Down the Road: Portland

It's hard to believe more than a year has passed since the last Portland Fall Open. I had such a good time last year (despite a rather mediocre result in the open section) I made sure to schedule a return trip, and this time I did things a little differently.

Instead of driving before the crack of dawn Saturday, I took the train down Friday evening, and I pre-registered so I was in no real rush to get to the club in the morning. Since I was staying downtown, Saturday morning I started off with a leisurely walk along the river, coffeenated, and checked out the excellent farmer's market at Portland State University, and then hopped on a bus to the club. I registered in the open section again, and as I somewhat expected I was seeded dead last. However I was feeling quite focused and relaxed, and in the year since the last event I've somewhat tightened up my game and my openings. Did this have any effect? We shall see...

As Caissa would will it, my first round opponent was none other than Isaac Vega, who I played in the second round last year. In our first game I had the black pieces in a modern Philidor, and blundered a rook in the late middle game after weakening my kingside with a couple of pawn pushes. I had black again in our rematch and just recently I've started to explore the Russian game...

Isaac had just played Ne5. Nf4 felt imminent, and looking at White's queenside space I sallied forth with g5.

However after f3, White won the f5 pawn and brought the queen and knight in behind my now advanced pawns (is a theme becoming apparent?). Queens came off, and though my rook had a brief moment of glory posted on e4, I missed a roundabout knight fork, lost the exchange, and soon after White had an overwhelming advantage.

Nonetheless, as many chess players know there's a real advantage to swimming at the bottom of the barrel in the open section. When your opponent has 300+ rating on you there's no real pressure, and just to play a decent opening seems like an accomplishment, so I felt good about the second round.

The pairings gave me black again, this time against an unfamiliar 1700s junior player who played e4; rather than play another Petrov I had a try with another second round Philidor. Perhaps my opponent had never seen the line, but with a few passive and defensive moves White gave up space and time...

I've just brought the bishop to e6. Key to this variation is the open g file and whatever blockade Black can put up in the center. White of course has multiple threats, but in the game he traded bishops which had the effect of kicking the knight out of the potent outpost on f5, and with no obvious White attack on the d file I had time to coordinate my rooks.

After I played the Ra-g8, to my surprise White moved the knight to e2. Objectively speaking the trade of rooks for queen doesn't seem to benefit Black very much, and I spent a lot of time looking at alternatives. In the end I went for it, and I did have a solid advantage which I squandered in this position:

I didn't like the knight taking the b pawn here, but I should have saved my bishop by retreating it rather than moving b4.

In the imbalanced endgame we both made some mistakes, but as they say I made the second to last one, and managed to use those two queenside pawns as an effective distraction to complicate the position into a mate. Despite the mistakes I was feeling great to have one point out of two, especially against better competition.

Last year on the first night of the tournament I met friends for ramen at the Marukin on the east side of the river, this year we met at the Marukin in the Pine St. Market downtown. Last year I played Isaac on Saturday, just like this year. Two modern Philidors in the second round where I played black...one could claim that chess, arguably a game of symmetry vs asymmetry, might have some influence on the geometry of fate, but regardless, the tonkotsu broth was delicious, and after a long day I fell asleep watching a TV show describing in great detail how aliens might have constructed the pyramids, which was quite effective at putting my mind off chess and letting me get some much needed rest.

Sunday morning afforded more good coffee and an amazing sandwich, and a third round pairing against another higher-rated opponent (who I will confess I thought was much higher rated than he actually was, which was the cause of no small amount of excitement during the game as we'll see).

I was White in a Caro-Kann, and I decided to play for the bishop pair. My opponent made a comment after the game that he was playing somewhat loosely, which I think worked in my favor. I again weakened the defense around my king and we reached this position:

Black's queen who had been on a5 retreated to c7 after I pushed b4, and my queen is very exposed on d4. Here Black played (the surprising to me, but logical) c5, and I didn't like moving the queen further forward, so played the objectively worse move bxc. Black's lines open up, but after some inaccurate moves we traded rooks and were close to equal.

I've just moved Qa5. Black's only real response is Bb6, and at this point I had the overwhelming feeling that I couldn't lose this game. Of course, I guessed my chance of winning was slight, but that hardly bothered me. As the game played out, Black did win a kingside pawn, but in a bishop of opposite color endgame couldn't advance the pawn majority and I got the draw.

With two blacks on Saturday I finished Sunday with a second white. Symmetry struck again, and we played another Petrov, but with Black playing Nc6 after Nxe5. Black gets a lot of open lines in this variation, and though I castled queenside to try for a quick attack Black won a pawn after sharp exchanges in the center.

Here I rather unwisely traded off rooks then isolated my c pawn in the center in a vain attempt at winning chances; since I was down a pawn already, this just gave Black majorities on both sides of the board which I couldn't defend, and eventually Black promoted to a queen.

So I finished with 1.5 out of 4, and a performance rating about 200 points higher than last year. I'm happy that I made the trip for many reasons and not just the decent result, since as it turns out it was my last chance to play at this location of the Portland Chess Club, which is moving closer to downtown around the end of the year. The current property was inherited after the owner passed away recently and the new owner is more than doubling the rent, in the name of market rates. A poor state of affairs but not too surprising I suppose. I have to admit I'll miss the faux tudor air of the old club. The new location will probably be more convenient, though from what I've heard it may not be as charming, and the club will have to do some extra work to bring in more revenue for a higher rent.

In any case, after a couple of tournaments in Portland I have a good opinion of the club's TDs, who seem to work well as a team and create a good sense of community, it might be a Portland thing. Sunday evening, on the bus ride back downtown, I found out about a Sunday night chess meetup in Southeast and transferred to the light rail eastbound, ending up at Lucky Lab around 7 PM. Four or five boards played there until around 10, when I fell in with a friendly and inveterate bunch that adjourned to The Basement a few blocks away, where proceedings continued in 3 +2 time. According to them The Basement is happening on Monday night as well; Coffee Time, in northwest Portland and once well known for its chess, is not what it once was. And so it goes. As I walked back across the Hawthorne bridge I could hear the pulsations of what sounded like a massive drum circle drifting over the river from the direction of OMSI. Though at that point I might have had one beer too many, and could have imagined the whole thing,