Zviad is My Spirit Animal

For the last several days I haven’t posted.  That’s because I’ve been in St. Louis at the US Championships.

At one of the late night parties at the chess house I met Zviad Izoria, and let me tell you, he’s one of the funniest guys I’ve met in the chess world!  I was actually able to hang out with him on two separate nights and had an absolute blast both times.

A couple of classics from him:

“_____, if you’re mad, don’t hit ____, hit me.  Or better yet, hit Chris!”

Then, later that evening when he was leaving he said to me “It was a good day at the office, neither of us got punched!”

Meanwhile he made quite the sensation on the board as well.  He scored two wins in the event, one against Hikaru Nakamura, and one against newly minted world championship challenger Fabiano Caruana.

His win over Fabi came with the black bits in round four.  They were in a level endgame when Caruana blundered.  Zviad then converted with precision.

Three rounds later in his game against Hikaru he technically won on time as Naka flagged, but he had a won position over the board already.

So it looks like he had some good days at the office at the board as well!

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

Heartbreaking Loss

With the US Championships getting up to full speed I was watching some of the games today.  One that I was keeping an eye on was between the up and coming Jennifer Yu and the defending US Women’s Champion Sabina Foiser.

It had been a fairly level game all day, and this position was reached

It’s Black to move.  With Black’s king where it is, the ideal plan would be to exchange pawns and then Black should be able to hold quite easily.

But it’s not easy to exchange pawns.  And of course it looks like White can put her king on h4 and then how can Black save the pawn?  With two connected passed pawns the win becomes trivial for White.

So here Sabina played 53…h4+?? and was lost after 54.Kh3.

However, in the original position Black can play 53…Rb1, and now if White tries to win the h pawn with 54.Kh4 Black simply plays 54…Rh1+ 55.Kg3 Rf1 and that should be enough to hold.

Chess is brutal sometimes.  Caissa giveth, and Caissa taketh away.

Here’s hoping that Sabina rebounds tomorrow.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

A Fun Endgame Position to Analyze

I am starting to read GM Jonathan Hawkins’ book From Amateur to IM in which he details how he went from a club player of approximately 2000 Elo to an IM with two GM norms (and of course has been a GM for a few years now) in a span of around eight years.

Spoiler alert…he did it by learning endgames very deeply.

One of the positions from the second lesson, “A Short Introduction to Planning in the Endgame” is this one between Bent Larsen and Slavoljub Marjanovic from the Bled/Portoroz Interzonal in 1979.

Here it’s white to move.  In walking the reader through the plans for each side Hawkins makes it clear that White would like to play h5 since that will damage the Black structure in a way which will both create better squares for his knights while also loosening up the Black king a bit.

He also makes it clear that if Black plays …h5 then White’s job gets much harder.

However, there is a problem with the immediate 58.h5 for White.  That would allow Black to play 58…Ra3 and then 59…Rb7 which would likely force an exchange of rooks, and any exchange of rooks would greatly favor Black as he would be the only one left with a major piece.

So Larsen plays 58.Rd5

Here the Let’s Check feature in Chessbase shows that pretty much every engine that’s ever analyzed deeply prefers 58…h5, but instead Marjanovic played 58…R4a6.  Eventually he lost the game.

The positions after either 58.h5

Or 58.Rd5 h5

Both of these are quite useful to analyze.  I encourage you to do so!

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

An Update on What I’ve Been Up To

I managed to go a month without posting anything until just a few days ago.  So what was I doing with my time?

As it turns out, there were a couple of things that I was up to.

The first is that I am working on doing more organizing.  Tournaments don’t organize themselves, so I am working on becoming a better organizer and TD.

Second, I have been getting back in the swing of writing.  As I write a regular column in American Chess Magazine I do spend a bit of my time there.

Mostly though, what I’ve been doing is working hard on openings.  Yes, you  read that right…I’m working on openings.

I’ve changed my repertoire a few times over the years, and I went from 1.e4 to 1.d4 to 1.c4 to 1.Nf3.

