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.

Italian Chess Festival "City of Roseto"

Can you believe it, this chess adventure turned out to be even more successful for me than the one in Thailand. I played in the Masters section which was reserved for players above 2000 rating but they let myself and another girl in as an exception, even though we were just below 2000 rating. They probably think that they made the right decision as I got 5 points out of 9, gained my first WIM norm with a round to spare and drew with a GM for the first time! My rating performance was 2311 against the average opposition of 2268 which included two GMs, two IMs and an FM, gaining me 47 rating points. You can see the final rankings table here which shows that overall I came 14th despite being seeded second from the bottom (37th) at the beginning of the tournament. I didn't get a cash prize despite being the best performer in under 2200 rating section because rating prizes were reserved exclusively for Italians. However, I was given a big 2kg Italian cheese which tastes fantastic! I was also the best woman performer. Apart from all that I got to play against the legendary GM Evgeny Sveshnikov who originally came from Chelyabinsk in Russia (like myself) but now lives in Latvia. Long time ago back in Russia I even attended his 2-week chess school once, when it had a joint session with GM Panchenko's school. He's best known for his theoretical developments in the Sveshnikov Sicilian and in the c3 Sicilian. Here is a photo of me with the GM Evgeny Sveshnikov J

The tournament itself was very well organised. I thought it was great that in the Masters section most boards were electronic, transmitting games live on the internet. I also really enjoyed living very close to the sea, near a very nice and shallow sandy beach with beautifully clean water. Even though the weather was up to 30 degrees Celsius on some days the water was quite a bit colder than in Thailand, but once you got in - it was very enjoyable. You only had to walk a few minutes along the beach to reach an area with no one around. It was also quite easy to get to the resort as there were direct flights from London Stanstead to Pescara with Ryanair, and the resort had a complimentary pick up/drop off service for the airport. It was also great to have a kitchen in our small bungalow and a shop nearby, which meant that I could get up late and make my own breakfast and lunch whenever I wanted! Of course, there was a restaurant as well which we used for dinner. I think I would recommend this resort especially for chess playing families as there seemed to be a lot of things to do for children. Hiring a car would give a lot of additional options to explore beautiful countryside with mountains and national parks nearby.

Now, more detail about my performance at the tournament. The time control was 1.5 hours for 40 moves plus 30 minutes to finish, with 30 seconds added after each move. I was white in the first round against an Italian FM Carlo Barlocco rated 2156. I couldn't prepare for the first round as there wasn't enough time after the pairings came out. However, I was lucky to get a Nimzo-Indian position which I discussed with my coach GM Chris Ward only three days before. After playing quite well I got into a bit of time trouble at which point my opponent who had about half an hour more decided to trap his own queen. I didn't mind that at all as it netted me a knight and I won soon after!

In the second round I was again playing white against one of three girls in the tournament - Maya Porat from Israel rated 2182. My preparation paid off this time as I got the position I was looking for against the Benoni Defence. In fact this was probably my best game as I thought it flowed very nicely from the beginning to the end netting me a point. I will aim to publish an analysis of this game in my next post.

In the third game I was black against a young Italian IM Axel Rombaldoni rated 2436. We went down a long theoretical line in the Taimanov Sicilian. My opponent was clearly under pressure to win and sacked a pawn for not enough compensation. However, the position was far from straightforward and I got lost in complications losing a point. Later, GM Sveshnikov told me I should have won that game. Even though I never had a decisive advantage it was enough to pose serious problems for white.

In the fourth game I was white against a Phillipino IM Virgilio Vuelban rated 2369. This felt like it was my worst game as I didn't play that well in the opening and made positional mistakes in the middlegame. I eventually lost this game after giving up too many pawns for an attack.

After losing to two IMs in the previous rounds I was surprisingly paired with the Latvian GM Evgeny Sveshnikov in the fifth round, rated 2493. He didn't have a very good start to the tournament which gave me this chance of a lifetime to play against him. It was quite funny as he prepared to play with black while he didn't realise he had to play white. It wasn't important at the end as he won by playing e4, c3 variation against my Sicilian. He's made a lot of theoretical developments in this variation and probably knows it better than anyone in the world. I could have played something completely other than the Sicilian but I thought it was a great opportunity to learn something useful from this opening's expert himself. I got some very useful insights including his analysis of a certain position that could have occurred and which he analysed when he was GM Karpov's assistant for his second match against GM Kasparov. All this would make me better prepared next time I face c3 Sicilian.

In the sixth round I had black against an Italian player Amilcare Lauria rated 2116. After a complicated game in the Hedgehog I emerged better off after the first time control. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to convert my advantage after my opponent correctly sacrificed an exchange for a pawn and the game was drawn.

In the seventh round I had white against the tournament's organiser and an Italian player Nicola Pienabarca rated 2097. My opponent surprised me with the Albin Counter-Gambit but I managed to figure it out over the board even though previously it has only occurred in my blitz games. I got a better endgame and my two bishops advantage brought me a point in the end. It was a very important game to win to continue having a chance of a WIM norm. I still needed to be paired with another titled player to get the norm, while those titled players (GMs, IMs, FMs) tended to hang around the top of the tournament table!

In the eighth round I had black against a German player Claus Seyfried rated 2087. This was yet another Taimanov Sicilian for me which gave me a slightly better endgame. I was very happy with how I played the endgame preventing my opponent's plan. In the end my opponent got into time trouble, got himself into a cramped position and made a decisive mistake. Again, this was a very important game to win to have a chance of a WIM norm.

In the final round I was paired with the Russian GM Igor Naumkin rated 2480 (there's a photo of me above during the game). This meant that I achieved my WIM norm already and could just enjoy a rare opportunity to play a GM. I had white and my opponent played the Classical Dutch which I expected. I played very well in a prophylactic way preventing my opponent's plan and got a better position. I chose to force a draw but was told by my coach GM Chris Ward and by my boyfriend IM Simon Ansell that I should have tried to win. I'm looking forward to my training session with Chris next Tuesday to get a deeper understanding and analysis of the position.

Now I'm back to England taking it easy for a few days before getting back to chess training. Tournaments like this are quite tiring but this time I felt more relaxed during the tournament. That's probably because I feel that I'm making much better moves than before (Rybka and Chris agree J) and have much more confidence when playing strong titled players. Finally, you can have a look at my WIM norm certificate on the right. It has a couple of small errors (like place of birth and number of titled players) which will be corrected by the tournament Arbiter before he submits it to the FIDE.

When I originally published this post I completely forgot to mention that the tournament was won by the ex-Soviet chess legend GM Oleg Romanishin from Ukraine. He got 7 points, half a point ahead of the top seed GM Vladimir Epishin from Russia and IM Misa Pap from Serbia.