quick draw

here's a quick draw for people who don't like playing against the queen's gambit accepted

[Event "5th Gibraltar Chess Festival"]
[Site "Gibraltar Gibraltar"]
[Date "2007.01.29"]
[EventDate "2007.01.23"]
[Round "6.1"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Yuriy Kuzubov"]
[Black "Ivan Sokolov"]
[ECO "?"]
[WhiteElo "2554"]
[BlackElo "2632"]
[PlyCount "20"]
1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 Be6 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. Ng5 Bg4 7. Bxc4 Bxd1 8.
Bxf7+ Kd7 9. Be6+ Ke8 10. Bf7+ 1/2-1/2


not that 4. ...Be6 is that common, but I can recall some computers playing it against me. if you're ever looking for a 10 move draw v. one of your buddies in a tournament where you don't want to be paired, here's an easy option ;)

Christmas book - done

Today I finished Timman's "Curacao 1962 : Battle of Minds that shook the Chess world"



about half the games were annotated and there were lots of pictures. interesting games though. i prefer tournament books to game collections as you get to see the good the bad, and the ugly, so to speak, of the top players. Curacao 1962 was famous for Fischer's allegations of cheating in Sports Illustrated. Every game between Keres, Petrosian and Geller was a short draw, but the one that really got Fischer's goat was this one.

Black is winning in the final position and Timman does some analysis on it. Also I learned that openings are almost pointless, as Benko opened 1.g3 in all of his games and scored +4-2=6, which is as good as anyone and also Filip played 1. Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.O-O O-O 5.d4 c5 6.c3 v. Tal, one year removed from facing Botwinnik for the world championship and was doing well up to move 33. 33.Rxe5 instead of the blunder 33.Nxe5? and he had Tal beat with a passive terrible system.

i don't think i'm gonna play in kitchener. with who knows what's happening in the future (house? marriage?) i'm gonna make work a priority. with all the overtime i'm working my energy levels are low, so i'm gonna keep working on chess, tactics, and working out a little bit and then see what happens. i'm exhausted so i need to relax on the weekends and i don't find going and playing 5 rounds in 2 days relaxing anymore. if i take an (extended) break, maybe the love will come back, or maybe i'll just realize that i like going through games and playing blitz. sadly, i don't think i'll be playing in Canadian Open either (sorry Neil). Chrystelle at work is going for training the week of the Canadian open so i can't go.

I've got on a good system with this past book...history has shown that i like going through annotated games and I hate doing tactics, so I did the logical thing and combined them. 10 tactics for every game I go through. It's not a lot, but I've done about 1522 tactics since I started doing this book which is pretty damn good as far as I'm concerned.

Candidates Tournament 1959

Here's a cool video from a game between Tal and Fischer from the Candidates Tournament 1959