Now I think I’ve settled on what I want to play going forward.  You’ll see me start to post some games and you’ll figure it out pretty quick.  One thing I did though is I took a look at what I was doing during the times I was gaining the most rating, and I decided to place the focus there.

I expect that as always I will get some terrible positions as I retool my openings, but the main difference is that when I’ve changed my repertoire in the past I’ve never bothered learning it deeply.  Now I am.

So we’ll see where all this leads, but I, for one, am excited.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

Calculation Training with IM Andrey Ostrovskiy

I’ve really been fascinated by this guy since I first heard about him on Ben Johnson’s podcast Perpetual Chess.  You can hear that interview here.

One of the things that Ben touched on, either on that episode or the one with Pepe Cuenca, was how strong players go about analyzing and solving puzzles.  Essentially instead of just thinking about moves they first spend a few moments getting a feel for the features of the position.

Since hearing this I have been working on doing that myself.  One of the ways I’ve been trying to teach myself to do that is by watching some of IM Ostrovskiy’s videos in which he does exactly this.

Watch this video.  You will not be disappointed.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

Your Opponent Has a Plan Too

This topic came up in a discussion yesterday after the Hales Corners Challenge XXVII tournament.  We were cleaning up, and a friend of mine who hovers around 1900 said this was something that he struggles with.

We talked about the three questions for a bit and how to develop the habit of always asking those questions.

For those who don’t know, the three questions are part of Jacob Aagaard’s training method and our outlined in his book Grandmaster Preperation: Positional Play.  They are as follows:

  1. What are the weaknesses?
  2. What is your worst placed piece?
  3. What is your opponent’s idea?

Now of course you need to also extrapolate additional info from those questions.  For instance, when you are looking for the weaknesses in the position you should be looking for both your own and your opponents.  When you look at your worst placed piece you should also look to see what your opponents is as well.

We talked about how one of the better methods for ingraining the three questions is to analyze games and just openly ask yourself the three questions on every move.  Within a quite short period of time the questions will simply become second nature.  I plan on doing this myself since I know that while I have gotten better at this, it’s still not an intrinsic part of my thought process.

So this morning I decide to go through more Petrosian games and lo and behold what do I see but an example of question three right away.

Tigran is playing Black against the Argentinian GM Pilnik in this position.  It is White to move.

Here Pilnik plays 17.Bd3

At first this struck me as odd since Petrosian wants to put the knight on d6 and chase the knight from b5 in order to reduce White’s play on the queenside which will allow him to better exploit his strong center as well as having the semi open b file from which to potentially attack the white b pawn in the future.

But then after 17…Nd6 18.Qe2 I realized that 17.Bd3 was an example of question three since after 18.Qe2 the knight doesn’t have to move since there is no more threat for Black to win a pawn if White doesn’t move the knight.

The three questions in action.

If you would like to see the entire game, here you are:

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

Become a Patreon Supporter

I decided to start a patreon page in hopes of getting some donations to help me take lessons regularly.  I know that a lot of people follow my exploits, and I hope that I provide some entertainment to you!  I also hope that you are learning along with me.

I’m at the point where I really need to be able to take lessons regularly.  That’s where I hope you come in.  Any monies donated will be used for me to improve.  To take lessons mostly, and maybe to play in better tournaments if I can raise enough.

If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter.  Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.

I genuinely appreciate you all, and I plan on being back to posting regular content.  Trust me when I say I’ve been hard at work.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

 

 

Terrible Game, But Nice Finish

Here is the first game in the Speedy Gonzalez Action Swiss, which I won last night at the Southwest Chess Club.

Please note that the ratings shown are Quick Ratings.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

(all donations go towards lessons)

My Final Round From the USATN

After having a horrendous second day at the USATN I started my Sunday off right with a win.

That brought me to my final game…

I sat down at the board feeling confident, and was quickly up a pawn, and then it went smooth, to quote some Norwegian dude.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

(any donations received go towards lessons)