea was that white can't take on e3 as in order to stop g pawn from queening white would have to give up too many of his own pawns. White correctly replied 43. b6 and now I played:

43...Rc8?! which only leads to a draw 44. b7 (only move) Rb8 45. Rxc6 Rxb7?! (46...Rxe5 was more accurate but I miscalculated it) 46. Rcxe6+ Kf7 47. Rxe3 dxe3 48. Rxe3 Re7! (the pawn endgame is luckily drawn because of black's g pawn) 49. Rg3 Ke6 50. Re3+ there's nothing better for white to do as otherwise black's king becomes active and it will attack white's weak pawns 1/2:1/2

However, I could have won this game by continuing:

43...axb6! 44. cxb6 Rb7 (44...Rc8 also wins now) 45. a5 (45. Ra8 Rxb6 46. a5 Rb4 47. Rxe3 dxe3 48. a6 Ra4 49. a7 Kg7 50. Kb3 Ra1 51. Re8 Rxa7 52. Rxe6 Ra1 53. Rxe3 Kf6 54. Kc4 Rf1 55. Kc5 Rxf4 56. Kxc6 Rf3 -+) 45...g3 ( 43...Rb8 also wins) 46. Ra8 g2 47. Rg8 Rg7 48. Rxg7 Kxg7 49. b7 g1Q 50. b8Q Qf2+ 51. Kc1 Re1+ 52. Rxe1 Qxe1+ 53. Kc2 Qc3+ 54. Kd1 Qxd3+ 55. Ke1 Qc3+ 56. Kf2 Qxa5 -+ it's a winning endgame for black even though there's still some work to do. To keep this simple, I didn't show many sideline variations which kept me entertained for quite a while with their complexities! But you are welcome to ask questions if something is unclear.

My next tournament is the London Classic Open which starts on Wednesday, 8th December. Same as last year, there will also be a closed WIM tournament but I decided to try my luck in the Open this time. Of course, the main attraction of the London Classic will be the super-grandmasters tournament, which this year will include the World Champion Anand as well as Carlsen, Kramnik, Nakamura and the top four English players like last year. And in the New Year I am planning to go to Italy to play in an Open there in February. But more about it later.

How Do You Evaluate a Position?

First of all, I have some exciting news. My friends at http://www.gingergm.com/ have created and posted a video from the London Chess Classic tournament held back in December. There are several interviews with grandmasters including Vladimir Kramnik! You will also notice a few shots of me in action :) So please do check out the video and let me know what you thought of it: http://www.gingergm.com/2010/02/10/interviews-at-the-london-chess-classic/

Tomorrow is the start of my all-play-all Challengers tournament at Uxbridge (near London). You can see the list of my opponents in the table here: http://www.e2e4.org.uk/international/2010/Uxbridge/group_fischer.htm
The tournament is quite intense with one round tomorrow and two rounds for the following 4 days. Yes, I'll be working hard during the Saint Valentine's Day. But I wish you a very happy Valentine's Day filled with lots of love! I'll update you on my tournament result towards the end of next week.

In the last post I published a puzzle (Yurenok- Peat). It was very easy and I'm sure all of you found the solution. My opponent resigned after: 21.Nxg6 because after 21...hxg6 22.Qxg6+ he either loses his queen 22...Bg7 23.Qxd6 or gets checkmated 22...Kh8 23.Rh3+ He could have moved his rook with 21...Rf7 but I guess he didn't fancy playing with two pawns down in a totally lost position!

I was asked the other day to describe how I evaluate a position. I'm sure you'd agree it's quite a complicated topic to discuss. I would be very interested to hear from you - my blog readers - how you would answer this question. My guess is there are as many answers to this question as there are chess players in the world!

During a game I don't systematically evaluate every weakness vs. every strength to come to a final evaluation. I do it more subconsciously than that, but if I was to "break down" my subconsciousness it would include all the things I know about what's good (e.g. bishop pair, etc) and what's bad (e.g. lack of space, etc) and my overall level of experience of the position in question. Some books suggest very detailed approach for position evaluation but I've never heard any decent chess players going through a tick list in their head!

