We are truly honoured :-)

After weeks of threatening to do so, Mike O Donnell has finally pulled the finger out and sent us an annotated game. As it is a pure work of art, I will shutup and let the moves (and Mikes annotations) do the talking.

Mike O Donnell – Gabriel Mirza Ennis 2012 (Notes in italics by O Donnell) 1.e4 Nc6 I was’nt sure what to expect from Gabriel ,cant say I was too happy to face the Nimzovitch as i have only played against it a few times!2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Bg4 5.Be3 e5 6.d5 Nb8 I expected ne7 with the Knight heading to g6 so i was on my own from here! 7h3 Bh5 8.Qd2 Be7 9.g4 Bg6 10.Bd3 c6 11.g5 Nh5 I was pleased with how the opening had gone all my pieces were nicely developed i was ready to castle Queen side and counter down the kingside! 12.0-0-0 Qa5 13.Kb1 0-0 14.Nh4 a6 15.Nf5 Bxf5 16.exf5 cxd5 17.f6

O Donnell - Mirza 2012 Position after 17.f6

now the fire works are starting 17…Bxf6 18. gxf6 d4 19Ne4 Qc7 20.fxg7 Re8 21.Qe2 Nd7 22Qxh5 dxe3 23.Nxd6

Its 64 squares of pure carnage kid!!!!

23…Nf6 the Knight on d6 is untouchable- dual mating threats on h7 and f7 forces black to lose more material 24.Nxe8 Rxe8 25.Qf5 e2 26.Bxe2 e4??in fairness to Gabriel the domino effect had kicked in at this stage!! 27.Qxf6 Rc8 28.Rd2 1-0 with this win I secured my final G.M Norm and an invite to next years Linares

Ah, I have to say you can’t beat the cut and thrust of club chess in the Munster League. Fair play to Gabriel for contributing to an entertaining game though he was like a punch drunk boxer clinging to the ropes by the end of the game. Someone better tell Mike that the Linares tournament didn’t take place in 2011 though it is rumoured to be making a comeback in 2012 so Mike might be getting an invite in the post yet.

Ones a super GM, the others a bit of a blaggard. Mike with a fellow Linares competitor

Mulcahy, Gonzaga, Munster Juniors- this weekend

The January ICU rating list came out at the weekend. In a rather crowded Irish weekend calendar there is loads of chess on at the moment with the Mulcahy on in Cork, Gonzaga in Dublin and the Munster Junior Championships in Limerick all taking place this coming weekend.

As pointed out by Martin O Grady, Alex Lopez is taking part in the Gibraltar tournament. Alex drew with the black bits against FM Sunil Weeramantry today after his loss to one of the top seeds Judit Polgar yesterday.

In the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk an Zee Levon Aronian had an impressive win today against Anish Giri to leave himself in first place a full point clear of Ivanchuk in second. Aronian has a 2944 rating performance so far and must be a huge favourite to win the tournament given that 2 of his last 3 games are against players at the bottom of the table. Pentala Harikrishna is leading the B tournament at the moment and Maxim Turov the C tournament.

At the recent Prague tournament Anthony Fox put in a solid performance after an explosive start and ended up with a 2181 rating performance to pick up some FIDE points. Peter Cafolla didn’t do quite so well but in large opens like this the luck of the draw plays a part. Jan Sodoma started really well and was on 3.5 out of 4 against good opposiition and then dropped out of the tournament, apparently because he had gained enough rating points to take him over the 2400 mark and get his IM title. But then again as someone said at the Munster League matches in Ennis at the weekend pointed out once he passed the 2400 mark during the tournament he would have qualified for his title even if he had finished the tournament, not sure how accurate that is?

