Musings by Hikaru Nakamura on life, chess, and travel. Don't forget to subscribe to receive timely updates.
Once again, this blog will be extremely short. I would just like to let everyone know, I will be headed to the doctor today to try and figure out what in the world has struck me since I have been sick for close to two whole weeks now. When I am settled in Seattle early next week, I’ll let everyone know about my general thoughts regarding the NH disaster and everything else.
I will recap rounds 1-5 when we hit the rest day, but for now just a few quick comments on my first two rounds. In the first round game against GM Ljubojevic, we reached a very bizarre middlegame in which I was probably a bit worse. However, I was able to outplay my opponent towards the end of time control and reached a winning endgame only to simply hallucinate and forget where the White bishop ended up. This led to a draw. In the second round, I once again obtained a very promising position against GM van Wely after two inaccuries in the middlegame. With time control looming, I simply blundered horribly allowing a very cute e4-e3-e2 trick which led to an endgame in which Black has a fortress. What can I say about the first two games? I felt that I have played very well in general, but I am getting tired at critical points in the game. This probably has something to do with my health which has been steadily going downhill since the first day I arrived. Alas, I will now go back to sleep until the round.
Greetings to everyone from Japan once again. It seems that despite my best efforts to set certain time schedules for blogging, I end up doing it sooner than planned. Therefore, without further ado, I present a recap of the past week and all its wild adventures which were to be had. Enjoy!
Day 1: “Arrival”
Early Tuesday afternoon, I arrived at Tokyo Narita International Airport after a long 14 hour flight from Newark. Fortunately, due to all my traveling, I really did not feel like this was anything particularly surprising. For the first five hours of the flight, I slept like a baby so there really is nothing to mention there. After that, I spent the next two hours charging up my computer and then studying some chess for the tournament here in Japan. After I got bored by this, I chose to turn on the entertainment system and spent time admiring how much better movies were in the old days, having re-watched To Catch A Thief (Alfred Hitchcock) and Diamonds Are Forever (Who doesn’t love Sean Connery?). At this point, we were only two hours from landing, so I decided to spend the rest of my time reading Market Wizards Volume I. Not such a bad flight after all since it was quite productive.
After clearing customs, I was met by Ms. Watai and Mr. Ozaki, who are both members of the JCA (Japan Chess Federation). Both have been quite generous to me over the past couple of years since I started making my annual voyage out here each August for the tournament. We then took the train from the train station out to Kamata, which is where the tournament was being held. After my mother and I checked into our hotel, we pretty much crashed immediately. On a complete sidenote, one of the great things about coming to Japan is that there is always free high speed internet everywhere. One of my big pet peeves about Europe is the ability of hotels to rip people off for internet instead of simply having it like most places in Asia do. Alas, we do not live in a perfect world.
Day 2: “Let’s Try This Game Instead”
On the second day, my mother and I, along with Mr. Ozaki headed over to go see a shogi festival where the legendary Habu Yoshiharu played a rapid game. It was here, that I had the pleasure of meeting one of Habu and GM Joel Lautier’s friends, Jacques Pineau. Although this was nice, it led to me ending up playing several games of shogi in which I got absolutely destroyed…sigh. I guess you can’t be good at all games, eh? After this somewhat enjoyable, somewhat traumatic experience, we all went out and had a nice dinner at an eel restaurant as Habu put it. Nevertheless, despite all my trips to Japan, I will never get used to having to sit on tatami mats as they make my legs hurt! With a 10 AM round looming, we did not let it get too late and returned to Kamata as I got myself into chess mode.
Day 3: “And So It Begins”
After having a day and half of trying to get on the time zone, the tournament began the following day. As much as I would like to start talking about the games, the morning had an event which I have not felt for some time. Having woken up at 5 AM, I decided to take a short nap from 7-9AM. This was, however, cut abruptly short when I got awoken by my mother and instantly realized that my bed was shaking?! The day before we had left New York, there was an earthquake in Japan. Although we originally thought this was an aftershock, it turned out to be a completely different earthquake which measured 6.6 on the Richter Scale. This certainly was NOT what I expected before the round and certainly a new experience which is saying something considering all the traveling I have done.
