August 15, 2008 • General
Hello again to all the readers in the blogosphere world. Since there is no live coverage of the tournament I am playing here in Japan, (quite a rarity for me these days ) I will catch everyone up on my results. So far I am 4/4 having played no one particularly strong thus far, but I will probably have to beat a couple of masters today, so anything is possible. The tournament itself is 7 rounds so there are two rounds today (Japan is 13 hours ahead of the US, 16 hours ahead of Vancouver) and then one round tomorrow. Hopefully I can continue to play well and win. Until next time, adieu.
Hikaru
August 13, 2008 • General
Greetings from hot and humid Japan. I will now confirm that I will be playing in the US Chess League for the Seattle Sluggers in the 2008 edition. Last year, I played for the New York Knights. We had some memorable matches and I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere. Despite my rather mediocre performance throughout, the team did reasonably well before we lost to Boston in the semifinals. The main reason I have decided to play for Seattle as opposed to New York is the fact that I am residing in Vancouver right now, so it makes sense to play for Seattle which is only a few hours away. This year, I will try to do better than last year and I look forward to having a good result and Go Sluggers!
Cheers,
Hikaru!
August 12, 2008 • General
Hello everyone! I haven’t blogged in some time, so I will give some general updates on my plans for the future.
Obviously, my most recent tournaments were in Mianz, Germany where I won the Fischer Random tournament. Overall, I felt like I played very well for the first part of the tournament first 6-7 rounds, then I fell apart. Despite being in great condition these days, I think that the fact that I was unable to get on the time zone definitely had some effect on me. From the very first day there I started falling asleep around 6-7 PM and waking up at 1 or 2 AM. Throughout the whole tournament this held true as I would play my games and then promptly fall asleep immediately. On some level this almost certainly affected me, but alas I’ll get back to the tournament itself. The first truly bad game I played was against GM Evgenij Najer who I have played quite a few times in the past although none of the games were within the last two years. In the game itself, I was worse out of the opening, then dropped a pawn for complications which only led to me being dead lost. However, he then proceeded to get low on time and made a horrendous blunder which allowed me to win the game. Then in my game against GM Sergei Movsesian, I got a slightly worse position out of the opening before I proceeded to completely outplay him in the middlegame and win comfortably. After this round I was the clear leader with 8.5/9 while the nearest competitors were on 7.5/9. In round 10 I faced GM Arkadij Naiditsch with whom I have a long history. Out of the opening the position was fairly balanced although I was probably slightly worse. Then in the endgame I completely panicked and messed up a slightly worse endgame by losing. This completely opened the field up as Naiditsch was tied while there were a ton of people a half point behind. In the final round I played GM Vladimir Potkin and got a great position out of the opening. As the game drifted through the middlegame and into the endgame, I reached a comfortable position up a pawn and probably winning. Unfortunately, I think proceeded to hallucinate badly and drew my game. This left Naiditsch in position to win the tournament as he was up a queen and winning against Motylev. Amazingly, he blundered badly allowing Motylev a miracle check mate. This allowed GM Movesian to also catch up leading to a three way tie for first place. Luckily for me, my tiebreaks were best so I will be invited to the 4 player closed 960 event next year.
Onto the rapid event. Once again, the field was comprised of the same set of Grandmasters as in the Fischer Random with GMs Movsesian and Eljanov being the top two seeds while I was number three. I started off well scoring 3/3 but then after obtaining a small edge against my countryman GM-elect Vinay Bhat, I badly misplayed it and proceeded to end up in a losing endgame. However, due to the fact that we were both in quite bad time pressure, then game ended up in a draw. After a win in round 5, I was sitting on 4.5/5 after the first day of play. The second day got off to a very interesting start as I was paired against the Swedish legend Ulf Andersson. Amazingly, he didn’t show up and the arbiter informed me that he was rather sick. So after this fluke win, I was paired against the Polish GM Thomas Markowski. After playing like a total clown, I was in quite a bit of trouble in the middlegame, being down a pawn and having very little counterplay. However, after a few slight inaccuracies I was able to regain the pawn and reach equality. In the extremely entertaining endgame, I tried very hard to win, but Markowski played accurately and didn’t crack under the pressure so the game was a draw. 6/7. In round 8 I played a very fundamentally sound game and beat GM Arutunian from Armenia without any boom bang fireworks. Then came the tragedy. In round 9 on 7/8 and still 1 point out of the lead due to a great start by Nepomniatchi, I was paired against the strong Hungarian GM Zoltan Almasi. The opening was the English Variation in the Najdorf with Almasi going for the early g4 variation. After a standard first 11 moves, I introduced the novelty 11…Ng6!? In a very complicated middlegame I outplayed Almasi and got a great position if not winning after 25 moves. However, I completely self-destructed and hung two pieces in a horrible manner, thus eliminating any chance of winning both tournaments. I still finished off nicely as I beat IM Polzin and GM Buhmann (2nd time) to score 9/11. In one of my next blogs, I will attach the Almasi game with annotations.
