One of the most important aspects of tournament play is to keep a clear head for the games. For this reason it is usually better not to prepare too much on the day of a game but instead just relax and perhaps take a walk.
This is something that people find especially difficult if they have a database and lots of their opponents games to go through, can it really be better not to study their games? I found that I did better when I just stopped worrying and prepared myself mentally for the fight ahead.
In the tournament where I made my final Grandmaster norm, the Gausdal International of 1993, I did exactly that. Gausdal is a ski resort situated in the Norwegian mountains, so every morning I took a long walk and came back in time for lunch, a quick look at the pairings and then going straight into battle. I just played chess, and managed to beat two Russian Grandmasters, Yuri Razuvaev and Naum Rashkovsky.
Here is the finish to the Rashkovsky game in which I was White; in the position in the diagram Black had just played 22...h7-h5:
Davies - Rashkovsky after 22...h5
What should White do here? Well using my clear head I calculated a forced win starting with 23.Bxe7 after which 23...Rxe7 fails to 24.Rc8+ Nf8 25.Qh6 threatening mate with either capturing on f8 or Nf6. So Black had to try 23...hxg4 but then 24.Qh6 threatened 25.Bf6 whilst 24...Rxe7 would be met by 25.Rc8+ followed by mate.
Rashkovsky tried one last thing with 24...Qxb2, but after 25.Bf6 resigned as even 25...Qxc1+ 26.Qxc1 does not help him as White threatens to bring his queen back to h6.
Tactical sequences like the one above will usually arise at some point in a game. This is why having a clear head is so important, you will calculate just that little bit better.
Today I took Sam to the Birmingham and District Chess League Rapid Play. He had an OK tournament, which was more or less around his current grade, but he clearly was not at his best. I had kind of expected this as he had a tough week at his sixth form college. Such matters undermine your focus even if you are not consciously aware of it. This is why one of a chess player's primary goals should be to have a clear head and for this reason it is often better not to over prepare and clear away possible distractions.
This year's Birmingham Rapid Play also featured an 8 player all-play-all invitational tournament in which three Grandmasters (Keith Arkell, Mark Hebden and Matthew Turner), one International Master (Ameet Ghasi) and four aspiring youngsters took part. As the cross table shows, the youngsters had a tough learning experience though Louise Head finished well after beating Ghasi and two of the other aspirants.
Invitational Cross Table
As usual Sam and I enjoyed hanging out with the other players, Sam pictured here with an eminent group:
Left to Right: Mark Hebden, Ameet Ghasi, Sam Davies and Keith Arkell
As always this tournament was well organized and there was a good turnout in terms of numbers. Probably we will be back next year and perhaps I might get to play.
Some time ago my son Sam told me that I shouldn't go in the playing room unless I am playing myself. He just didn't like me looking at his games when they were in progress, usually because I looked so worried. This has certainly made my life easier as a chess parent, now I just don't get nervous. I was even oblivious when Sam played an opponent who objected to the slight crinkle of his water bottle when Sam took a drink, made a big thing of it and a lot of tension and anger ensued with Sam's opponent finally being kicked out of the tournament! It was quite interesting to find out what happened later and all the time I had been getting on with some work in the analysis room.
Yesterday there was another case where it was better not to watch, though I did take a quick look at Sam's position when he left the playing room for a few minutes. I saw the following position which looked like it should be a draw:
Davies - Ashton, Crewe 2018
Here Black had just played 41...Qh5+ after which I figured it would be a draw, with both sides having the chance to deliver a draw by perpetual check. I got out before Sam returned so as not to get into trouble and waited for him to finish. Some time later he found me and announced that he had won, but it was not a very good game.
What had happened? Well in the game there followed 42.Kg1 e5 43.Rd7+ Ke6 44.Re7+ Kd6 45.Rxe5 Qd1+ 46.Kh2 Qe2? (Black should draw with 46...Qe1) 47.Rd5+ Kc7 48.e5 c4 49.e6 b5 50.e7 Qe1 51.Re5 Qh4+ 52.Kg1 Qd4+ 53.Kf1 Qf4+ 54.Ke2 Qh2 55.Kf3 Qg1 56.e8=Q Qd1+ 57.Kg3 Qd3+ 58.Re3 Qd6+ 59.Be5 1-0 but this was not the only drama. Apparently Sam lost his queen earlier in the game and had a position he could easily have resigned.
