Cancel Chess

Game Of The Week

This week's game comes from the Colorado Springs Chess Club's regular Sunday night event, Fast Lane Rapid Online (4SS, G/10+10).  The game was played by Brian Rountree, ex-City Champ and ex-officer of the Colorado Springs Chess Club, and John Brezina, current President of the Parker Chess Club.  I chose this game because it was the only one I got to watch during the event.

If your own game finishes early in the round, you can watch other games by clicking on the board icon in the Live Chess page and then clicking on the matchup you want to watch.  The nice thing is that you get an analysis bar that tells you who is winning.  In this game, the bar was swinging back and forth.

I thought for sure John was going to win when he found the 28. Kxf2 Ne4+ tactic, but Brian hung in there.  He was down a minor piece, but he had a couple of scary Pawns that put the fear of God into John.  In this position, I thought Brian was going to win if found the tactic.  There are actually two solutions!  See if you can find them both.

White to move

He missed the tactic and looked to have his win cancelled, but Brian hung in there.  He is used to having his good openings cancelled by his time scrambles.  In fact, they happen so much he is getting a lot of practice at coming up with good plan Bs.  If at first you don't succeed, try again.

For some reason, Brian had to join the tournament twice.  His first entry got cancelled for some reason, but Brian hung in there.  He missed one round, got back in, and still earned the bronze.

We live in a new age of cancel culture.  Things are getting cancelled all the time.  Sometimes things get cancelled for good reasons.  Sometimes things get cancelled for bad reasons.  Sometimes things get cancelled for no reasons at all.  You never know when it will happen to you.

Donald Trump got his social media accounts cancelled after the capitol riots, and I was reminded that the 70s TV show, The Dukes Of Hazzard, was cancelled a while back after some violence erupted too.  The television shows being pulled are from where the cancel terminology comes.  But now all kinds of political players, corporations, and even website moderators are joining the band wagon of cancellation.

I thought I was immune from cancellation since my violence was limited to the chess board.  However, chess humor can be a dangerous thing.  I was banned from lichess when I titled a blog, "WARNING: High Performance Rating."  It was the story of how the USCF's automated rating system warns you about a player, rated 159, getting his first win over a 1000 rated player.  However, the automatons at lichess have no sense of humor and can't seem to bother to read the blog to get the context or a joke.  They just flag the title as click-bait since the game was between lower-rated players.

I guess there is no open-source code to understand sarcasm.  

Now, chess players are in greater jeopardy as more websites are turning over their moderation chores to computers.  I fear for the future of my blog, as I have no trust in a computer's ability to take a jab.  Sure, they can beat the best chess players over the board, but I have never heard a computer say anything funny.  When IBM had Deep Blue try out for NBC's Last Comic Standing, the computer was heckled mercilessly until it left the stage with its circuits smoking and playing .wav files of racial epithets at the crowd.

Look who is causing trouble

Dan Avery even pointed out the irony of Youtube cancelling one of its top chess channels because chess jargon can sound racist.  You can no longer say, "White is better."

Of course, I take everything Dan Avery says with a grain of salt.  He tried to have my Youtube video cancelled just because I fairly won the 2013 Colorado Springs City Chess Championship over the board.  It was a good thing I saved the video since 5 years after the fact, he accused me of cheating.  Thankfully, the video surveillance and numerous witness show otherwise.

https://youtu.be/JhZ5tvGg3-M

I was just reminded how biting my sarcasm can get when one of my long-time readers was offended.  I really write this blog for two people, LM Brian Wall and Tim Brennan.  I thought for sure, of anyone who actually reads this blog, they would never get their feathers ruffled by my sense of humor.  But when Brian says, "Inappropriate,"  you have hit a home run in cancellation.

From: BrianWall-ChessList 
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2021 1:58 PM
Subject: Request to mailing list BrianWall-ChessList rejected

 

Your request to the BrianWall-ChessList mailing list

    Posting of your message titled "COATI Uprising"

has been rejected by the list moderator.  The moderator gave the
following reason for rejecting your request:

"Your message was deemed inappropriate by the moderator."

Cancel Chess

[Event "Fast Lane Online"]

[Site "https://cschessnews.blogspot.com/"]

[Date "2021.05.30"]

[Round "3.2"]

[White "Rountree, Brian"]

[Black "Brezina, John"]

[Result "1-0"]

[ECO "C62"]

[WhiteElo "1862"]

[BlackElo "1703"]

[PlyCount "99"]

[EventDate "2021.05.30"]

[TimeControl "600+10"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 d6 4. d4 exd4 5. Nxd4 Bd7 6. Nc3 Qf6 7. Be3 Nge7 8.

O-O a6 9. Ba4 O-O-O 10. a3 Nb8 11. Bxd7+ Nxd7 12. b4 Ne5 13. b5 a5 14. Qe2 b6

15. Rab1 d5 16. f4 Nc4 17. e5 Qh6 18. Bc1 g6 19. f5 Qh4 20. Nf3 Qh5 21. f6 Nf5

22. e6 Bc5+ 23. Rf2 fxe6 24. Qxe6+ Kb8 25. Bf4 Rhe8 26. Qc6 Nfd6 27. Nxd5 Bxf2+

28. Kxf2 Ne4+ 29. Kg1 Qxd5 30. Bxc7+ Ka7 31. Bxd8 Qxc6 32. bxc6 Rxd8 33. c7 Rf8

34. Rd1 Ned6 35. Ne5 Nxe5 36. Rxd6 Nf7 37. Rd7 Kb7 38. Re7 Kc8 39. g4 Nd6 40.

g5 Nb5 41. Rxh7 Nxc7 42. Rg7 Ne6 43. Rxg6 Nd4 44. h4 Nf3+ 45. Kf2 Nxh4 46. Rg7

Nf5 47. Ra7 Nd6 48. Ra8+ Kd7 49. Rxf8 Ke6 50. Rg8 1-0

https://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game-replayer.php?id=116609

This Week In Chess

On May 30th, the Colorado Springs Chess Club held the Fast Lane Rapid Online (4SS, G/10+10).  Jose Llacza won the gold, Jeff Fox claimed the silver on tiebreaks, and Vedant Margale and Brian Rountree split the bronze.

Place, Fast Lane Rapid Online, Score

1 "#1 JJ7X (1912)" 3.5
2 "#2 jfoxhoot (1678)" 2.5
3 "#3 KingVed (1543)" 2.5
4 "#3 linuxguy1 (1863)" 2.5
5 "#5 cschessnews (1760)" 2.5
6 "#6 Czechmate1972 (1702)" 1.5
7 "#7 grahamjcjg (781)" 1.0
8 "#8 RishabhNair2 (1040)" 0.0
9 "- RaiderATO (705)" 1.0
10 "- exCityChamp (1907)" 0.0