Cannes' chess festival - 2014

As happens sometimes, only now I see Zenomorphy's beautifully supportive post! A pleasure to read :-)

One comment, though, about managing adrenaline: 

Yesterday, when I started my game, I noticed that I was still very nervous, after the loss the day before. 

I asked myself - why should I be so nervous, when I'm playing black against a considerably lower-rated opponent, the game has just started, and I know what to do in this opening? (or so I believed... :-) but anyway)

And then I recalled an old remedy for nervousness... I asked the arbiter's permission to go out, find a pharmacy, and get myself a healthy portion of vitamin B1 and vitamin C. 

I got them, even though it cost me half an hour before move eight - but it made the difference. I relaxed considerably and was "present" for the rest of the game, as it shows in my play, which was patient and disciplined as the position called for. 

Vitamin B1 is a well known remedy for nervousness, for nightmares...

It seems that during concentrated mental efforts, the brain exhausts a certain quantity, which B1 remedies. Try it for yourself and you'll see. It is small wonder that one feels nervous after prolonged mental efforts - but now you know what I do against it :-) I bought the 250 mg pills of Bauer. Recommended!! :-)

The tournament has three more rounds to go - so nine in total. 

I'm now placed 24th out of 163 participants. The excellent Luba Kopylov (the mother of Daniel, whom I beat in the first round) is leading with six out of six!

There is one player with 5.5, and after that the list of "damaged" pretenders with 5, 4.5 etc. is pretty long, as you'd expect from a tournament with that many players. 

4 out of 6, I feel, is very calmly out of contention :-) 

Let's just concentrate on today's game, against one of France's brightest and most promising young talents - the 13 year old Pierre-Basile Coiffait who, with an 1921 rating, is the 7th player in France (!) under age fourteen.

Prediction: I'll beat him!

B1 & C huh? Man, I gotta remember that. Beats the heck outta Xanax & Beta Blockers ;). Like I said, it's how you manage the adrenaline. Nice remedy. ;') So much for the "Giant Killer" though, right? That was a nicely played end game. Your Bishop owned the Mason/Dixon line. Coulda saved the extra King walk (for a couple of moves) like you said. The a2 pawn can only be attacked from behind. We'll done!

That kid's mom is certainly crushing it! Wow! What a chess family!

Again, I'm digging the confidence & next round prediction. Lol

Their looming 2458-rated dad is hovering above them throughout the game (wife and child). However, I have absolutely no reason to suspect foul play. All seems completely straight. 

The family simply lives and breathes chess

Which brings me to the idea of bringing my daughter to a chess tournament at some point... :-) of course it has to coincide with her school vacations...

And right - in the case of Xanax and other Psych drugs, if they purport to "solve" any kind of mental issues - stress, fatigue, depression, you name it - the solution is certainly WAY worse than the problem! I invite you to take a sincere look at www.cchr.org, and discover the horrors for yourself!! Like with similar substances which are known as ILLEGAL drugs - cocaine, heroine et al - it's better not to start. Withdrawal symptoms are so horrendous, that for whoever's on these drugs, the only hope is to consult one of these rare medical doctors, who have experience helping people get off of the Psych drugs - through proper nutrition, vitamin and mineral supplements to give back to the body what the Psych drugs has depleted it of, and sometimes other remedies as well, designed to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. Urgh!

My daughter would say here, "off topic, papa!" (in French, of course)

I'll see you after the game :-)

Post #56: Well, zenomorphy, if all it took was attitude I would have been 2000 a lot sooner :)

I'd like to think I've had a mature attitude for years, but chess is so hard it takes even more than that. For example even though we learn at a very early stage to keep focused even when we are winning, we still blow or almost blow winning positions -- in fact, even grandmasters do :) As if we still need to be reminded to keep playing and being alert in winning positions yet this idea has surrounded any chess player as soon as they started playing -- chess is hard :)

I wish you luck solskytz -- let's hope you get to 2200 sooner rather than later, but these things tend to be harder than they seem :)

Nice game in round 6 by the way!

Great thread, just read through it all! Good luck in the last rounds!

"And then I recalled an old remedy for nervousness... I asked the arbiter's permission to go out, find a pharmacy, and get myself a healthy portion of vitamin B1 and vitamin C. 

I got them, even though it cost me half an hour before move eight - but it made the difference. I relaxed considerably and was "present" for the rest of the game, as it shows in my play, which was patient and disciplined as the position called for. 

Vitamin B1 is a well known remedy for nervousness, for nightmares...