This is why parents should stay out of the playing room, it just saves them a lot of stress! In the end Sam got another good result of 3.5/5 and a share of second place but it could all have been very different. Here is the top of the final cross-table:
Crewe Major Cross-Table
Below is a picture of a smiling Sam outside the Ibis Styles Hotel where the tournament was played, another very nice venue:
Today I took my son Sam to the Atkins Memorial Rapidplay, which was one of the most distant tournaments we have been to in a single day. It was worth the trip though because it was very well organised and had a really excellent venue at the Leicester Grammar School. Here is view from the outside:
Leicester Grammar School
Sam had another good rapid play performance, finishing equal third in the Major and looked very much as if he has the potential to win such events in the very near future. He was half a point behind the joint winners and this could have been very different had he not made a bad slip in round 4. Here is the top of the cross-table:
Major Cross-Table
It was also good to meet up with legendary GM Mark Hebden for the second weekend running, and also good to see Mark winning the Open with considerable ease. Rapid play seems to be his strongest discipline as it showcases his very well worked out opening repertoire, great intuition and excellent technique. Mark is pictured below with Sam:
Mark Hebden (left) and Sam Davies
I will take Sam to two more tournaments on the next two weekends after which he will have a few weeks break. Fortunately the next ones are not quite as far!
The September clinic is now online and members can access it here. The theme this month was 'pawn levers', which tend to be neglected at club level but which members tend to develop because of the strong focus on strategy and pawn play. Here are a few examples from the clinic:
This first one seems like a fairly normal looking position, but White has a way to obtain the more promising position. What should he play and why?
What should White play and why?
A promising way to proceed is with 6.b4! which gains space on the queenside and at the same time inhibits Black's two main pawn levers, with ...c6-c5 or when White's bishop goes to b2, ...e7-e5. This plan is covered in my Building an Opening Repertoire course and has been used by Magnus Carlsen; White built up a very promising position and won in just 28 moves.
The second example features a typical mistake by Black which happens a lot a club level. What should Black play here?
Black makes a typical error
Black has quite a few good choices, for example 5...Nc6 or 5...Nbd7 to name but two. What he should not do is 5...cxd4?!, as this allows White to gain firm control over the ...e5 square and indeed a later ...e6-e5 by Black will leave him with an isolated d-pawn. Yet 5...cxd4 is exactly what Black did, and this is one of the most common moves at club level.
Finally let's look at a lever that is associated with a direct attack. It's Black to play in the position below:
Black has a lever which gives him an attack
Black played a very strong lever with 14...b5!, which does involve a pawn sacrifice but it is a very promising one. After 15.axb5 Black even followed up with the excellent 15...d5! and after 16.bxa6 even levered open the center with 16...e5!. Black went on to win this game very quickly after his excellent pawn play.
To see the members clinics (48 of them so far!) you need to join, which can be done so on the Membership Signup page.
When I started playing tournament chess in the 1970s the venues might well have been described as 'basic'. Typically players would be huddled together in some school or community centre, one of the worst I remember being a workshop with benches to sit on and a vice in my back. The toilet facilities were just as basic, and if someone had the forethought to arrange refreshments it would be tea with stale sandwiches and maybe (just maybe) a packet of digestives. During one school match we were given tuna sandwiches (at least I think it was tuna), which successfully discouraged me from eating tuna for the next couple of decades.
How times have changed! These days organizers have recognized the value of having good venues in order to make chess tournaments more pleasurable for the players. I think this certain helps to encourage parents to bring their kids to chess events so they can enjoy more pleasant surroundings while waiting for them to finish. I think it also encourages more women to play as they tend to be a bit more picky than men with regards to where they spend their time.
Amongst the UK tournaments with the best venues are the 4NCL events, which emerged as an offshoot of the 4NCL team competition. These events are invariably held at very decent hotels with Bridge Overseas liasing with hotel chains so as to provide good value venues. The English Chess Academy has also been using Bridge Overseas as a result of which I have been spending a lot of time in this place, The Park Inn Hotel in Nottingham:
Park Inn Hotel in Nottingham
In my chess parent role it is certainly nice to be able to sit in comfort whilst my son Sam is playing. Grandmasters get their hotel room paid for which brought Keith Arkell and Mark Hebden to this latest event (September 28-30). Pictured below (from left to right) we have my son Sam Davies, legendary GM Mark Hebden and Ukken Somton (father of Anita, one of the UK's young stars).
Sam Davies (left), Mark Hebden (centre) and Ukken Somton (right)
Keith Arkell won the Open with four wins and a draw. When I caught up with him in the bar he was in his usual jovial mood, ascribing his win to having an easy day on the Saturday with a win by default in the morning and then a thirteen (!) move win in the afternoon against IM Antanas Zapolskis. Keith is pictured below:
GM Keith Arkell
In case you are wondering how he won in just thirteen moves, the first twelve were 1.d4 b5 2.Nf3 Bb7 3.Bg5 c5 4.c3 h6 5.Bh4 Qb6 6.e3 e6 7.Nbd2 Ne7 8.a4 cxd4 9.Nxd4 a6 10.axb5 axb5 11.Nxb5 Rxa1 12.Qxa1 Nf5 reaching the position in the diagram below. Can you see the killer blow:
Arkell-Zapolskis: Position after 12...Ne7-f5
White to play uncorked 13.Qa7! which wins on the spot because 13...Qxa7 is answered by 14.Nc7 mate. A very neat finish which meant he could have the rest of the day off!
