Game Of The Week
This week was a first for me. Tim Brennan, one of my most loyal readers, and I played a USCF-rated game for the first time. When he mentioned it to me at the start of our game, I was in disbelief.
We are both consistent fixtures on the Colorado chess scene. We both started our USCF careers in February 1998. He moved to Colorado in 2001 and has played in 160 events since that time. I have played in 137 events as a Colorado resident, but our paths have never crossed before.
Of course, most of the time Tim was in Denver while I was in Colorado Springs. However, Tim recently moved to Colorado Springs around the beginning of 2007 increasing our odds of being paired together.
Tim plays a lot more than I do as evidenced by his standing in the 2007-2008 Colorado Chess Tour standings. Tim is currently in 4th place overall with 33 games while I am in 10th place overall with 20 games (as of the last Informant). However, that makes him the number two, class B player and myself the number one, class A player in the tour standings.
I guess that puts us in the running for some prize money. I can’t say for sure, as the Tour has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. The tour appears to have started in 1982 according to the Colorado State Chess Association’s webpage. Unfortunately, it only lists the names of the overall winners and not the prizes nor the other categories (activity and class prizes).
I have run across articles in the Informant that mention the tour. In January 2008, Richard Buchanan wrote about Barry Biggs, owner of PC Brokers, increasing the prize fund for this year, and in October 2007, Randy Reynolds wrote about the people who won each category last year.
However, it seems a lot of people are still in the dark about the tour as Randy mentioned, “Few Tour winners actually showed up to collect their prize.” I have received a small plaque for finishing in the top ten of my class several times, but I have never won my class before, at least not as far as I know. I can’t seem to find my little plaque from last year so maybe I was one of those people who didn’t show up for their mystery prize last year. Well, I am curious enough now to see what I won this year, if I can manage to hold on to first place through the final tour event, the Pikes Peak Open.
Anyway, despite the closer proximity and continued activity of Tim and I, it still took a year and a half to finally meet. Tim is fond of irregular openings, and this game was no different. I have only played against 5 irregular openings in my USCF career, but I have won them all (5-0 vs. g3, d3, b4, h4, and g4) even though I can't remember the opponents' names.
"When you're strange- no one remembers your name."
Densmore-Krieger-Manzarek-Morrison
Tim likes the grob (https://cschessnews.blogspot.com/2007/04/tiny-tim.html). His motto is "Remember, you can't stop the grob. You can only hope to contain it!" However, this grob was so irregular that Fritz had no lines to offer until the end of the game. I thought the analysis was so strange that I ran it again. The second results were still strange but so similar that I figured Fritz was running correctly. Here is a comparison of the analysis and the game:
First Analysis
3.c4 last book move
4.h3 Covers g4
6.Qb3 c6 Prevents intrusion on d5
13.a3 Controls b4
18.Nf3 The knight blocks f4
25.c5 White gets more space
29.Kf1 [>= 29.Rbc1+/= and White hangs on]
30. nothing
33.Rc1 g5 [33...g5 34.h4 h6-+ ]
Second Analysis
3.c4 last book move
4.h3 Consolidates g4
6.Qb3 c6 Consolidates d5
13.a3 Secures b4
18.Nf3 Blocks the pawn on f4
25.c5 White gains space
29.Kf1 [>=29.Nh4!?= and White is still in the game]
30.Bxf3 [>=30.exf3!? Red7 31.Kg1-/+ ]
33.Rc1 g5 [33...g5 34.h4 h6-+ ]
 |
| Black to move |
Games Are Strange
[Event "July Quad"]
[Site "https://cschessnews.blogspot.com/"]
[Date "2008.07.15"]
[Round "3.2"]
[White "Brennan, Tim"]
[Black "Anderson, Paul"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A00"]
[WhiteElo "1687"]
[BlackElo "1931"]
[PlyCount "66"]
[EventDate "2008.07.15"]
1. g4 e5 2. Bg2 d5 3. c4 d4 4. h3 Bc5 5. d3 Ne7 6. Qb3 c6 7. Nd2 Qa5 8. Ngf3
Ng6 9. O-O O-O 10. Ne4 Nd7 11. Bd2 Qc7 12. Qc2 a5 13. a3 a4 14. Kh1 Nf4 15.