With that performance behind me, I am now in Japan getting set to play the Japan League for the 3rd year running and trying to keep my current perfect score (14/14) intact. The tournament will be seven rounds and I look forward to playing some classical chess for the first time in nearly three months. Hopefully I can play well and break 2700 right here and now. Please note that the Live Rating list will almost certainly not have an update on this tournament, so even if I break 2700 here it will not be reported in all likelihood.
Till next time, all the best!
Hikaru
July 27, 2008 • General
Hello again everyone! For the first time in several months, I have actually been following some chess tournaments over the past week and a half, so I will start with my observations on Biel. Obviously Carlsen is the big favourite due to his recent results as well as the opposition of the field. Overall his play has been ok, although not quite what I would expect from someone who is supposed to be number 2 going on number 1 in the world as he got lucky to beat Pelletier and ridiculously lucky against Bacrot in a close to losing position. Carlsen aside, Alekseev seems to be playing solidly as does Dominguez as they are cruising along to see who finishes 2nd. And then there are the other 3. Onischuk seems to be playing reasonably well although losing R+N vs R to Dominguez is disappointing to say the least. Bacrot is having another up and down tournament as he started off horrifically but has bounced back with two straight wins. Pelletier on the other hand is just having a terrible tournament. Yannick is a nice guy, so it is quite unfortunate to see him struggling so mightily in this tournament, but hopefully he can recover before the end. Carlsen will almost certainly win this tournament, barring a massive collapse, so the real question is who will finish 2nd.
Shortly, I will be leaving for Mainz to play in the rapid event as well as the Fischer Random rapid event too. Due to my long break from chess, (7 weeks) and the time I have spent in Vancouver recently, I will not go in with any expectations. My goal is very simply to try and play the best that I can and if it is meant to be, so be it. If not, then I will move on. Although the rapid portion is the most important, it will definitely be interesting to play Fischer Random. The only other time I have played Fischer Random over the board was at a blitz tournament which I won in Virginia back in 2003 during the Millenium Chess Festival (beating Polgar 2-0). As far as the Fischer Random goes, I don’t mind the game, however of all the variants of chess which I have come across thus far, I find Seirawan Chess to be the most novel as well as interesting. I do not know yet if ICC will have any live coverage of the games, but either way I will try to play exciting chess as usual.
In my last blog posting, someone left a comment pointing out that I had not listed the field for the round robin tournament which I will be playing in Montreal from August 24-September 2. The reason I did not list the players is because not all of the spots have been confirmed yet. However, for Steve, I will list the players that I know are playing. Shulman, Nataf, Maze, Bluvshtein, Charbonneau, Kovalyov, Roussel, Zugic, myself and one other player. Although the tournament this year is not as strong as in years past, the organizers have said that this is just a transitional year and it will return to the super strong tournament next year. Once again, I will simply try to play well and beat all these Canadians who are living on the wrong coast of the country! 😛 I think the average of the tournament will be somewhere around 2550 if I decide to crunch the numbers. My general attitude these days is simply to just enioy life and if improving at chess goes along with it, so be it.
I will also announce here my plans to play in the French League in 2009 with the French Club Evry. Although I had a great opportunity to play for the first time in a foreign league with the club Antibes, the conditions as well as the possibility of winning has been greatly improved for this upcoming year. However, I would like to thank the club for everything they did for me last year and I wish them nothing but the best of luck in the future. The team Evry came very close this last year and has a very strong team with the number 1 French player Vachier-Lagrave, (Bacrot may retake this spot soon if he regains form) as well as another rising French junior Sebastian Feller. Other notables are Yusupov, Chucelov, Chabanon,Hauchard as well as others. The event promises to be fun, and it will certainly be a blast. I will post the dates under the ‘Events’ tab at the top with the links.
I have not been doing anything special these past few days despite returning to my old stomping grounds in White Plains, New York, USA. Although the weather here is ok, it is quite a bit hotter and also much more humid than it was in Vancouver, so I cannot say that I am necessarily enjoying the weather. Hopefully Germany will offer better weather, but I have not seen whether the temperatures are in the 20’s or 30’s, (CELSIUS) so I will just go and hope to see sunny skies, hot frauleins and play good chess. What more can one ask for in life? Till next time, keep it real and enjoy the summer!
July 19, 2008 • General
Hello again everyone! Sorry for not posting anything for such a long period of time, but I have been very busy with life. As of right now, I have not played any chess tournaments since the wretched National Open. Having said that, I cannot complain with my current 2697 rating and number 31. My next tournaments as planned right now will be in Mainz, (Rapid+Fischer Random) Japan, and a reasonably strong round robin tournament in Montreal. Hopefully I can continue to play well and improve my world ranking (crossing fingers). I would also like to give a shout out to a friend of mine, Ylon Schwartz, who has reached the final table of the World Series of Poker in November. Good luck, and may the Schwartz be with you! Till next time, over and out!
