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Press Release 14-7-2008

The annual international open tournament “Summer Cup 2008″ has started under the best conditions in the 5-star Porto Carras complex in Northern Greece. In total, 81 players from 13 countries are participating (Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Sweden, FYROM, Serbia, Italy, France, Hungary and Finland) and among them are GM Alexander Zubarev (UKR), IM Robert Ris (NED), GM Rolando Kutirov (FYR), WGM Marina Makropoulou (GRE) and WGM Anastazia Karlovich (UKR).

The games are been held in the Meliton Congress Hall of Porto Carras from 12 to 19 July. It is also confirmed that Porto Carras has been chosen by FIDE as the venue for the World Youth Chess Championships in October 2010.

Organisers of the “Summer Cup 2008” are IM George Mastrokoukos and Aggelos Tzermiadianos while Chief Arbiter is IA Alexandros Kostouros. Apart from the players, another 150 people are visiting the event in order to combine chess with 5-star holidays.

Among the distinguished visitors are the IMs George Michelakis (president of the investment firm Gladstone Partners) and Andreas Tzermiadianos (writer of well-known chess books), Theodoros Tsorbatzoglou (ECU marketing director), Francois Soupe (head of alternative investments pricing of Societe Generale Bank) and many more friends of chess. After the 4th round, GM Alexander Zubarev (UKR) and the junior player Georgios Kanakaris (GRE) are leading the standings with 4 wins (100%) and they face each other in the 5th round.

Full results, standings, games and photos can be found in the official website of the event: www.greekchess.com/cup2008
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PRESS CENTER “Summer Cup 2008”
Tel: (+30) 6977973587, Fax: (30) 2121219426
URL: http://www.inchess.com/
Email: cup2008@greekchess.com

Source: Susan Polgar Blog

Grandmaster Pal Benko celebrates his 80th birthday today. He was born in France, but grew up in his native Hungary. Later he moved to the US. Benko was one of the world’s leading players in the 1950s and 1960s.

Benko’s best-known contribution to the opening theory is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5, which in the West is called Benko Gambit. He is a well-known chess journalist and composer. In 2003 Benko and IM Jeremy Silman wrote a book called “Paul Benko. My Life, Games and Compositions”.

To celebrate Benko’s 80th birthday, Hungarian chess magazine Magyar Sakkvilag organised an international formal thematic composition tourney. The theme was: starting from the initial position of the play White and Black don’t capture any men in the main line during the first eight moves at least.

Pal Benko is the judge in this competition. The preliminary award of tourney will be published on September 1st 2008 at the webpage of the Magyar Sakkvilag.

Source: Chess Today

Source: Susan Polgar Blog

Source: Jim West On Chess http://jimwestonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Atlantic Chess News editor Steve Ferrero took these photos at the New Jersey Futurity International 2008, held at the Dean of Chess Academy from July 7th through 11th.

Here tournament organizer Michael Khodarkovsky presents the winner’s prize to GM Sergey Erenburg.

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NM Mackenzie Molner ponders his position against IM Dean Ippolito who eventually won the game.

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NM Evan Ju lost to IM Milos Scekic who played brilliantly.

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IM Alfonso Almeida Saenz lost this game to GM Sergey Erenburg who drew his fellow grandmasters while defeating everyone else.

Source: Jim West On Chess http://jimwestonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

The New Jersey Futurity International 2008 will be held, from July 7th to July 14th, at the Dean of Chess Academy in Branchburg.

Participants will include four grandmasters, among them last year’s winner Sergey Erenburg. Here is a list of all the players.

GM Sergey Erenburg [Israel]
GM Leonid Yudasin [Israel]
GM Mark Paragua [Philippines]
GM Sam Palatnik [USA]
IM Alfonso Almeida Saenz [Mexico]
IM Milos Scekic [Serbia]
IM Dean Ippolito [USA]
IM Mikhail Zlotnikov [USA]
NM Mackenzie Molner [USA]
NM Evan Ju [USA]

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
[Our pedagogical series in which we look at a portion of a game I played the previous week in which some obvious tactic is overlooked. Readers are invited to practice their skill by seeing if they can spot what was missed.]

Horton v Bruned (FM, 2383). Benasque Open 2008, round five, position after White’s move 34.Ba3-b2.

Play now proceeds 34…e4 35.Nxe4 Nxe4 and Black offers a draw.

Should White accept?

