Friday, February 01, 2008

A Big Win

I won a critical game last night in the Reno CC Class B Ch. over Vernon Young (1762). My first round game against him is here. I was pleased with myself for recovering from my big blunder against the dentist and winning the game I had to win to give myself a shot at the title.

Admittedly the Class B Championship isn't the biggest deal in the world, but of course one wants to excel at whatever is to hand, so I have tried hard to play my best in this event, and now at 2-1 I just need a win or draw to get the "title." Back in 1985 I was Class C champ, so after only 23 years moving up a class would represent some real progress, no?

Anyway, to the game. I went back to my first and only true love, the King's Indian Defense, against his 1. d4. Lo and behold, he played the Saemisch variation and when I played the 6. ...c5 variation Nathaniel Garingo had played against me, Vern played the same move (7. d5) I had played, transposing into a type of Benoni. I was playing against myself!

I didn't follow Nathaniel's move order exactly but Vern quickly changed the direction of the game completely away from that previous encounter by pushing h4-h5 and castling queenside. The result was a complex, tactical slugfest with the always attractive mutual attacks on both kings on opposite wings. After the game Nathaniel and Chris "ChargingKing" Harrington had some suggested improvements for both sides, but my opponent made the first big mistake, he took a knight but a move later I had a killer line up of heavy pieces on the b-file, and it only took two more moves before he was losing a full queen and more. White resigned on move 27.

I seem to have left my score book at the club, I'll have to get a hold of it before posting the game. Another tactical battle that will need a lot of analysis to figure out. To be honest, several times during the game I didn't really know what the hell was going on but just kept doing the best I could, and it paid off in the end.

I think I'm ready for some quite positional play and endgames now; I remember that back when I lived in Alaska my friend John Peters used to kid me about how all my games had me playing for a queenside majority. Starting with the Western States Open back in October I'm now at 5 wins, 3 losses and 1 draw, with a performance of a little over 1800--and the games have lasted 32, 38, 34, 25, 31, 26, 36, 27 and 27 moves and there isn't a real ending in the lot! Statistical anomaly or is the real Mr. Hyde finally emerging after all these years?

5 comments:

chessboozer said...

Congradulations on your 2nd win against Verne, Im impressed. Like you said you need at least a draw against Hadi to win B class. You will have to be careful. Class B could wind up being a 3 way tie. Hadi is inconsistent but when he is on form he plays very strong.

chessboozer said...

Next time you talk to Capablanca can you give him my regards and ask if Fischer is causing any trouble yet.

Robert Pearson said...

That's a great point, maybe wherever they all are there can be a double round robin with Fischer, Tal, Capa, Botvinnik, Alekhine, Lasker, Steinitz and Morphy. Or since they've got time, a quadruple round robin!

chessboozer said...

Even if they have a quadruple round robin it will be meaningless if Kasporov isnt there, and when he dies there will be someone else not there. We wont be able to see who the real champion is until the end of time.

chessboozer said...

Where is the game,
Im at work and feel I should be doing something as they are paying me.