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!

Thank You!

I'd like to say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to my chosen charity "Save the Children", which I'm supporting as a part of my chess challenge. With your help we've already raised £325!! And if you haven't donated yet - why not? It's for a very good cause! My donations page for "Save the Children" is here, please have a look!

I didn't do too well in the Golders Green Rapidplay, I only got 2 out of 6 but had interesting games. The problem seemed to be getting short of time and then blundering or running out of time - not a good strategy in the rapidplay! But I managed to get 1 out of 2 against the Kings Indian without knowing the theory. It's always a good fun playing something you haven't played before. Now I need to look in the book to figure out how I should have played!

My next chess game will be on Thursday for the second Hackney team. I was promised a good game as I will be on one of the top boards there. Hmmm, I wonder what sort of opening I should experiment with this time... Apart from that I'm continuing my training. This week my focus is on practicing tactics and analysing my own games. Hopefully, reading "Positional Play" by Dvoretsky and Yusupov should help me in identifying positional mistakes in my own games. I hope you agree - positional analysis of own games is the hardest thing of all because a computer can't help you with that like with the tactics!

And on Wednesday I'll have a bit of time off from chess as I'm going to see Arctic Monkeys in Wembley Arena. Now I have very high expectations after seeing Green Day a couple of weeks ago! The other great thing is I'm going to a great Indian restaurant beforehand - I love Indian food! On Friday I also went to a gig with my friend Karen. Her Canadian boyfriend bought the tickets, but had to go away on business, so I agreed to come instead of him to see a Canadian band "Tegan and Sara" which I've never heard of before. Karen too hadn't seen them live and didn't know much about them apart from that they were twins. It didn't take me too long to figure out that something was a bit odd as I got a strange feeling I was witnessing the biggest congregation of lesbians I've ever seen. I have nothing against lesbians - just felt a bit out of place, in the same way a heterosexual bloke would feel when walking into a gay bar, I guess! I wouldn't even want to imagine what lesbians feel like by living in this predominantly heterosexual world... I quickly figured that Tegan and Sara were lesbians too - hence the big following. It was interesting to observe a bit of the world I've hardly ever seen before. It makes you appreciate once again that we should not forget how diverse people are and take it into consideration even when we go about our day-to-day business.

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.