My evaluations probably tend to range from "winning", to "better", to "about equal", to "complicated", to "difficult" to "lost". On top of that I consider my time spending situation and try to assess my chances realistically from that perspective. I'm also an optimist by nature so have a tendency to overestimate my chances sometimes. It's not that easy to cure this problem, but I'm trying. One of my friends IM Adam Hunt has given a good advice which went along the lines of: don't assess a position as "winning" or "losing", but rather assess as "white has better chances" or "black has better chances". His view is that is how top players evaluate positions if you listen to their after-game analysis. I think this advice certainly has some psychological value as it's much harder to re-adjust during a game if you thought you were winning earlier but didn't at the end, however it's not such a big psychological loss if you thought you only had better chances! Another related point is also in the wording - it's important to notice opponent's "chances" - something that I don't always pay enough attention to. Well, enough for now! Maybe with your help we can start a bit of a discussion on this topic.

Missed Opportunities

I'd like to show you two interesting positions from my games in the London Chess Classic festival. In both cases I didn't find the best continuation and ended up losing both games.

The first position is from my game against the top seed of the tournament, IM Susan Lalic. After a long positional struggle earlier in the game I ended up in the worse endgame. However, after some inaccuracies from Susan I could have made a draw at this point. Can you find the right continuation?

Maria Yurenok (1968) - Susan Lalic (2310)

11 December 2009
London Classic - Women's Invitational

The solution is quite simple:

51. Nd4! + (51. f7 also draws but unfortunately I played 51. Nc7+? Sadly for me, I only had a few seconds left on the clock to finish the game and there was no increment. Otherwise I should have found the solution.)

Unfortunate position of the black's bishop and a5 pawn means white would capture one of them. Now black must take one of white's pawns or she would be the losing side. E.g. 51... Kd7 52 f7; 51... Kf7 52. d7 and one of white's pawns queens.

51... Kxd6 52. f7 Ke7 53. Nc6 Kf8 54. Nxa5 Kxf7 55. h3 =

or

51... Kxf6 52. d7 Ke7 53. Nc6+ Kxd7 54. Ne5+ (or simple 54. Nxa5=) Kd6 55. Nxd3 =

The next example is a lot more complicated and I'm not sure if I would have found the solution if I had more time. It is, however, easier to find the solution when you know there is one, so try to find it before looking below.

Maria Yurenok (1968) - Maria Ikonomopoulou (2065)

14 December 2009
London Classic- Women's Invitational

I was looking at 23. Nxf7 for a while but it only leads to equality. Here is an example variation, which I didn't see anyway 23... Rxf7 24. Rxf7 Kxf7 25. Qg4! Qc6 26. Bd4 Ne4 27. Bxe4 dxe4 28. e6+ Qxe6 29. Qxe6 Kxe6 30. Bxg7 =

During the game I couldn't come up with anything better than moving my knight back with 23. Nf3 and I lost later in the time-trouble.

I did consider the winning move for a few seconds, but quickly dimissed it:
23. e6!

There are many variations to consider, but my favourite is with the queen sacrifice:
23... hxg5 24. exf7+ Rxf7 25. Rxf7!! gxh4 (25... Kxf7 26. Qh7 +-) 26. Rxg7+ Kf8 27. Bxg6 Nd7 28. Rf1+ Nf6 29. Bxf6 Qc4 30. Rf7+ Kg8 31. Bd4  +-

Other responses for black:
23... f5 24. Nf7 Nxe6 (24... Bxc3 25. Qxh6 Bg7 26. Qxg6 Ne4 27. Rxf5  +-) 25. Nxh6+ Bxh6 26. Qh6 d4 27. Qxg6 Ng7 28. Bxf5 Rxf5 29. Rxf5 dxc3 30. Qf7+ Kh8 31. Rf4  +-

23... f6 24. Bxg6 fxg5 (24... Qc6 25. Bf7+ Kh8 26. Rxf6! exf6 27. Bxf6 with unavoidable checkmate) 25. Rxf8 Rxf8 26. Bf7+ Rxf7 27. exf7+ Kxf7 28. Qh5+ Kg8 29. Qe8+ Kh7 30. Qf7 Ne6 31. Qf5+ Kh8 32. Qe6 (threatening 33. Qxh6) 32... Qd6 33. Qxd6 exd6 34. Bxa5  +-

I guess strong chess players would make 23. e6 move intuitively even if they haven't seen through all variations.

