Puzzle and News

Well, I'm now booked to play in two Open tournaments: Reykjavik in Iceland towards the end of February and Bangkok in Thailand in April! It's great as I've never been to Iceland. And even though I've been to Thailand 3 years ago, I am also really looking forward to it because it will be a lot hotter than wintry England! IM Simon Ansell is also going and we will stay for a few extra days in each country to look around and explore.

I played a game on Tuesday for the 2nd Hackney team in the London League. I was actually playing on the first board, which is quite unusual for a woman! But I lost... I thought I was doing quite well, I played as white against the Queen's Indian for the first time. I seemed to get a good position out of the opening despite not knowing almost any theory on this opening. However, I blundered a pawn in the time-trouble and it was the end of it, especially since my opponent was playing quite fast and had a lot more time. He didn't have ECF rating, but his FIDE converted to ECF was about 193, so quite strong for me. The match is still on-going as one game was adjourned (yes! adjournments still happen in England!!!) with an extra pawn in the rook ending on my team's side. If we win that game we would draw the match, so it's a very important game. However, rook endings are notoriously hard to win.

This weekend I'm playing in a local London tournament in Barnet, not FIDE-rated. I thought I might as well get some practice since Barnet is fairly close to where I live. I will play two games on each of two days, so it's quite intense but good practice for clock handling before more serious Uxbridge all-play-all tournament in mid-February. And on Monday I'll be playing in the London League again, this time for the 1st Hackney team.

Here is a fairly simple puzzle for you from one of my games in Hastings, black to move. Can you find the winning continuation? Let me know if you can and I will post the solution in a couple of weeks.

G. Moore (1902) - M. Yurenok (1968)

3 January 2010, Hastings

Finally, I've had a training session with my new GM coach Chris Ward on Tuesday and it went well. I will be an expert in 1.d4 openings in no time, so watch out!!

Hastings Tournament

Happy New Year everyone! It's been very quiet on my blog for a while because I've been playing in Hastings - the oldest chess tournament in the world. The current venue is a large sports centre, that's why you can see basketball rings on the photograph below.

I wasn't able to play the first game and had an average performance in the rest of the tournament gaining 2.5 points out of 8 rounds and losing 10 rating points. However, I had some interesting games and will present those to you in a few days time. The tournament was won by four GMs on 7 points: Howell, Hebden (both English), Edouard (French) and Istratescu (Romanian). Here are the two of the four winners playing each other in round five: Howell - Istratescu ended in a win for Istratescu.

Hastings is a pleasant sea side resort in the summer, but in the winter the weather is quite miserable. There was a lot of heavy rain in the first few days and it turned into snow towards the end of the tournament. When it snows in England you can be sure that public transport stops normal operations. I guess many foreign chess players had trouble travelling back home because several airports were closed and trains were operating reduced service. There is still snow in England which has turned into dangerous ice on many footpaths and roads. This is set to continue for the coming days, creating the longest freeze in England for almost 30 years and causing all sorts of chaos across the country. I did go out for a walk around Hastings on one of the rare sunny days, however it didn't help me with my chess! Here are the ruins of the ancient Hastings Castle.

I was late for my first game (which for me was in the second round) by 20 minutes because I got lost trying to get to the venue despite leaving the hotel 15 minutes before the game. I've been to the Hastings tournament before, I think in 2001, but back then I had a car and getting around was very straightforward. This time I had to use my feet and my very wet and quickly disintegrating map in the cold Hastings rain. The streets in the centre of Hastings are quite complicated and many of them don't have signs, making it difficult to figure out where you are at any point in time. Even some Hastings residents couldn't point me in the right direction! Needless to say that Hastings is not the kind of place where you can easily flag a passing taxi. I was getting very worried, because default time was 30 minutes. Eventually someone helped me with the right directions and I arrived to my game red-faced and out of breath from all that quick walking. I eventually lost my game. Here I am once I'd calmed down a bit, seemingly not having it as tough as the chess player next to me - Petr Marusenko.

In the evening before the last round I participated in a themed blitz tournament, which was a part of The Killer Dutch DVD launch party. The DVD is presented by the very talented English GM Simon Williams who's been playing the Classical Dutch all his life. He has a very engaging presentation style and I thoroughly recommend for anyone to buy it. I've bought one! You can find more information about the DVD and how to buy it on Simon's website: http://www.gingergm.com/ The great thing about the blitz was that every game had to start with the moves 1.d4 f5 even if you've never played those moves before in your life! There were lots of fun Dutch-themed prizes like cheese and Advocaat liqueur. Even I got a prize for being the top woman in the blitz despite getting only 2.5 points. That reminds me that I should go and taste my prize, because I got some lovely Dutch peach schnapps! :) The winner of the blitz was GM Danny Gormally, but not before the play-off against my coach and good friend IM Simon Ansell. Here is a photo of their first play-off game.

Since my tournament chess isn't going as well as I was hoping, I've decided not to go to Moscow or Gibraltar in February and train instead. My next tournament will be in mid-February and local to London. It's a bit less serious than my recent Opens, but it's still an all-play-all and FIDE-rated Uxbridge International. I will be playing in the "Challengers" section against 9 players of roughly the same strength as myself. And if all goes well I may go to the Reykjavik Open at the end of February. I've never been to Iceland and fancy checking it out!

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.