Friday, November 23, 2007

A Small Reprieve

I’ve a somewhat quiescent point with things at home that allowed me a chess moment at the club. I had a side game with a father who was waiting for his kid to finish. It was a serious imbalance in ratings being 500 points higher than him. I admire he was still a sport for the challenge and I must admit he had a good game.

The position below was reached after:
White: Blunderprone Black: Chess Father

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bf4 0-0 6.Qd2 a6 7.Bh6 Re8 8.Bxg7 Kxg7 9.0-0-0 Bg4 10.e5 dxe5 11.dxe5 Qxd2+ 12.Rxd2 Nfd7 13.Nd5 Ra7 14.Ng5 b5 15.h3 Be6 16.Nxe6+ fxe6 17.Nf4 Nc5 18.b4 Ne4 19.Rd4 Nxf2 20.Nxe6+ Kh8 21.Rg1 Nc6 22.Rh4 Nxe5 23.Kd2 c6 24.Ke2 Rd7 25.Kxf2 Rd2+ 26.Ke3 Rxc2 27.Ng5 Rc1 28.Kd2 Ra1 29.Kc3 Rf8



The position looks threatening for me with both rooks looming on my bishop and a rook pinned. Believe it or not, I actually planned it that way as I saw a nice tactic that just doesn’t jump out in this position. Can you?


(Scroll when ready)




30.Bc4 Lose the game or lose the rook !
30...Rxg1 31.Rxh7# 1-0


I will be able to escape on Sunday to attend the Harry Nelson Pillsbury Memorial ( one of Massachusetts early champions).



I haven’t had much OTB experience and a little on line but I am looking forward to some good sparring. I’ll be playing in the Under 1900 section.

On a side note, in continuation of tactics training, I am in the process of converting CT-ART to PGN and playing it against Fritz using 3D mode since visualization is important for OTB and I am too lazy to set up a board. After the initial material gain, I find playing the game to the win isn’t as easy as it seems against Fritz. Despite the material gain, it’s a good exercise in not blowing a won game.

12 comments:

Chessaholic said...

Nice tactic! That's the kind of stuff I hope my tactics training will help me find more easily in the future...

Glenn Wilson said...

I quickly saw a variant of your idea. 30. Rxh7+ Kg8 31. Bc4+

But, your move order is better as it gives the opponent the opportunity to go wrong...

Nice.

Anonymous said...

New Post! Anybody have any ideas?

gorckat said...

After the initial material gain, I find playing the game to the win isn’t as easy as it seems against Fritz. Despite the material gain, it’s a good exercise in not blowing a won game.

Huh. Never thought of that. Good idea!

BlunderProne said...

On the CT-ART PGN transposition, I found that the only way to really do this is for EACH position I have to invoke Crafty as if I were to play the position. Once the new board appears, I right click in the white area where the moves would be and I can save to a PGN. I keep appending the same PGN file for each level. If you don't make any moves, the starting position is captured as FEN in the PGN. I then copy the FEN and PASTE it into Fritz ( FILE-> NEW-> POSITION SETUP [PASTE FEN] )

Anonymous said...

I also like the idea of using positions from CT-Art against a chess engine. Great idea!

likesforests said...

At a glance I spotted 1.Rxh7 Kg8 2.Bc4+ Nxc4 3.Rxa1. Your sequence and result is definitely better!

wang said...

Good luck in the upcoming tourney! I like your idea, although it sounds a bit time consuming. Anyway good luck again.

Anonymous said...

Like everyone else, I saw Rxh7 first and stopped looking. It's good to see you've had a little breathing room.

Anonymous said...

Send me an eMail and I'll send you the pgn.

sschere [at] gmail [dot] com

Anonymous said...

30. Bc4! is actually much better than Rxh7+? since after 30. Rxh7+ Kg8 31. Bc4+ Nxc4 32. Rxa1 Rf5 the knight is overloaded, for instance 33. h4 Rxg5 hxg5 Kxh7 and it's a real battle.

Unknown said...

Nice game George!

When you get that PGN from CT-ART going, please let us know. I'd love to play against it. BTW, I manually put in Pawn endgames from "Total Chess Training" (Studies 2.0) as I go through each exercise, it really helps (but its painful...). Do you have an automatic way to make the PGN??