During the last few weeks I have been working on a new French Defence course that will extend the French material covered in the Building an Opening Repertoire course. The new repertoire covers many of the same lines but just in greater depth, and with options against 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 and 3.Nc3 apart from the Rubinstein Variation with 3...dxe4.
Against 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 the new option is 3...Nf6, when besides 4.e5 White can pin the knight on f6 with 4.Bg5. What should Black do here? For someone who already has a background in the Rubinstein, 4...dxe4 (known as the Burn Variation) 5.Nxe4 and now 5...Nbd7 is an excellent choice, which transposes into a Rubinstein line where White has already committed his bishop to g5. The main line then runs 6.Nf3 h6 7.Nxf6+ Nxf6 8.Bh4 c5 after which 9.Bb5+ Bd7 10.Bxd7+ Qxd7 11.Qe2 Be7 12.O-O-O O-O 13.dxc5 Qc6 14.Ne5 Qxc5 reaches the position in the diagram below:
Position after 14...Qxc5
Although this is a solid line for Black, things sharpen up quite a bit at this point with 15.Bxf6 Bxf6 16.Nd7, after which the obvious way out of the fork with 16...Qg5+ leaves Black with an uncomfortable postion after just 17.Kb1. What Black should do instead is surprising (see diagram below):
Position after 16.Nd7
The star move here is 16...Bxb2+!! after which White must tread carefully. 17.Kxb2 is forced after which 17...Qb4+ 18.Kc1 Qa3+ 19.Kd2 is White's only way to avoid an immediate draw by perpetual check. The position now reached is pictured below:
Position after 19.Kd2
Here Black should continue with the logical 19...Rfd8 after which the best line is 20.Ke1 Qa4 21.Qd3 Rac8 22.Rd2. What should Black do in this situation as 22...Rc7 is bad because of 23.Nf6+? Well the answer is quite subtle, and puts the onus on White to find the only way to keep the balance. Take a look at the position below and figure it out for yourself:
Position after 21.Qd3
The answer is the calm 22...Kh8!, just leaving White with the pin on his knight and avoiding any Nf6+ ideas when Black plays 23...Rc7 on his next move. It's now White's turn to find an only move and he has to see 23.Qb3! after which 23...Qe4+ 24.Qe3 Qb4 25.Qb3 Qe4+ repeats the position and results in a draw.
This is one of the sharpest lines in my French repertoire as the focus is on simple and logical lines that are easy to remember or work out at the board. This one too is very logical, but it helps to know it.
When will my French course be out? Hopefully in a week or two, I'm recording more video whenever I have time.
Building a chess opening repertoire is a fundamental aspect of becoming a strong player. It also takes time to do so and there are top Grandmasters who spend many hours every day just on this. Besides understanding the plans and ideas they will need to know about the latest finesses, which sometimes occur 20-25 moves or more into the game. There is also the issue of computer testing, which with the sharpest openings will be a big job requiring some very serious technology.
The fact that top players want to do this leads amateurs to think that they need to as well, yet how is this possible with things like a job and family to consider? The short answer is that it is not, they need to make simpler choices whilst using their time to develop core skills such as positional understanding and a knowledge of endgames. Yet this is not what chess publishers seem to indicate as they churn out countless volumes of densely packed analysis. Here's a picture of four books which cover what might seem to be a simple repertoire; 1.d4 as White and then the Caro-Kann and Slav with Black. The thing to the right is my coffee cup:
Four Book Repertoire
A count of the number of pages shows a total of around 1,750 pages, many of the variations extend to 20 moves or more and there are probably around 10 variations a page. Is it practical for anyone with any kind of life outside of chess to study these monstrosities? The answer is a clear NO! So why do people buy them? Perhaps they are tired of bad positions and have heard somewhere that they should play the main lines as a remedy?
Is playing main lines a remedy? Well kind of, though this should not necessitate having 1,750 pages/17,500 variations worth of repertoire. If someone learns and understands logical openings, where there is no immediate sharp conflict, then nothing too bad will happen to them in the opening. I should add that if their general chess understanding is good then they will probably get the better of an opponent who has booked up on variations but does not understand too much. Trust me, they will not be able to remember all 17,500 variations and are more likely to get brain damage than chess strength.