It seems that during concentrated mental efforts, the brain exhausts a certain quantity, which B1 remedies. Try it for yourself and you'll see. It is small wonder that one feels nervous after prolonged mental efforts - but now you know what I do against it :-) I bought the 250 mg pills of Bauer. Recommended!! :-)"

Hmm, this is hard for me to relate to, perhaps because I'm too young :)

Hey, ...I was joking (see smiley face), rather than advocating the "alternatives for nerves", lol. Glad you found a holistic & healthy way to manage those nerves and adrenaline! That you did, sorta goes to my point., ...a healthy & effective means to replete what the brain loses to stress. I get it. Haven't you read of musicians, singers and actors contrarily turning to Beta Blockers and suffering in performance, ...utterly contrary to my earlier point (the long one ). Anyway, ...still chuckling about waking to the good-willed & incisive "argh invective" against chems dude, ...uh, thanks. :) And no Elubus, pretty sure simply "attitude" was far from the gist, exegesis nor summation of my point, although I did echo shams insight & encouragement at the beginning and stand by that. Further, sincere "Congrats" to ya on achieving Expert Elubus. Ya see solskytz, it didn't take long before you were called old. Lol. Finish strong!

Elubas too young to suffer from nervous tension during chess games? Maybe. For me this isn't a new problem, though. I remember suffering from it over 10 years ago already. 

Great to meet you, Waller! You're invited to explore the rest of my content - I hope you find it just as entertaining :-)

I have lost another game today, which y'all may be interested to look at - against France's #7 U14 chess player - the 1921 rated Pierre-Basile Coiffait. A very well-mannered 13-yo gentleman. 

The game was not devoid of interesting points and ideas - faulty opening play by white (yours truly), than some missed tactics by black in trying to exploit this, then some clever play by white - until he tried to be too clever for his own good... 

After that - just to see how a 13-year-old takes the harness into his hands and never let it slip, is an experience in itself, I promise you. 

Well, still a good tournament for you. Thanks for sharing. In English we put it like this: "the perfect is the enemy of the good". 

Wouldn't be surprised to see this remarkable wunderkind sorta "finding his way" at the beginning of a meteoritic rise. If so, someday you'll consider it a contribution to the future of French Chess. Haven't looked at the game yet, but perhaps shifting the focus to maximizing the remaining ratings opportunities helps. Finish strong, you've carried yourself well in a tough tourney! You are courageous & generous to allow the vicarious participation in your journey. I've enjoyed this thread bro.

Mind you - I've reposted post #71 now. I noticed that my variations and comments for the first twenty moves or so, have mysteriously disappeared - so I rewrote them. If you already looked at the game, take another look. You won't regret it!

I have an interesting history with meteoring youngsters. 

When I lose to them (such as a loss to Tamir Nabaty from Israel - today a solid 2600 player), it sticks in my memory...

But sometimes I beat them (Maxim Rodstein, who is touching 2700 now, and Michael Luria, who was Israel's U14 champion and beat Kasparov in a simul shortly before I beat him), and it's sweeter to recall. 

I don't remember ever drawing one, though..

As an Artist, perhaps you'll appreciate the following poignant elegance from Leonard Cohens '56 poetry anthology (two years before my intro to life), Let Us Compare Mythologies, to further shams point on the unattainability of this elusive sprite called perfection.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in.

Peace

Looking forward to digesting your game post. :)

Big-time "Wow" on your experiences w those upstart, meteoritic youngsters! I can relate, as to the sweeter reminiscences, ...we play to win :)!

So - I always introduce a new game with a few opening sentences. 

However, this time around I have several 'opening formulae' in mind. 

Opening formula n. 1: 

It's so hard to win when you're up the exchange for a pawn! Especially when your opponent is as motivated and as resourceful in holding the draw as 1855-rated Enrico Gardini has been today. 

60+ years old an unrelenting as he is, ours was the last game (but two) to end in the whole three tournaments!

I entered this ending with great confidence, then realized that it would be harder than I thought (after he played his excellent 29. Bd7!, which I hadn't foreseen). 

I was still very optimistic, and created a long-term winning plan, that was so long-term, that I was in danger of infringing the 50-move rule!!

I did manage to execute it - only to find out that at the end I had no win, and that if I did have a win, it must have eluded me altogether. 

In yesterday's game, you may recall that I found a defensive setup of a B on e3 and a N on f2, blocking all entry points for his rook on the d-file. 

It turned out, through the kind help of one, Houdini, that I found it too late. Had I seen it several moves earlier (when his king was still on e7, rather than f7), I would have had much better chances to hold the draw. 

Something similar happened today. I'm writing this introduction before actually going over the game. 