Bxf4 exf4 16. Nxc5 Nxc5 17. Nxd4 Qe5 18. Nf3 Qf6 19. Qc3 Qe7 20. Rae1 Re8 21.
Qd2 Qd6 22. Qb4 Be6 23. d4 Ne4 24. Qxd6 Nxd6 25. c5 Nc4 26. Rb1 Bd5 27. Rfe1
Rad8 28. Kg1 Re7 29. Kf1 Bxf3 30. Bxf3 Nd2+ 31. Kg1 Nxb1 32. Rxb1 Rxd4 33. Rc1
g5 0-1
This Week In Chess
On July 15th, the CSCC had 14 members in attendance. The event for the evening was quads. The members were split into groups of four and played each other in a round robin tournament (USCF-rated G30). Here are the results:
Score Player
Quad A
3.0 Paul Anderson
2.0 David Meliti
1.0 Tim Brennan
0.0 Anthea Carson
Quad B
3.0 Josh Divine
2.0 Alex Torres
1.0 Ken Dail
0.0 Dean Brown
On July 16th, the CSCC held the third round of the Poor Richard's Bookstore July Open. Here are the current standings:
Score Player
3.0 Brian Wall
2.5 David Meliti
2.5 Joseph T Fromme
2.0 M Paul Covington
2.0 Bill Whinemiller
2.0 Anthea Carson
2.0 Gerard Sunderland
1.5 Timothy Brennan
1.5 Alejandro Isaac Torres
1.5 Kenneth W Dail
1.5 Dean Brown
1.5 Fred Eric Spell
1.0 Thomas Mullikin
1.0 Gerald Maier
1.0 Isaac Martinez
1.0 Kristin Colette Meliti
1.0 Sarah Cantwell
0.5 Michael Joseph Wokurka
0.5 Reece Cantwell
0.5 Gary Frenzel
0.5 Tara Martinez
Comments From Email
DuWayne Langseth, Wednesday, July 16, 2008 9:37 AM
Your game with Tim was intriguing. It's always annoying when an opponent plays the Spike and actually maintains the white advantage. I once had someone play it against me in a postal game! I slowly developed an advantage and won, but to my surprise, it was really tough to make anything out of the kingside weakness. I would have voted for that one, but in typical Anderson-win style, Tim gave you a free exchange at the end for no apparent reason.
I yawned when, in your game with Anthea, she gave you a piece and you had an easy win until you decided to castle into her attack. Then you were lucky to survive. Having second thoughts, I should have voted for this one out of tribute to Anthea's attacking attitude. If she had offered to sac the rook instead of the bishop near the end, you could have had some real problems. But she didn't and in fact must have missed the mate. Maybe she was in time trouble.
I voted for the Meliti game because it was interesting and the mistakes weren't major ones until the endgame. With your bishop pair vs his rook you offered him a free piece and he declined, resigning a couple moves later. I was impressed at how often you found "best moves" in that game.
Tim, Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:58 AM
Paul - here is the latest episode of How to Play Chess like an Animal Video on Demand :-) This week Anthea teaches Buddy the hedgehog/(porcupine ?) how to play against the Raccoon opening, which is a neat variation of the Kings Gambit that goes 1. e4 e5 2. f4 h5!?
Upcoming Events
7/22 Bughouse tournament!, CSCC
7/22 July 2008 G/29 Grand Prix Event, CSCA
7/23,30 Poor Richard's Bookstore July Open Final Rounds, CSCC
7/25-27 Boulder Chess Festival: 2008 Boulder Invitational, 2008 Boulder Qualifiers, & 2008 Festival Open, BCC
7/26 US Air Force Academy USCF Open Quads & Non-USCF Community Swiss, CSCA
7/29 G/15 tournament, CSCC
For event details and additional events, see the following websites:
Colorado Springs Chess Club: CSCC (http://springschess.org/)
Boulder Chess Club: BCC (http://www.geocities.com/boulderchessclub/)
Colorado State Chess Association: CSCA (http://colorado-chess.com/)
Wyoming Chess Association: WCA (http://www.wyomingchess.com/)
Kansas Chess Association: KCA (http://www.kansaschess.org/)
New Mexico Chess Organization: NMCO (http://www.nmchess.org/)
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