I'm going to historical Hastings tomorrow to play in the traditional international tournament there. Unfortunately I had to miss the first game, so will play only 8 games this time. I haven't done a lot of preparation, but I've enjoyed watching the Russian Championship Super Final for men and women in the past few days. With one round to go GM Grischuk leads in the men's and IM Galliamova in the women's. But, I think it's not fair that women's tournament has shorter time limit compared to men's. I wonder if that was for the entertainment value as there seems to be an awful lot of chess in time trouble.

My Cute Checkmate

I'm finally ready to show you some of my creations. Here is my third round game from the women's section of the London Chess Classic. I played with white against Olivia Smith from Wales, rated 2026. Our opening was Queen's Gambit Declined, Exchange Variation (D36). You can replay the whole game via an applet below. But here is the commentary with some insights into my thinking approach:

M. Yurenok - O. Smith
10 December 2009

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 d5 3. c4 e6 4. cxd5 exd5 5. Nc3 c6 6. Bg5 Be7 7. Qc2 Nbd7 (7... g6 is a good alternative for black, with the idea of 8...Bf5)

8. e3 h6?! (8...O-O is the usual move here, while 8...h6 looks a bit early)

9. Bh4 (9. Bf4 is also a good alternative with the idea of h3 and Ne5)

9... b6  I haven't come across this plan in this opening yet as I haven't been playing this opening for long. Black normally develops the pieces like: 0-0, Re8, Nf8 aiming for ideas around playing Ne4 or c5. While white either creates pawn minority attack on the queen side or aims for e4 push

10. Bd3 Bb7 11. O-O O-O Previous two moves were straightforward development, but now I have the key decision point. A minority attack may not have the usual effect as black would probably push c5 before my pawns get very far. I decided just to develop my rooks where I thought they would be useful if black plays c5, which I was expecting very soon. It's better than having no plan at all.

12. Rfd1 (12. Rad1 would actually be more precise as the other rook could be quite useful either on e or f file)

12... Re8 13. Rac1 Ne4 14. Bg3 is not the best move, but I had a plan in mind to get the e4 square back under my control and to put my knight on e5 followed by f4 and perhaps a kingside attack. A good alternative would have been: 14. Bxe4 Bxh4 15. Bh7+ Kh8 16. Bf5 Bf6 17. e4 g6 18. Bh3 +/=

14... Nxg3 15. hxg3 Nf6 16. Ne5 Bd6 17. f4 Bxe5 18. dxe5 This is the position I was going for at move fourteen

18... Nd7 (18... Ng4!? may be an interesting alternative)

19. Qe2 I want to swap my queen and bishop around to attack the enemy king. A good alternative would have been: 19. Bh7+ Kh8 20. Bf5 with e4 as an idea. Rybka suggests that here black should give up a piece with 20...Ne5 giving a slight advantage for white, but I doubt many humans would seriously consider this move and agree with computer's calm assessment.

19... Nc5 20. Bb1 Qe7 21. Kf2?! Aiming to put my rook on h1, but this turns out to be a bit slow. A good
alternative would have been: 21. e4 dxe4 (21... Red8 22. exd5 cxd5 23. Nb5 Ba6 24. Qc2 g6 25. Nd6 with nice position for white) 22. Nxe4 Nxe4 23. Qxe4 g6 24. Qa4 and black would struggle to defend all her pawns

21... Rad8 22. Qc2 g6 23. b4 Ne4+? (23... Ne6 and 23... Nd7 were perfectly fine. My opponent saw that by giving up a pawn she'd get it back, but I saw further than that)

