Great round in Greece today. Germany beat No. 2 seed Ukraine 3,5-0,5. That's probably the greatest upset of the tournament so far, and also the best German result in a single match in a long time. They were playing without Ivanchuk though. Germany had already won against No. 5 seed Hungary the day before. So far, everything is going very well...

In other news, Russia lost 1-3 to Bulgaria. They had only drawn the Netherlands before and their round 1 match was very close too. It seems the sacking of their coach Bareev after the disappointing World Team Championship has not brought any results...

two positions (almost) from my games in a weekend tournament I just played:

White is running out of ideas, but Black is running out of time. White has just played Ra3-a1, expecting Qa5 when...what happens?



Black to move, what can he make from his attack?

Position 2:

yeah?

I just heard on ESPN Sportscenter that Michael Vick, the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, learned how to play chess while in prison.

Since returning to the league he has improved considerably with his schematics and understanding of football.

Maybe learning chess helped him become a better Quarterback!?

I'm thinking of putting some time aside to play chess. I wonder if chess helps to get better at poker or are there any other benefits from chess? I do enjoy playing chess but if it doesn't help me improve at poker I'd rather just continue with poker for now. My rating was something close to 1400 so I'm not very good

I'm not giving this much thought at the moment, but I'd imagine that time spent playing poker would help your poker game more than time spent playing chess. At least in most cases.

Is there any cool "fun" chess games that are free online, like of the lego chess adventure variety?

Holy ****, Germany just won against Azeribaijan in the European championship and is now on tied first place with Armenia. Naiditsch won with black against Radjabov and in the end Fridman saved a half point against Mamedyarov with a beautiful motif:



This was the position I saw when I came home today, and at first I thought Black is lost. However, there follows:


Tomorrow they will play the last round against Armenia. I suspect Armenia might offer a quick team draw; this would win both teams gold and silver respectively. In any case this is probably the biggest success of German chess since the silver medal in the 2000 Olympiad.

i'm not sure what the tiebreak is, but according to chess-results.com it's board points, so a draw doesn't guarantee anything, Azerbaidjan would pass Germany with any win and also Armenia if they win 3,5:0,5 (not completely out of the world against Romania). I would be also very disappointed if the german team gave up gold without a fight.

after around 2 hours we're looking good imo, granted Naiditsch didn't try too hard to beat Dr Levon, but the rest looks equal or slightly better for Germany.

Things are looking very good right now. It's 1-1; Gustafsson's game is probably drawn (I don't see how he can lose this); and Meier has a complicated game but a very good position with little time left on both sides.

Azerbaijan is winning though, so a 2-2 would only be good for third place.

Looks like Germany is pulling off a huge surprise :O Azeris second and Russia and Hungary might both end with 13 points and 22,5 game points

Though Gustafsson just made it harder for himself...looks like he has to give up an exchange now. Should be still drawn, but under pressure every step in the wrong direction can be costly.

Problem for Sargissian though is that winning the game will probably win the Azeris the championship

Better to think positive, giving the exchange for the two assets in white's position (strong knight and a-pawn) is maybe the GM-way to draw the position.

And ze germans win \o/ Looks like Georgiev might lose, which would give Hungary third I think

Incredible.

both correct of course. The first one happened over the board and I won a few moves later. The second one, I have to admit for historical accuracy, didn't actually happen. I had an extra rook on f8, so I'm totally winning anyway, and he didn't play Kc2-d3 to arrive in this position but instead Bxd4 and again, I won in a few moves.

The game I lost that weekend also had some queen sacrifice themes leading to mate. That one was much more complex, I think I may have missed a win.

In Tartakower v. Yates, New York 1924 Yates played played 41...Kd8 and lost quickly after 42. Bh3 Rxf4+ 43.Kd5 Nd7 44.Ra1 Kc8 45.Ra7 1-0.

Alekhine commented that if 41...Kc6 White plays 42.Bc5+ and that's all he says about it but it's not at all obvious to me why that is so terrible for Black that Yates would choose the game continuation instead. I guess if you know more than I do about endgames you would know something like 41...Kc6 42.Bc5+ Nxc5 42.Kxc5 Kxd6 43.Rxb6 Kc5 44.Rf6 Rd7 just isn't worth playing. Is that true?

The second diagram looks pretty grim for Black. If I'm White and I have the K@e6 or K@b3 instead, I think it's a pretty easy win, for example.

From that perspective, Black's almost in zugzwang, since the rook can't leave the 7th rank, and if it leaves the d-file, White protects c4. If Black plays Kxc4, then Ke5 should be winning.

So 45.Rf8 might be one idea for White, although my commentary on rooks and pawns endgames is unlikely to be any better than yours.

I was just looking at the Tal tournament. Is this kind of tournament inherently flawed in that half the players have to play black 5 times vs. 4 with white?

Not only does Carlsen fall into that category, but he plays black vs. all of the other 2800s (already drawn with Aronian) as well as Ivanchuk and Nakamura - to win this tournament, he'll have to put on one hell of a performance.

Yeah, it's the price for not playing a double round robin or having an odd number players.
Your last point is also a sort of positive - he gets White against the players who he needs to beat

Are there any threads on study plans according to your level?

What I've been doing is:

- 30 minutes of tactics once a day.
- Have 30-100 1-3day per move games going on at chess.com at any given time. (I rarely take more than 2 minutes per move though).
- Spend 30 minutes or so per day watching chessbase dvd's and putting opening variations into chess position trainer at the same time.


That's about it. I have a lot of books in hardcopy and also have quite a few (unlimited) gathered from the internet that I don't venture into.

I know I should be adding annotated games in here somewhere and perhaps some of my other material for theory like amateurs mind, or reasses your chess but not sure.

My OTB play is pretty much 1 slow game (g90) per week, and one 4rd one day swiss per month. I don't play much "live" chess (online or otb) other than that. Very difficult to arrange time periods to play slow games where it will be quiet in my house.

Is there a post / blog / article that is like a roadmap?

Bill said I'm probably about 1500 based on my last game. So maybe something like, "1500-1600" work on this.

This is beyond low-content, it's absolutely 100% zero-content as far as chess is concerned, but I'm just too excited not to tell everyone I safely can and since my girlfriend doesn't read 2+2 this qualifies:

I bought an engagement ring today! Proposing on Wednesday, so excited, so nervous, can't wait!

Congratulations! Are you hoping she says yes or no?