Munster League 21st January

Ennis A and Ennis B clashed for the second time this season in the Division 1 of the Munster League last Saturday in the Auburn Lodge. The B team were on a mission to avoid a second whitewash of the season against the A team. Their cause wasn’t helped when their board 2 Carl Jackson missed his train from Dublin in the morning which meant a last minute replacement needed to be drafted. Non playing captain Will O Keeffe pulled a masterstroke in selecting Alec Fleming who went on to defeat Kieran O Brien on bottom board in the first game to finish. Kieran had a good position but blundered his queen and eventually lost. Unfortunately for the B team, and despite some close games, this turned out to be their sole win in the match as results on the other boards went against them.

On board 1 Johnny Joyce energetically punished some rather risky opening play by Pete Morriss who essayed 1.d4 b5!? otherwise known as the Polish Opening. This is obviously playable, I seem to remember a game by Spassky with this opening (or was it Bronstein) from a World Championship match many years ago. Pete however played in reversed Sokolsky fashion essentially going into the 1.b4 e5 2.Bb2 Bxb4 3.Bxe5 Nf6 line a whole tempo down. A risky way to play but it still required enterprising play by Johnny to take advantage.

Joyce_Moriss...White to play

In the position above Whites forces are impressively centralised whereas Black is relatively underdeveloped. How did white storm the black kings ramparts? Well he started with 1.Ne4! Bxe1? Black should try Be7 but white is better here. 2.Bxf6 gxf6 3.Qg4+ Kh8 4.Qh4! Bxf2+ 5.Kxf2 fxe5 6.Nf6 Qxf6 (6..Kg7 7.Qg5+ Kh8 8.Qh6 mates or wins the queen) 7.Qxf6 and White won in a few more moves.

On board 2 I managed to defeat Gerry Casey who moved up from board 3 due to Carls absence. Tony Aherne defeated Ollie McNamara on board 3 with the white bits. Apparently Ollies scoresheet erroneously showed the game had ended in a draw, according to Mike anyway, so there was some confusion among members of the Ennis team for a while as to the actual result of this game. In the last game to finish Lorcan overcame spirited resistance from Mike O Donnell to eventually take the point and seal a 4-1 victory. Lorcan is having an excellent season in the Munster League this year and so far its probably between Tony and himself for the title of the A teams most consistent player this season.

Ennis B 1-4 Ennis A (Ennis A white on boards 1,3 and 5)
1. Pete Moriss 0-1 John Joyce
2. Gerry Casey 0-1 Rory Quinn
3. Ollie McNamara 0-1 Tony Aherne
4. Mike O Donnell 0-1 Lorcan O Toole
5. Alec Fleming 1-0 Kieran O Brien

In the second match of the day the B team had a tough assignment against Adare and did well to take 1.5 points. Mike O Donnell winning on board 5 (Mike has said he will send me on some games but I havent received them yet) and Gerry Casey drawing on board 4. Pete Morriss played his favourite Sokolsky against former champion of Tallin Juri Fristov but Juri eventually prevailed in the last game to finish to seal the win for Adare. Here is a link to a short and sweet Sokolsky game.

Adare 3.5-1.5 Ennis B (Ennis B white on boards 1,3 and 5)
1. Juri Fristov 1-0 Pete Morriss
2. Ronan Magee 1-0 Carl Jackson
3. Ossine Murchada 1-0 Ollie McNamara
4. Gerard Buckley .5-.5 Gerry Casey
5. Gabriel Mirza 0-1 Mike O Donnell

In the A teams second game we were playing Limerick who have some good results of late including an impressive win over Charleville. However Ennis came out on top this time with a 5-0 win. I got a bit of slagging for allegedly helping James Danaher to prepare for his game with Tony in this round. However although I correctly predicted that Tony would play the Caro Kan, John Cassidy felt he would play 1…e5 and there was also the possibility that he would play something completely different so given the time available it wasn’t really feasible to prepare. Tony actually sent on the game, though without any annotations. The game is below with some brief annotations, it was quite complicated featuring a line of the Advance Caro that can lead to mind boggling positions. I dont have the time to delve deeply enough into the position to uncover whats really going on so I have just given my in initial computer assisted impressions. Anyone who wants to add a comment or analysis feel free to do so!