24. Nxe4 dxe4 25. Qxe4 c5 26. Qc4 cxb4 27. Bxg6! This is what she missed.

27... Rc8 28. Qb3 Rxc1 29. Rxc1 Rd8 Black is threatening 30...Bd5 followed by taking on g6. Here I saw a very cute checkmate several moves ahead and I wanted it! Unfortunately it stopped me from thinking straight. I quickly discounted 30. Bd3! as a "bad" move, while there was actually nothing wrong with it - I just keep a healthy pawn. I could have spent a bit more than a few seconds looking at it to realise my wrong assessment, but my wishful thinking meant I already decided that my move was the only good move. I wanted a simple decision and I was hoping that my opponent would cooperate with getting into the checkmate - not a good approach to choosing a move!! I did realise that if my opponent didn't make the move I was hoping then I would end up in a rather complicated pawn and rook endgame with chances for both sides. I was a bit concerned that in this scenario I might actually lose because of the approaching time-trouble. Nevertheless, I played:

30. Qxf7+!? Qxf7 31. Bxf7+ Kxf7 32. Rc7+ Ke6?? That's the black's move I was hoping for and now I could relax being sure that I'm winning. But if black played a better move my win would have been far from straightforward 32... Ke8! 33. Rxb7 Rd2+ 34. Kf3 Rxa2 35. f5 b3 36. Rb8+! Not an easy move to find and other moves lead to an immediate draw, e.g. (36. e6 Ra5 37. e4 Re5 38. Rb8+ Ke7 39. Rb7+ Ke8 =; 36. f6 Ra1 37. e6 Rf1+ 38. Ke4 Rxf6 39. Ke5 Rf1 40. Rb8+ Ke7 41. Rb7+ =) 36... Ke7 37. f6+ Ke6 38. Re8+ Kf7 39. Re7+ Kf8 40. e6 Ra5 41. Rh7 Rf5+ 42. Ke4 Rxf6 43. Ke5 Rg6 44. Rf7+ Ke8 45. Rxa7 b2 46. Kd6 Kf8 47. Rf7+ Kg8 48. Rf1 Rxg3 white has winning chances, but it would be hard to win

33. Rxb7 Rd2+ 34. Kf3 Rxa2 35. Ke4 b3 nothing could have saved from checkmate (35... Rf2 36. g4)

36. f5# But how cute is this! 1-0

London Chess Classic Part 2

The tournament finished yesterday and I didn't do as well as I hoped. I only got 3.5 out of 9 and gained 6 rating points. I haven't analysed my games yet but I felt I was playing quite well in the first 6 rounds, and then I lost two games on the row - one of them quite badly. I found the tournament quite intense and very hard work. I don't know if I just run out of energy towards the end... I managed to switch my brain back on for the final game and drew after 5 hours of play. I also learnt a new opening during the tournament - the Dutch Stonewall, although I would normally avoid doing something like that during a tournament as there's too little preparation time as it is. I decided to do that because in this case I thought it saved me preparation time compared to what I would have had to do otherwise. I applied it as white and as black in the last two games and got decent positions out of the opening, but only got half a point from those two games. My opponents used exactly the same set-up against me in both games which certainly made it easier for me to play the second game. The whole tournament was very hard fought by all women and there were no short draws at all which seemed to entertain many spectators. There were also a lot of photographers who were mainly interested in the grandmaster tournament, but managed to take a lot of pictures of the women's tournament as well. Here I am in the fatal 7th game! (Photo by Ray Morris-Hill)

The tournament was won by WIM Arianne Caoili from Australia who got amazing 8 out of 9 points and finished 2 points clear of the rest of the field. I did lose my game to Arianne as she played a variation that no one has played against me before. I vaguely remembered what I was supposed to do and chose to sacrifice a pawn in the opening with a view of getting it back later on. That's a perfectly suitable plan if you know what you're doing, but I managed to go astray on move 9 and never got the pawn back, so in hindsight I should have just taken the pawn back straight away. We did play for the full 5 hours though! Here are the final standings of all players in the women's tournament.

Of course, the main event of the London Chess Classic festival was the grandmaster tournament which was won by GM Carlsen just ahead of GM Kramnik. On a couple of days I managed to finish my own games early enough to be able to watch grandmasters play and listen to their post-games analysis. I think the whole festival was organised very well and seemed to be very successful because of the number of visitors and the large variety of events (blitz, rapidplay, children's tournament, etc). The FIDE Open tournament was won by GM Hammer with 8 points, while England's IM Jovanka Houska got a shared second place with 7 points - a great result for women's chess! You can see results of all London Chess Classic festival events on their website.

