Carlsen's memory

At the end of this enjoyable video I realised I have something in common with Carlsen. I too lost to David Howell when he was a junior. My blitz loss was at a barbeque around the Hastings Congress and I had had a couple of lagers, so at least I have an excuse.

Beer is not conducive to good chess.

I have one good Grand Master result. I beat Larry Evans in a simul in Denver right after he won the US Championship.

I managed to draw GM Enrico Sevillano at a simul a few years back.  Last summer I got to play him in an (online) tournament game, the National Tournament of State Senior Champions, at G/90.

I thought I'd managed the draw because he had to play so fast...but in the tournament game he took under 1 minute total for his first 15 moves.  He then thought about the next couple moves, maybe a total of 10 minutes, and used less than 1 minute for the rest of the game (I resigned around move 25).  So playing fast apparently doesn't faze him!

I cherish the moment in the simul where Enrico, a pawn up, came by and saw my move and made a tiny annoyed sound under his breath.  At that point I figured my calculations that it was a draw were correct, and indeed they were, though he gave me quite a thorough pop quiz on rook endgames before taking the draw.  (He did the same to my friend Davey in the same simul; unfortunately he eventually found a question Davey couldn't answer.)

In a simul I have beaten Dzindzindashvili and drawn against Jan Timman. 

My win against Dzin was the worst game ever. After 9 move I was down a piece and ready to resign. A few moves later Dzin blundered a piece and missed an easy and winning knight sacrifice on f7. After this I easily won the game but was far from proud of it.

I merely have a few draws against FMs at daily chess (winning for the majority of one and just missing the right path), a (just one) win against a WGM at blitz on chessclub.com (used to be the place to find titled players) and a win at time-handicapped blitz in a tournament at the Barbican against an FM who became a GM a couple of years later (Aaron Summerscale. He played the Philidor Defence against me).

On the debit side I lost to Australian GM Ian Rogers in a simul and an interesting thing about it was that the Sveshnikov line I lost against him, he had lost against Kasparov as juniors. And here is that game.