A Beautiful Win by GM Plaskett

As mentioned below I recently added GM James Plaskett's Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary to my links. While his blog is primarily about coincidence and synchronicity, it does have a good deal of chess content, including a beautiful miniature contained within this post:

Hastings Challengers, 1988
White: Lopez
Black: Plaskett

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nc6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 Qc7 7. Be2 b5 8. f4 Bb7 9. Bf3 Na5 10. Qe2 Nc4 11. 0-0-0



Nxb2! 12. Kxb2 Ba3+! 13. Kxa3 Qxc3+ 14. Nb3 Bc6 15. Bc5 a5 0-1

Every Sicilian player's dream game!

Pearson-Kesti, Game 6

Finally got the time together to post last week's game; Michael Goeller of the excellent Kenilworthian, author of the Mad Dog post that inspired the opening, was interested in how that part went. See his article for more on this interesting variation.

It's nice to win, but GOLLY there are a lot of mistakes!

[Event "Match, Reno CC Class B. Ch."]
[Site "Reno, NV"]
[Date "2007.03.22"]
[Round "6"]
[White "Pearson, Robert"]
[Black "Kesti, Steve"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1600"]
[BlackElo "1764"]
[ECO "B07"]
[Annotator "R. Pearson"]

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Bc4 Bg7 5. Qe2 O-O 6. e5 dxe5 7. dxe5 Nfd7 8. Nf3 { More consistent is 8. e6, but the move played also leads to advantage for White. } e6?! { Nb6 seems to keep his disadvantage to a minimum, though it's nice to be White in any case. } 9. Bg5 Qe8 10. O-O-O? { Nb5 leaves Black under serious pressure. While O-O-O doesn't throw away everything, it's even giving him a target, instead of preventing counterplay. } Nc6?? 11. Nb5 f6 { Taking on e5 was better, but depressing. } 12. Nxc7 Qe7 13. exf6 Nxf6 14. Nxa8 Qb4!? { Black goes for a counterattack instead of meekly succumbing...and it almost works! } 15. Bd2?! { Why not simply 15. c3? } Qd6 16. Kb1 Nd5 17. c3 { Ng5! } Bd7 18. Rhe1?! { Qe4 keeps a larger advantage--White is frittering away a good portion of his once crushing position. } Rxa8 19. g3 { Qe4 } Na5 { Black has been playing the best moves to give himself a chance. White is still winning, but the margin's getting smaller... } 20. Bxd5 exd5 21. Qe7? Bf5+ { 21. ... Qxe7 22. Rxe7 Bg4! and Black is right back in it! } 22. Ka1? { Kc1 } Qa6? { Qxe7 } 23. Qa3 Bf8 { Bg4 } 24. b4! { Should lead to a big advantage } b6 25. Nd4 Qc8 26. Qa4 Nc4 27. Qc6?! { Not as good as I thought at the time. } Qxc6 28. Nxc6 Bg7 29. Ne7+ { In time trouble I play a brief combination to get rid of his dangerous bishop, not seeing his 31st move. The funny thing is, it still may be best! } Kf8 30. Nxf5 gxf5 31. Kb1?! { Now I realize I lose back the Exchange, but I think I get a good Rook ending. 31. Re3 would have saved a pawn, however. } Nxd2+ 32. Rxd2 Bxc3 33. Rde2 Bxe1 34. Rxe1 { Now either the c- or f-pawn will fall--unless Black goes Re8, which he can't afford because the pawn ending is lost because of White's outside majority. Right? } Re8? 35. Rxe8+ Kxe8 36. Kc2 Ke7 37. Kd3 Kd6 38. Kd4 { And though the rest of the score is mislaid at the moment, suffice it to say that White made a passed pawn on the g-file and Black resigned on move 50. } 1-0

Cool Links

The Chess Drum--I mentioned it in an earlier post.

GM James Plaskett's Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary--not strictly chess, but very interesting!

Rocky Rook--Thoughtful Knight Errant.

Blue Devil Knight--Now Knights Commander.

All recommended reading!

Pearson-Kesti, Game 6: A Win for Your Host

Although Steve Kesti had clinched the Reno CC Class B Ch. with his victory last week he was kind enough to play Game 6 (the usual practice at our club) last night, and the result was a win for me, in rather strange fashion.

I opened with 1. e4 this time; I'm back to playing it occasionally and since this game was just for fun, glory and rating points I pulled it out. And with what a result! He chose the Pirc Defense and I unveiled the Mad Dog variation, and by move 10 he was in desperate trouble, down material...and then of course I had to castle O-O-O, in the spirit of things, and it got more interesting as he threw everything he had at my King. I think I had it under control until move 30, when on the last move before the first time control I took an attacking Bishop off, which I figured would quell the attack. Unfortunately, this wasn't really calculated, it was, as I say, figured (heh) and I soon realized he would win back the Exchange and a pawn he was down.

But okay, not getting down on myself, not panicking, I saw that I could go into a better Rook ending where he had weak pawns, and indeed win one of his pawns within a few moves. Fine--I feel good that I was still trying to find the best move instead of worrying about the way things might have been. And lo and behold, he immediately offered to trade Rooks into a lost Pawn ending, which I played accurately enough.

I'm sure it was difficult for my opponent to play his best when the match wasn't on the line, but I had the motivation of estimating before the game that a win would gain me around 9 rating points, to 1609, inching a little closer to my goal of 1700 by the end of the year. Plus I'm having a lot of fun playing again.

As is customary here, I'm putting down my day-after impressions while still fresh, and will do my best to post the game and annotations late tonight, or if not then, in the next couple of days.

Slugfest at Melody Amber

In case you hadn't heard, Anand (White) and Kramnik played a marvelous draw the other day during their rapid game at Melody Amber. Dennis Monokroussos has annotations at the link.

I'm inspired for my game tonight!