Today, I had a tempo-gaining mate threat, which I've only seen just before the move when I played it. At this writing, the question bites in my mind, how long has it been on the board, and could I have made better use of it. (edit: no worries. The opportunity didn't exist before the move in which it appeared... however there were other "surprises" where I might have played differently had I foreseen them).

Now we go to:

Opening formula n. 2:

Goodbye FIDE 2000+ rating!

It was great while it lasted. I wish it went longer. Who knows when I'm going to see you again? (maybe after tomorrow's game, although this is not a goal, and would have been a wrong goal had it been one). 

Nothing dramatic - it's just that my live rating has now hit a level of 1999 - the highest of the "dreaded 1900s" to paraphrase <Elubas> - but anyway, basically a number. 

Did you notice how frequently in life we let numbers stress us?

Numbers serve for telling us what we have to think about ourselves as regards our chess ratings - but also regarding how much money we have in the bank or earn per unit of time, our age, our weight, even our IQ! - and other ways of measuring and comparing ourselves to others (and to our past performances, to our expectations, etc.)

The more we obsess about numbers, I feel, the more we miss out. 

There is just so much to learn from today's game, which brings me naturally to:

Opening formula n. 3:

I can already see that with all of these opening formulas, the game itself will wait for another post. 

You already know what happened there. I still haven't told you that I tried to win for 102 moves... :-)

But each thing at its time. For now I'll keep the opening secret :-) I will only hint, that it was one of my favorite openings, and that I played black. 

This was an opening to the opening formula. Now to the essence:

If I calculated correctly, my performance in this tournament so far is 1958 - which is somewhat below my actual rating, but by no means a disaster. I was "expected" to score 5 out of 8 - and I currently have "only" 4.5 (between us, the way today's game went, I really expected to finish it with 5 out of 8...). 

That said, you will recall that I had quite different expectations when the tournament started... 

So there was a considerable gap between reality and expectation. 

However, I can definitely not say that it was a "disappointing" tournament. 

Why?

Because, with the exception of one really horrible move (32. Rd3 in game 5, which cost me the queen in a terrifically winning position, turning it immediately into a terrifically losing position) - I basically played my best game. 

My best game, complete with new ideas, improvements and refinements which I learned and prepared prior to the tournament - and to a certain extent during it - in openings, in tactics, in strategy and in endgame play - and minus mistakes through lacunes of knowledge, of understanding, and sometimes of patience, of careful calculation, check and double check... but this is ME - the whole package. Good and bad. 

This is what I brought with me to the tournament. Overall I was playing in a disciplined, well thought-out way, within the limitations of my knowledge, imagination, constitution and time available. The results are what I should get with this kind of play. 

Luck wasn't especially on my side in this tournament (besides a couple of forgotten pawns which opponents didn't take in games 3 and 4), but you don't always get lucky. 

The games of this tournament are the best feedback I could get on my strengths and weaknesses. Already this current game, n. 8, can teach so much on the type of ending that was reached, of other endings that could have come out of it - and on differences between my evaluation of the sitaution during the game, how it looks to me after the game, and what the situation really is, as revealed by sober Houdini analysis (the same Houdini, by the way, who claims that in yesterday's game, 20. Be3 (instead of the serious error 20. f4) would have given me only equality against best play - no clear advantage. I saw it and was convinced). 

Now that you've read all of these introductory thoughts, you are ready to see today's effort. Only thing is, I'm not ready with it yet...

I hadn't posted game n. 8 yesterday night, which was a very interesting fight, full of ideas and very rich in play. 

One of the reasons for this 'omission', was that I was very tired, and knew that I had to get some rest before round 9, which was played early this morning - and of course I still had to get from Nice (where I'm staying) to Cannes to play...

So - in game nine I played yet another talented boy. After beating the 11th-rated U12 German and losing (after 20. f4?? and his excellent technique after that) to the 7th rated U14 French - today my opponent was Moller Sophus Mechlenburg, the 4th (!) U14 Dane, who is rated 1869. 

This game started as another one of my Alapin Sicilians - I guessed right, that Sophus would probably consult with my Round 7 opponent and ask him what I was playing - and that we'll have again the exact same opening. 

However I've made my homework and studied this variation a bit - and so I got into a line which I learned especially for this game (our position after move nine was actually on my computer screen yesterday night).

This line looked promising for white, with many opportunities for black to go wrong. 

Sophus took quite some time on the clock - but used it well, as he navigated through the opening maze, which was obviously not known to him beforehand, remarkably well. 

The position started to become interesting and complex, with him getting the somewhat better development, and me, the two bishops very early on (much like you've seen in game n. 6). 

I like this kind of "imbalance" - especially when the game is open, or when you suppose that you can open it eventually, and when there's not yet too much activity or initative to suffer through and neutralize. 