So where can someone find repertoires which depend largely on plans and ideas? Unfortunately they are difficult to find, and this is why I decided to create one. A few years ago I developed the Building an Opening Repertoire course here, which features 21.5 hours of video and pgn files which can be loaded into software such as Chess Position Trainer and Chessable. I deliberately made the lines as simple and logical as possible so as to aid the assimilation of plans and ideas, for example as Black I gave the French (including the Rubinstein Varation with 3...dxe4) and older lines of the Queen's Gambit Declined. For White I gave the Colle System (1.d4 followed by 2.Nf3 and 3.e3) and showed how White could then adapt his later plans to however Black responded, sometimes going for a queenside pawn advance (c2-c4, b2-b4 and a2-a4) and at others setting up a Stonewall Formation (Nf3-e5 and f2-f4). People who have bought this course have responded very positively, many starting to understand typical plans for the first time despite having shelves full of openings books. Below is a position from one of the lines in which White has established a knight on e5:
Stonewall Attack Formation
The main target audience for the Building an Opening Repertoire course is the 1300 to 2000 Elo range, though even stronger players have found it useful. I am now working on some follow up courses, the first of which will be an expanded version of the French and include lines against both 3.Nd2 and 3.Nc3 as alternatives to the Rubinstein (3...dxe4 against both). I will be announcing it here when it is out, though you will get the news faster by signing up for the Tiger Chess Newsletter.
Playing table tennis can help your chess. It's not just a question of getting some exercise and thus facilitating the flow of blood to your brain. There are habits and attitudes that are very useful for chess players and having a second activity can help console you if the first one goes badly. As Mark Taimanov said after he was battered 6-0 by Bobby Fischer: "I still have my music."
My son Sam has been playing table tennis for around 18 months and it has helped him a lot in many ways. We started by having a knock about on a table at a shopping mall and then progressed on to having some games in a bar with a table tennis table in it. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) he was asked his age after a few visits and it turned out that he was not allowed in there. So we needed to come up with an alternative and found that we could hire a table at a local leisure centre.
Never one to do things by halves I suggested we find a coach and started taking lessons. After a couple of months of lessons, and dedicated practice of everything we were taught, Sam was good enough to play at a club. This is now a regular Monday night activity, he's playing in a League team some other evenings and we are doing tournaments! From a parenting point of view this is a bit like going to chess tournaments, though your offspring needs a bat instead of a pen and the parents do not usually get a quiet place to sit. After being pelted with table tennis balls on a few occasions I now retire to the car. Sam is pictured below playing at his club:
Sam Davies (left) on a club night
So how does table tennis help your chess? First of all there are no draws, so you get used to playing a game with just two outcomes, a win or a loss. The practice ethic is similar to chess but when people see its importance in a second activity it becomes a universal rule of excellence. The psychological aspects are also similar, but in table tennis you have to play the ball when it comes to you, there is no time to delay or think about it. This in turn makes the possibility to think into something that is valued. I could go on but the most important point is this; Sam's chess has been transformed of late so that he is now far more pugnacious and more willing to take calculated risks.
Of course it does not need to be table tennis or even any kind of sport, there are other activities which have great value. Since taking up tai chi over a decade ago I have found it to be a wonderful way to get away from the stress of competition and I would not want to be without it. Though I should mention that to go deep into any activity needs time, and this in turn means that you should not try to do too many of them. I know of many children who are encouraged to try a vast range of activities, never practice any of them (there simply is not time) and do not progress at any of them. I would say that two or three is enough for most people, and perhaps just one if time is very limited.
For the last 8 years I have been going to lots of tournaments, but taking my son Sam rather than playing myself. The most recent of these was the Darnall & Handsworth Rapidplay in Sheffield, which took place on September 1st. Sam had another pretty good result, finishing 4th= in the Major with an 1878 Elo performance. This seems to be more or less in line with his current strength, though his rating is lagging behind at the moment.
A few people who have watched Sam's steady progress from unspectacular beginnings wonder about our training regime. Essentially it's all here on Tiger Chess, with a strong emphasis on endgames and strategy rather than the standard junior fare of openings and sacrificial attacks. His openings could certainly be better, and this is something we've been working on of late. But it takes time to develop a sophisticated repertoire that is dependent on understanding and concepts rather than rote learning and tricks.
From a chess parenting perspective one of the great things about the chess circuit is how Sam is making friends with other chess playing youngsters, and in his case adults too. Below he is pictured on the right together with Anita Somton and Armaan Gogia. Anita was 4th= in the Open with a 2066 performance whilst Armaan also did well in the Open with a 1944 performance. Both Anita and Armaan are coached by Anita's father, Ukken Somton, who has a strong focus on endgames and has been very successful in developing young players.
One Lioness, Two Lions
Where are we going next? Probably to a tournament in Nottingham at the end of September and then on from there. What's the goal? Our provisional aim is that he should be around 2200 strength at 18, at which time we will be reviewing the situation.
Nigel Davies
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