Small World

I'm quite excited as I've booked myself into my next international tournament which will be in Winterthur near Zurich in October. I've never been to Switzerland! It's very sweet that they've even put up my picture on their website. They do that for all titled players. But of course, I'm the lowest titled player there - see for yourself: http://www.schachwoche.org/teilnehmerMOpenEngl.php

The other amusing fact is that one of the entrants comes from my birth town of Chelyabinsk in Russia. I don't know that person, but I'm hoping to talk to him to find out any interesting news about life and chess in Chelyabinsk. I haven't been there for 2 years, since my parents emigrated to the U.S.A. Actually, I've already had a "small world" encounter this year at the last 4NCL in May. I met GM Igor Kurnosov who is also from Chelyabinsk. I caught up on the gossip about my past coaches, other chess players and even my school teachers. That's because it turned out we went to the same school! Chelyabinsk is a town of 1.25 million people with many schools, so it's not the kind of thing you'd expect. Isn't it great that in chess you can meet new people from all over the world and also make the world feel like a small place!

While I'm on the subject of Russia, I draw your attention to the very strong Men's Championship of Russia. Top 5 players will get into the Super-Final Championship of Russia. There is an English version of the website and live games: http://chess.buryatia.info/english After 5 of 11 rounds my favourite chess players are doing rather badly. No doubt, they'll bounce back either in this tournament or shortly after. Mental resilience and self-belief are essential to deal appropriately with failure and these guys certainly have that. They wouldn't be over 2600 otherwise. I wish I could interview them to find out in detail how they cope with disasters like that, as I still have more to learn to improve my psyche.

Chess and Music

Music has always played a special part in chess players' lives. For example, Taimanov and Smyslov were music professionals as well as top chess players of their time. No, I'm not planning on becoming a music professional myself. I can't even play any instruments or sing. I'm more interested in exploring the topic of what music chess players use to motivate themselves.

I think it's important to be mentally prepared for a chess game and I find fast-paced music helps me with that. Walking while listening to music is even better, as it gets all the blood circulating ready for a game. In my recent tournament I was mainly listening to Linkin Park, Shakira and Flo Rida.

I think I especially like Linkin Park, as their occasional screaming definitely wakes me up and makes me want to win! Do check out one of their recent songs with a cool video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/linkinparktv?blend=1&ob=4 It doesn't have any mad screaming in it, but still rather good! I wouldn't mind seeing their gig, but I think I would be a bit scared standing among the crowd for fear of being accidentally squashed by overly excited rock-lovers.

I do try to go to rock and indie gigs when I can, though I struggle more and more to convince my girlfriends to come along with me. I guess my taste in music is not very girly. Right now I am really looking forward to Green Day at Wembley Arena in November. I have seats - wimp :) Well, I don't particularly like being covered in beer like all the standing crowd does. Billie Joe Armstrong is almost cute beneath all that eye make-up, so maybe that would convince my girlfriends to come along! :) Besides, Wembley Arena is one of the best venues in London. Green Day is also playing in O2 Arena, but O2 has terrible sound quality. Once was enough to convince me to never go there again.

I leave you with my favourite Green Day song. It's a few years old, but still the best! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpHmtA7LOk

A Small Step Forward

It's one month exactly before my sabbatical starts. I'm counting the days as you can see :)

It's been quiet on my blog as I played in the FIDE-rated Berks & Bucks congress over the bank holiday weekend. It was held in Twyford and I didn't think it would be too far to travel from London, but I ended up spending 4 hours on travelling each day for three days on a row. Probably not a wise idea as I also had to play two games of up to 5 hours each day! So I won't be doing that in the future and stay in B&B instead.

Here is me playing in the first round against Liam Varnam. We both ended up in a mad time scramble in a tactically complicated position where I lost in what looked like a better position for me.

Despite all the travelling, I managed to perform a little above my rating at 2055 and gained 3 rating points. Much better than in Kavala, so I'm making some progress. My ECF performance was 177, which is also above my current rating. Apart from losing in the first round I drew all the other five games. I wasn't trying to draw, it just so happened! The good thing is that before zeitnot I was probably losing in only one game out of six (need to analyse to confirm), but I didn't convert my advantage in some other games. So basic learning points for me: don't get short of time and learn to convert the advantage! It's not as simple as it sounds though...

The interesting fact is that by move 12 in the last round I had exactly the same Slav position as Simon Ansell in his round 3 Kavala game that he published here: http://www.gingergm.com/2009/08/05/bishops-part-one/#more-1040 But unlike Simon, I was on the black side of it. I remembered Simon's advice to put black's rook on 12...Re8 and keep my queen on d8-h4 diagonal to avoid getting mated like his opponent, so I easily equalised and drew the game. It was quite handy, as I was rather exhausted by then!

As you probably know, FIDE has just moved to bi-monthly publishing of ratings. On the September rating list and for the first time ever I've dropped below 2000 at 1981 because of my earlier poor performance in Kavala. That sort of hurts my pride - another reason to work hard at chess and get better!