A bit later the heat started to turn on. I have managed to push forward and exchange the isolated d-pawn which I got as part of my opening play, winning a Q-side pawn for it and creating a majority there. 

With the two bishops, this would have been rather promising - except that with correct play, I should have allowed him a strong passed pawn in the center, and probably exchanged one of my bishops.

The resulting position wouldn't be without its dangers for both players, as I would still remain with my strong LSB. 

However, none of this actually came to pass, as I've simply blundered away my light squared bishop, not noticing that the rook that recaptured my knight on d5, was also looking to its right, to b5 where my bishop was, totally forgotten, much like my queen was in game 5. 

Blunders!

In this tournament, I got good, perfectly playable positions from the opening nine times out of nine. 

This means that my preparation was impeccable for my playing strength. In those cases when an opponent played something I wasn't familiar with, I always found excellent solutions for that (which goes to show that I understand the openings I play very well) - or, failing that, still managed to come out ahead at some point (the only exception really being game 3, where still, the excellent Qf6!, Instead of Qf4, would have guaranteed me an opening advantage.

Even then, I've later studied, and I have a totally different concept of how to play that variation, which was totally unfamiliar to me - to the point that I thought that he was playing something 'offbeat' during the game). 

Blunders!

So why do blunders happen?

I'm no authority on the psychology of chess, of course, but I think that in my case, this kind of blunder, of just forgetting a piece (which is more typical of players of 1100-1200 playing strength), is simply a sign for me, that conditions aren't right for me to bring into expression the full extent of my chess understanding, knowledge and preparation. 

There are certain negative factors in my life (don't worry, my health is perfectly ok!), not related to chess at all, that rob my attention from the chess board when I'm playing chess. I thought that I could put them aside for the time being, and just concentrate on playing chess for eight days - and I thought I was doing pretty well at it for quite a while - but alas, they caught up with me, coming 'through the back door', so to speak. These non-chess issues were definitely asserting their presence!

When I wasn't making progress from the 1900 level, back in Israel some 11 years ago, again there were these 'mysterious' things happening (not blunders. In Israel it manifested differently, but was essentially the same phenomenon - I could see that I was already better than 1900, but something was always 'magically' pulling me back) - I also knew that I had to handle some 'extra-chessory' factors. Once I did, my playing strength really jumped a level pretty quickly. 

It took me some 7 more years (from fixing that specific issue) to get back to tournament play - and of course, my consistent and much improved results were no accident. 

Now I know what I've got to do. Maybe I won't resist the temptation and play some more competitive chess games - however, I know exactly what needs to be done for me to be playing the way I should be, according to my understanding - and to expand my understanding still further. 

Many things interest me in chess, which I haven't studied yet: Sharp Sicilians, Angry KIDs, Swinging Benkos and Benonis, deep and strategical Ruy Lopezes... my game could be a lot richer. The openings I play now very often go for early exchanges of queens, and endgames or queenless middle games. I like to play like that - but I want to have more suits in my closet, so to speak. 

Rating points come and go. The system compensates itself. When you're doing better, you rise faster in the ratings the lower-rated you are... so having lost 37 points here in Cannes with my 1900-ish overall performance (due to the K=30 factor as a new player to the system) isn't really a concern. 

However, these two big blunders (forgetting queen and bishop in two white games), come as a signal from the "out-of-chess" world - you better handle something, man - you have 'baggage' tying you down, so no take-off yet. 

A miscalculation, such as 20. f4 in game seven, where you fail to take into account the opponent's strongest reply to your next move, can happen to anyone at any time. The mind does tend to play this kind of tricks also on stronger players (where a response which wasn't doing him any good on move 19, packs a nasty punch on move 20, where the conditions on the board have altered but little). 

But just overlooking that a piece is threatened - I think that even a 1500 player won't be able to maintain his rating, no matter how much he understands chess, if he lets these oversights slip into his game. 

Of course, I don't need sympathy. Nobody has to feel 'sorry' for me or anything :-) These are only chess games and chess-related rating points we're talking here. One of my strong personal points is that I never take chess seriously in that sense, of being badly affected by chess losses or chess 'failures'. It's just a game. I do it for fun, and because I like it. I could be an 1100 player and I would still like it (in fact, I've been playing lots of chess throughout my childhood without ever being better than 1200 before age 17 - when I first discovered that chess clubs and chess books exist). 

I have had a marvelous vacation here in the south of France - and if some of my chess (and life) thoughts and ideas have interested or inspired anyone, the purpose of this daily column has been served. 

That, and of course at a convenient moment I'll post game 8 and game 9, complete with annotations, just as I did with games one through seven.