After the tournament ended I went out with lots of chess players for a few well-deserved drinks and for a Chinese meal. It was nice getting up this morning and not worrying about having to prepare for another game! And tonight I have a Christmas meal with the team from work. Even though I'm on the sabbatical it would be nice to catch up with everyone. However, I have to get back to chess training from tomorrow as my next tournament is starting on 28th December in Hastings. So much to do but so little time!

London Chess Classic Part 1

Today was the start of the London Chess Classic festival and I'm glad that my anticipation and training is over and all I have to do now is play chess ... but play it well! I drew my game against Elena Winkelmann today. I was a bit better throughout the game, but couldn't find a way to progress and keep my advantage so I forced a draw. However, it's nice to get a good start in a tournament. My friend Denise Frick did even better and managed to win the game that she was losing! Denise is staying with me and it's great to have some company to discuss chess and to support each other during the tournament.

I finished my game quite early, so had plenty of time to watch games in the grandmaster tournament. By that time Kramnik was already a pawn down against Carlsen. Apparently he had problems with getting a British visa (how is that possible??) and that may have affected his state of mind. He eventually lost the game. I really hope he does well in the rest of the tournament. Short lost to McShane but I didn't stick around long enough to find out how exactly that happened. I thought it would end up being a draw as their position didn't seem to change much for a long time. The other two games were draws, but everyone kept wondering how Nakamura managed not to win against Ni Hua in what looked like a winning rook and pawn endgame. Of course, that happened because all rook endings are drawn :)

I haven't stopped following the World Cup. With fewer people it's less exciting but there are still some very interesting games. In semi-finals, Karjakin against Gelfand was very entertaining apart from the fact that I wanted Karjakin to win. At least Ponomariev managed to overcome Malakhov in today's tie-break. I saw their first two exciting rapid games and then I had to force myself to switch off the computer and go to my own tournament! So, the final will be Gelfand-Ponomariev. Come on Pono!

Tomorrow I'm playing against Arianne Caoili. Everyone knows that her boyfriend is GM Aronian and it seems he's arriving today to support her. So, will this super-GM find any holes in my openings that Arianne can use? Can't wait to find out!

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!

Training

I've been so busy trying to study positional chess that I've neglected my blog! I'm currently half way through reading "Positional Play" by Dvoretsky and Yusupov. It's a brilliant book and I really recommend it. I found the chapter on prophylactic thinking especially amusing - I would have never seriously thought of some of those moves if I was playing those games myself. So, I have a lot to learn. I've also revised how to win with a king, knight and bishop against a king in under 50 moves and in time pressure - so far that position has never happened to me but it would be annoying if it happened and I couldn't win! My next chess event is the Golders Green Rapidplay on Saturday - that would be a welcome fun break from all that chess studying at home.

This week Lawrence Cooper informed me of my opponents in the London Chess Classic Women's round robin tournament starting 8th December. I wonder when the drawing of colours will happen, so that I can prepare for my opponents... I've only played a couple of them before, so this is promising to be a very interesting competition. WIM norm is expected to be about 6.5 points out of 9. Here are the entrants so far:

Susan Lalic (England) IM 2310
Arianne Caoili (Australia) WIM 2206
Arlette van Weersel (Netherlands) WIM 2193
Maria Ikonomopoulou (Greece) 2065
Maria Teresa Arnetta (Italy) 2046
Sabrina Chevannes (England) WFM 2042
Camille de Seroux (Switzerland) 1989
Maria Yurenok (England) WFM 1968
Denise Frick (South Africa) WIM 1920
+ 1 other

As you can see, Lawrence is still looking for one more participant, so if there are any FIDE-rated women reading this blog and want to participate in this tournament - get in touch with Lawrence! You can find out how to contact him from here.

The main event in the London Chess Classic Festival will be the strongest chess tournament in London for 25 years, with eight very strong GMs: Magnus Carlsen, Vldimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Nigel Short, Michael Adams, Ni Hua, Luke McShane and David Howell. I hope I'll find some time away from my own tournament to observe live games of these fantastic chess players. There are several other chess tournaments and events scheduled during 8-15th December. You can find full details on their website here.