In the first round, I was paired against the Japanese player, Ryo, Shiomi (2124). After a very quiet opening, my opponent fell apart pretty quickly after he could not come up with a good plan in the middlegame. I duly converted without any problems at all. The second game was a bit of a surprise as I played an unrated Japanese player Goto,Susumu. It appears that due to the Japanese tournaments being only 7 rounds in cases such as this one that some players never get a FIDE rating. However, since I had played him last year, I was quite aware that he was around 2000 strength. After a roughly equal position from the Scandinavian, I proceeded to outplay him in the ensuing queenless middlegame without any major issues. Obviously, it is good to get off to a good start, but I found it much more useful here since I had not played a classical game of chess since San Sebastian which was already nearly a month ago.
Day 4: “Keeping The Status Quo”
On the second day of the tournament, I was definitely surprised, when I noticed that I was paired against Nakamura. Luckily, I was not paired against myself, but against Ryuji (2177). In another typical game with White, I chose to play an extremely slow fianchetto opening and achieved a small advantage. However, I was able to slowly build up an advantage and eventually won when my opponent finally collapsed at time control. The fourth round was definitely a step up when I was paired with Ryosuke Nanjo (2199) with Black. Nanjo and I go way back having co-tied for first place in the nationals about 10 years ago now (I forget which nationals it was in…sign that I am getting too old)! Nanjo, like quite a few of the other top Japanese players has been on a bit of a downswing. Nevertheless, he gave me a serious run for my money three years ago when I played in this tournament for a second time. This time however, I avoided any real dramatics as I got a small advantage with Black and then after a few miscues a completely winning one. I did not make any mistakes and was off to a 4/4 start after two days. However, as I have learned from previous years, there are always one or two games where I have some issues.
Day 5: “Rolling Along”
The fifth game brought me my third White of the tournament against Gene, Nakauchi (2193) who is Japanese, but apparently plays for Australia. Despite another pairing against a significantly weaker player, I was not going to take my opponent lightly as he played a marvelous first round game against FM Kojima (brightest Japanese junior player) and should have won but only ended up drawing. After getting a nice advantage with the Tromp, my opponent decided to go for a very speculative exchange sacrifice, but then mid way through it realized that it did not work. This simply left me up an exchange with no problems. I easily finished off the game moving to 5/5. In the sixth round, I got Black once again against British junior Samuel Franklin (2133, 15 years old). After a roughly equal position out of the Scandinavian, I took a big risk since I had to win the game. Ironically, I had looked at the exact line on the plane during the flight over, but then decided against what I had prepared as the line was simply equal. This led to me reaching a slightly worse position but still playable. However, as Samuel used up more and more of his time, he eventually went astray and this led to an unpleasant ending where he suffered for a bit before blundering away a pawn and the game. 6/6
Day 6: “The Finale”
Once again, for a fourth year in a row, I came into the last day with 6/6. However, unlike previous years, I had to play the second best player in the last round as opposed to earlier rounds. In the final round, I was paired against FM Akira Watanabe (2339) with White. Unlike previous days when I took a slow and steady approach, I came right out of the gates going into an open sicilian. This backfired nearly immediately when I reached a slightly unfamiliar pawn structure. After a couple of very careless manouvering moves, I ended up with a slightly worse position. However, I was able to wind through the complex complications of the late middlegame and turned the game around near time control. After a long endgame, I won and thus ended the tournament with a perfect score of 7/7. This now puts my career score in Japan at 28-0.
After the prize giving ceremony, there was a simul with twenty player. Despite facing a master and several 2100’s, it only took me an hour and a half to complete a clean sweep. Unlike past years, there was definitely a certain feeling of finality to this year. Perhaps, I will be back against next year or in the future, but my schedule will likely make it difficult. Either way, it has been a great run and I have had a lot of fun here over the past four years. In particular, it has been great meeting some gringo’s Simon, Phil and semi-gringo, Paul. Overall, I have nothing negative to say about Japan chess, only positives. Hopefully, God willing, I can become world champion and generate some genuine interest in chess here. Tomorrow morning, I fly back to New York for a day before heading off to Amsterdam for the NH Rising Stars Event. Enjoy the following pictures below!
Trying my luck at Shogi against Mr. Pineau!
A picture from the dinner. Left to right: Me, Mr. Habu, my mother, Mr. Pineau.
Some idiot looking all smug after receiving the first place prize.
This is a quick update for those who are interested. I am currently in the lead by a whole point here in the Japan League with a score of 6/6. However, I will be playing FM Akira Watanabe (used to be 2400 Fide) tomorrow, so it should be interesting. Once I return to the US for half a day on the 17th, I’ll add a complete recap on the tournament.