Ennis A 5-0Limerick (Limerick white on 1,3, and 5)
1. John Joyce 1-0 Ray O Brien
2. Rory Quinn 1-0 Kansey Joseph
3. Tony Aherne 1-0 James Danaher
4. Lorcan O Toole 1-0 Stephen Danaher
5. Nick Larter 1-0 Justin Mulrooney

James Danaher – Tony Aherne 2012 Ennis (notes by Quinn)1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 Bf5 4 Nc3 A very aggressive line recommended by the Greek GM Kotronias in an old book on beating the Caro Kan. It doesn’t seem to be holding up as well as some other lines of the advance however. 4.h4 seems to be becoming quite popular of late as well as the Short system with 4. Nf3 4…e6 5 g4 Bg6 6 Nge2 c5 7 dxc5? As Tony mentioned in his email when he sent me this game this release of tension is premature and, although the game transposes back to a mainline, this move gives black other options. In fact I would go a bit farther and call this move a blunder. In such a super sharp variation both sides have to be careful I would be inclined to play 7.h4 here and 7.Be3 has also been played. 7…Bxc5 8 h4 h5 8…Nc6 9.h5 Qb6 is very good for black according to Stockfish, the move played lets white off the hook a little bit 9 Nf4 Bh7 10 Nxh5 Nc6 11 f4? I didnt find any games with this move in my datbase. It seems to be a mistake. Most players opt for 11.Bb5 here but black seems to be doing fairly well after 11…Kf8. 11.Nxg7+ may also be posisble 11…d4! 12 Na4 Be7 13 g5 Qa5+13…Be4 seems stronger, white has two pieces en prise. 14 c3 0-0-0 15 Bd2 Bg6 16 Ng3 f6? The position is very complicated but this seems to be a mistake. After 17.Qb3 my computer thinks white is better. 17.Bh3 Nxe5 18.fxe5 Qxe5+ 19. Kf2 dxc3 20. Nxc3 Bc5+ 21.Kg2 Be8 22.Re1 Bc6+ 23.Kh2 Qd4 24.Rxe6?? Allowing mate in two, after Nce4 the position still seems quite unclear, my computer claims its dynamically equal.24…Qf2+ 0-1

Gender and Chess Talent

I have been reading chessbase a fair bit lately and one article in particular over there caught my eye recently. The article dealt with the question of gender and chessplaying ability. Earlier in the week I even saw the fact that men outperform women in chess given a brief mention in an article written by Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent. Myers article really just contained an allusion to chess in the context of a longer article he had written about feminism and gender ‘equality’. The article at chessbase went into rather greater detail on the gender question in chess. There is no argument that women are underrepresented among the worlds elite chess players. For instance in the top 100 players in the world, only 1 (Judit Polgar) is a woman. Obviously there are many strong female players however they are far outnumbered by their male counterparts. Most red blooded males will agree that this a somewhat unfortunate state of affairs, but what is the reason?

A number of hypotheses have been proposed but a prevailing one until recently was the greater male variability hypothesis which essentially posits that men exhibit a larger range on the intellectual spectrum than women. So for example outliers at either end of the range (those of very high intelligence and those of very low intelligence) are statistically more likely to be male than female. Hence the reasons for the lack of women in the higher echelons of intellectual endeavours like chess is due to biological reasons, meaning the male and female brains are wired differently.

Aside from the dubious link between intelligence and chess (just look at half the Ennis chess team for Gods sake! and I include myself in that) this greater variability hypothesis didnt hold up recently when Jonathan Kane and Janet Mertz, two American researchers, did a meta analysis of studies from 86 different countries which had looked at variability in maths scores between the sexes. What they found was that greater variability in male scores was evident in the results from any particular country and the extent of this variability remained constant in repeated tests in that country however crucially the extent of variability between countries was not the same i.e. the extent of the gender gaps varied significantly from country to country. If the gap were due to stable biological factors then obviously this result would not be expected.