Miss Easy Tactics! index

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

White to play and win

(Duras, 1927)

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

The Chess Match

David McKee

[poster]

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Two weeks ago, in a review of the first volume of the Duncan Suttles trilogy Chess on the Edge, I posted five interesting positions that could be found within the book. They were not tactical or positional exercises as such, more a collection of flashpoints illustrative of Suttles’ tendency to play moves that one would never expect. I had promised to reveal all within a few days, and then promptly failed to do so. So for those of you still wondering, here are the solutions:

a) Suttles - Letic, 1981. 31.?

This was the real stumper; not one poster got even remotely close to the answer. It is not surprising, for Suttles played the extraordinary 31.Ng3!! After the natural 31…g5 there followed 32.Bxg5 hxg5 33.Rd8. Harper and Seirawan describe this as an ‘absolutely pure positional sacrifice’, the aim of which is completely bind up black’s position. As the authors point out, this is already beginning to come to fruition: Letic has but one piece move which does not lose material (33…Rc7). For the conclusion of this highly imaginative game, go here.

b) Schulman - Suttles, 1965. 6…?

The answer here is the decidedly un-Suttlesy 6…d5. Given that Duncan once wrote that ‘Most of my opening strategies are based on control of e5 and I rarely play …d5, even though sometimes it is the best move’, it is difficult to understand. But then again, can’t we say that for all of Suttles’ play? In the game Schulman wisely chose 7.e5 over 7.Nxd5 e6, followed by 8…Nxd4, or 7.exd5 Nf5.

c) Evans - Suttles, 1972. 14…?

An anonymous poster was straight on the money with this one: 14…Nxg4 15.Nxg4 (15.Bxg4 Nc4) Bxg4 16.Rdg1 (again, 16.Bxg4 Nc4) and white’s position is a mess.

d) Filipowicz - Suttles, 1964. 15…?

This one’s a rarity - an ‘only’ move with deep psychological impact all the same. The solution is 15…Ne3, which Harper and Seirawan assign two exclamation marks. ‘The notes in Chess Chat give this a “?!”,’ they write, ‘but since Black’s alternative is to resign, that hardly seems fair!’

e) Suttles - Schmid, 1975. 1.?

1.a3, of course! Play continued with 1…d5 2.Nf3 g6 3.b4 Bg7 4.Ra2. Nuff said.

And now, some new questions. Below are six chess-related quotations which are far from well-known. For a bit of Friday ‘fun’, I would like to invite you to put a name to each quotation. Some clues: a) belongs to a Victorian aesthete; the author of b) was punched live on television in the early 1960s; c) was uttered by a Surrealist; d) originates from a 1976 NME interview; e) is perhaps the most obvious, especially if you’re au fait with French existentialist footballers; and f) was said to Jacob Bronowski in the back of a taxi.

a) ‘In painting and poetry the workers scorn analysis, and the best work defies it, and, so far as chess is capable of analysis, it is neither art nor play.’

b) ‘My own enthusiasms are numerous and mostly long-rooted. Like other people’s, some grow greater with the passage of time, and some recede, though some which appear to have vanished are only lying dormant; I used, for instance, to play a lot of chess when I was young - it was indeed a passionate enthusiasm - and have only played a handful of games these years past, but whenever I have taken the pieces out I have instantly felt all the old excitement and pleasure, the eagerness to start and enjoy.’

c) ‘Chess is a game where the most intense mental activity leaves no traces.’

d) ‘I don’t appreciate a band that likes to play chess in their off-stage hours. If you have to spend a lot of time with people who are interested in their chess boards and little card games and shit like that, it can drive you nuts.’

e) ‘You cannot be a great player without being intelligent… In one second, you have to imagine a lot of possibilities and decide immediately… It’s like geometry in your head. Sometimes, there are 60,000 people in the stand and you give a good ball to somebody to score and nobody could see the ball.

Why? Because you have something special and can read things nobody else could. Maradona was like Kasparov. He could see 10 moves ahead. Platini was like a chess player. So was Cruyff. So is Zinedine Zidane. It is about creativity. I don’t like people who say: “I paint so I am an artist”. You are an artist if you create something.’

f) ‘Chess is not a game. Chess is a well-defined form of computation. You may not be able to work out the answers, but in theory there must be a solution, a right procedure in any position. Now real games… are not like that at all. Real life is not like that. Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do. And that is what games are about in my theory.’

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Being a sarf Landanner means I’ve never been to one of Adam Raoof’s Golders Green Rapidplays across the other side of the river. Still, don’t let that put you off, especially as there’s one this Saturday coming up. And also because as you can see from Vad’s photographs here from one of the recent rapidplays, these certainly look like friendly events in a nice venue, replete with some familiar faces from the chess scene south of the river . . .