In tune with the past blog, I will now recap my past week which has also been extremely busy. For some unknown reason, I cannot ever have one free day of rest. Oh well, such is life in this day and age. At least I can keep everyone apprised of what IS happening.
Following the Mainz Chess Classic, I returned to New York for a few days briefly. Shortly thereafter, I headed off to Indianapolis, Indiana for the 2009 US Open. After arriving in Indianapolis on Thursday, I went straight to the tournament to check out who was participating as well as the location itself. I must say that after so many years away from the US Open, I am not happy with the current trend. Although the young talent seems to abound, I recognize fewer and fewer people with every passing year. Perhaps I am getting too old for too attend this tournament!? I recognized the usual faces such as Shabalov, Finegold,Kosteniuk, etc. After this, I briefly chatted with several people who asked me various questions about my schedule. Unfortunately, due to the rather isolated location of the tournament, it was rather impossible to do anything in particular, so I simply spent the evening relaxing and then eating dinner with a few friends. A very uneventful first day in Indiana to say the least!
On the second day (Friday) I had a simul scheduled for 1 PM. The entry fee was $50. Unfortunately, the simul was scheduled at a horrendous time as it prevented people in the 4 or 6 day schedules from being able to participate in the event. Nevertheless, the turnout was quite substantial with 26 players in total playing out of a possible 50. This was more than I expected, so I was pleasantly surprised. In terms of the actual competition, there were several experts who signed up to play which surprised me, and made it a lot more of a challenge. In the end, I won all 26 of the games despite several games in which my opponents nearly held draws. By this point it was already 3:30 in the afternoon at which point I went to the hotel restaurant and had a brief lunch with my dad, Macauley and World Senior Champion, Larry Kaufman. After this, I was planning to take a brief nap, but I got waylaid by my friend Chris and ended up analyzing his game instead (with a crowd watching). This led to about a 10 minute break before I went downstairs to the bookstore and started signing memorabilia for fans.
Since I had now completed all the tasks which I was specifically there to take part in, I decided to finally go out and explore Indianapolis. I went to a nice quaint little sushi place nearby with WEBMASTER DAVE and his lovely wife, Kelly. This definitely improved my original opinion of the town; however, this seemed to change rather quickly when I found out later that we were near the area where murders apparently happen (I later found out its safer than the Bronx). We decided to do a drive by tour of downtown Indy and I saw Lucas Oil Stadium which replaced the famous RCA Dome last year (This is football). This massive 800M behemoth of a monument to Peyton Manning looks quite impressive from the outside and hopefully at some point in the future I’ll have the opportunity to attend a Colts-Titans and watch the Colts get smoked! We passed by Conseco Field House home to the Indianapolis Pacers and Monument Square as well. Overall, I enjoyed the tour, but at the same time, it truly makes one realize just how fundamentally different certain parts of the country are.
One would assume that after such adventures, I would just call it a night since I had a 11 AM flight back to New York the following morning. This turned out to NOT be the case, as I ended up heading back downtown later that evening for a late night snack with my father and a few others. We had a few drinks and discussed the general state of chess and all of our aspirations for the future. Sadly, the evening did not involve any real mixing with the downtown area (I blame Jim, Drew and a few others for having to play games which went well past 10 PM) and we all returned back to the hotel around 2 AM. My dad and I then watched our two friends duke it out at blitz. The sight was definitely not pretty, but at 2 AM no one can really be expected to play good chess. Thus ended my brief, yet satisfying stay in Indianapolis.
The following morning, after a few hours of sleep (Thanks for keeping me up, Chloe!) I got a ride to the airport and boarded a flight back to New York. The route that we took to return went directly over the Hudson River which was a bit disconcerting as there was a crash between a helicopter and a charter plane which occurred less than an hour before I was over that area. Thankfully, my flight arrived safely and I got back without any problems. Since then, I have just been relaxing and doing some last minute preparation before I begin my August schedule which involves tournaments in Tokyo, Japan and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. That is all for now folks as I have to get some sleep since I have a 11 AM flight from Newark to Narita tomorrow morning. Once again, thanks to everyone who takes time to read and or post comments.
Last but not least, I finally caved today and started a twitter account (several people have been asking me to create one for some time). For those who are interested, it is http://twitter.com/GMHikaru