Its clear therefore, assuming that the results of this meta analysis of maths studies can be extrapolated to chess, that cultural factors play a role in the differences observed between male and female chess ability. Perhaps a self fulfilling prophecy generated from societal expectations is at work here. It certainly seems quite plausible.

Anyway, on a lighter note, if there are any women out there considering taking up a career in chess this article by Natalia Pogonina gives some idea of how much money you could hope to earn Not half enough most people would say!

Fox starts Prague Open with a bang!

Anthony Fox made an excellent start to the Prague Open yesterday with a win over the 2397 rated IM Pavel Vavra.Today Anthony was playing the young Czech player Tuma who I remember from Karlovy Vary last year. Jan Sodoma also got off to a winning start though as one of the higher rated players he was playing a lower rated player. Peter Cafolla didnt have such luck losing to a Spanish FM.

Petr Neuman is also playing in a tournament at the moment, though where I am not exactly quite sure. Its not the Prague tournament as I dont see his name there. He had a great result today beating the 2600+ rated Antoniewski. You can see the game here. I am not too sure how long that link will work by the way. It will probably be replaced tomorrow. Interesting to see an old pal of Jan Heinrich, Mikula Manik halfing the point with a previous victim of mine Ivan Hausner in the game next to Petr’s.

Edit: apparently Petr is playing in the Slovakian League in Liptosky Mikulas.

Prague Open and some other bits and bobs.

The Prague Open kicks off today in…well.. Prague…. Jan Sodoma is trying to make enough FIDE points to get his IM title. Irish players Peter Cafolla and Anthony Fox are also competing. You can see how they get on at the tournament website.

By the way just came across this website for a club in Belfast that I thought I would share. Some entertaining stuff on there.

As a further aside I just realised today that Joona Kiiski who currently plays for Limerick in the Munster League is one of the programmers of the excellent (opensource!) chess engine Stockfish. According to Wikipedia the 64 bit version has a rating of 3241 which makes it one of the strongest freely available chess programmes. The only stronger ones I see in the list on wikipedia are Critter and Houdini and even then there is very little beween them. Incidentally if you are into computer chess and/or programming there is a big debate taking place about the decision by the Intenational Comuter Games Association to ban Rybka programmer Vasik Rajilch for life from ICGA events and strip Rybka of its world computer chess champion titles. The row is well doumented over at Chessbase.

Nigel Short comes to Ennis!?!

Well the Bunratty tournament seems to have attracted significant sponsorship from Blackthorne Transport this year as they have an astonishing 10 GMs and 10 IMs signed up so far. The tournament takes place next month from the 17th to the 19th February. I for one am looking forward to it already. There was a suggestion on the ICU website that former world championship challenger Nigel Short MBE would be giving a lecture and simultaneous in Ennis on the Wednesday before Bunratty but it seems to have disappeared again. John Cassidy said on Tuesday that he was organising this event for the Auburn Lodge. Contact John on 087 2495913 or ritacassidy16@eircom.net for more information.

3 games taking place in the Shannon Masters tonight. After some initial confusion over the colours (I thought I had white for some reason) I managed to beat Dan Clancy although the game could have gone differently. I saw a way to win a pawn, there was two ways for Dan to give it up but he chose the wrong one. I had seriously underestimated the amount of compensation he got in one line but he chose the other one and I managed to wrap things up. In the other games Frank Noonan had a good position against Gerry Casey, Frank sacced the exchange (does Frank do this every game?) for a pawn, though one could hardly really call it a sac as he got huge compensation for his small material investment and I presume went on to win. The game between Chris Young and John Alfred seemed fairly equal so it could be a tricky one to call.

Munster Junior Chess Championship 28th and 29th Jan

The Munster Junior Chess Championship will take place on the 28th and 29th January in the Absolut Hotel, Sir Harrys Mall, Limerick. There will be sections at U8, U10, U12, U14, U16 and U18. There are different time controls and round start times depending on which section you are competing in. Cost is €20 per child , for 2 children or more cost is €38 max. Clocks and sets will be provided and John Alfred is the competition controller.

For more details and to enter contact
John Cassidy, Loyola, Cusack Road, Ennis, Co. Clare (087 2495913) ritacassidy16@eircom.net
OR
Steve Danaher, 25 Fearnog, Shannon, Co. Clare (087 6101503) stephendanaher@eircom.net

Jones breaks into top 100

Congrats to former Ennis player Gawain Jones who has broken into the Worlds top 100 players. See the January FIDE list for details. All those beery weeknight trips down to such salubrious locations as Mallow and Charleville to play for Ennis in the Munster League weren’t in vain then! Whats next for Gawain I wonder top 50, top 20…top 10??? Gawain next time you are smashing the crap out of some random GM in a luxury hotel somewhere sunny, spare a thought for us poor patzers plugging away in the chess version of purgatory in some grotty pub in the wilds of South Munster where the twin dangers of a passing stranger picking up one of your pieces and flinging it at the wall and a band striking up Irish rebel ballads at eardrum splitting volume in the room next door are ever present. All I can say is that I hope we will see Gawain in an Ennis team again soon, a return spell for Gawain in the Munster League might presage an elevation to even greater heights in the world rankings!?! In fairness it would be a bit like Wayne Rooney turning out for Shamrock Rovers or maybe Limerick City but that would be a cool thing, right?

Hastings is finishing today, round 9 seems to be more or less over and the winner is the top seed Wang Yue of China on a score of 7.5 from 9. Ryan Rhys Griffiths had a decent tournament and would have finished well up the placings had he managed to overcome the wily old campaigner Mark Hebden (another player who has appeared on an Ennis team in the past) on board 9 in the last round. I havent looked through all Ryans games from the event yet but he must be reasonably happy given he was on the same score and the next board to David Howell in the last round.

Other Ennis players haven’t been so lucky lately, Jan Sodoma told me that yesterday he was reading the Ennis blog at work and today he got fired (or was it restructured out of existence?) from his job with a well known English multinational grocey retailer. Crikey I hope the two werent linked! Still on the bright side he will have plenty of time to work on getting his IM title (he has 3 norms +an extra one for good luck but needs 10 more ELO rating points). By coincidence there is a big tournament in Prague soon which might mean he gets his title soon, I wonder if the fortuitous timing of his exit from the job (‘not good work’) had anything to do with this.

Another Ennis player who needs just a clutch of ELO points for a title (the GM one this time) is Petr Neuman, who needs around 40 points for the GM title. I see he finished in 5th place in the recent Czech blitz championship though I am not sure Petr was as happy as he might have been given that he was leading the tournament before a relatively paltry 1.5 from the last 4 rounds meant he slipped down to fifth. He also finished a creditable 5th in a tournament in Aachen in Germany (more famous to me for their 2nd division Bundesliga football team who have won me a few quid on betfair back in the good old days when that league was as predictable as a cuckoo clock). Today he drew with Korneev and has another 2600 tomorrow in some other tournament. How does he find the time to play all these events? One of the benefits of being in a job with flexible hours I guess. Hmmm now where can I find such a job?

Next up for Ennis in the Munster League is matches on 21st January. Ennis B will be keen to revenge their drubbing from earlier in the season in the local derby match. In the other matches the A team will play Limerick and the B team have Adare.

The national club championships will take place on 28th and 29th April this year in Limerick which will make a nice change. Should be an interesting competition this time round!

Hastings

The annual Hastings Congress was into round 6 today with Chinas Wang Yue (at 2697) the highest rated player to ever participate at Hastings apparently) maintaining his positions at the top of the leaderboard with a win over Nick Pert. Yues half point dropped so far came in round 3 when he drew with the black bits against Indias Deep Sengupta. The tournament has a new web address where you can keep uptodate with matters as they happen including watching live games and get some commentary from Chris Ward.

Best of the Irish is Ryan Rhys Griffiths who was on 3 from 5 going into todays game against a French player Robaud. Other Irish players competing are Gary O Grady, Anthony Bourached and Oissine Murchada.