Chess Room Newsletter #377

"I'll take my five positions per second any day, thank you!"
~Viswanathan Anand, World Chess Champion (comparing humans with chess computers)

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1) Mechanics' Institute Chess Club News
2) US Champions to play in Europe
3) Frank Anderson - Munic (ol) 1958
4) Anand vs Kramnik WCh Match Announced

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IM John Grefe won the Fall Tuesday Night Marathon with a score of 7.5 from 9 ( 6 wins and 3 half point byes). This was only the second event that the former US Champion (1973) has played in after recovering from a life threatening illness that caused him to lose over 100 pounds. His victory was well received by MI regulars.

Tying for second at 7 points were FM Frank Thornally (who was undefeated) and young NM Sam Shankland. Among those on 6.5 was 9-year-old Nicholas Nip who saw his rating advance from 2128 to 2144. He has approximately 6 months left to raise his rating to 2200 and become the youngest master in the history of the USCF.

January 2-6 the Mechanics' will host the US Chess School with GM Yury Shulman as the GM trainer to 8 of the strongest 9-12 year olds in the US. MI members Nicholas Nip, Daniel Naroditsky and Greg Young will be among those attending.

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The Pivdenny Bank will hold the 2nd ACP World Rapid Cup in Odessa, Ukraine, January 4-7, 2008.

The prize fund of the tournament is $136,000 and the following 16 players are participating.

Dmitry Jakovenko, Vassily Ivanchuk, Peter Leko, Teimour Radjabov, Evgeny Najer, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler,

US Champion Alexander Shabalov, Pavel Eljanov, Ernesto Inarkiev, Boris Savchenko,

Alexei Shirov and Boris Gelfand have qualified via the ACP Tour, while Anatoly Karpov, Judit Polgar, and Yuri

Drozdovskij received wild cards from the organizers.

March 10-20 US Womens Champion Irina Krush will play in a strong women's only event in Turkey.

No.	W-rank	Name	Title	Country	Rating	B-Year
1	3	Cramling, Pia	GM	SWE	2531	1963
2	4	Zhu Chen	GM	QAT	2531	1976
3	6	Xu Yuhua	GM	CHN	2509	1976
4	8	Hou Yifan	WGM	CHN	2502	1994
5	9	Chiburdanidze, Maia	GM	GEO	2500	1961
6	11	Ushenina, Anna	IM	UKR	2486	1985
7	12	Harika, Dronavalli	WGM	IND	2480	1991
8	13	Krush, Irina	IM	USA	2475	1983
9		Atal�k, Katerina	IM	TUR	2404	1982
10		Betul Cemre Yildiz	WIM	TUR	2220	1989
Reserve players
	14	Javakhishvili, Lela	IM	GEO	2474	1984
	15	Socko, Monika	IM	POL	2473	1978

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Newsletters #348 and #349 had material on Frank Anderson, the first strong player to live in San Diego. Almost 50 years he won the gold medal for best score on board two in the Munich Olympiad and received the IM title for his efforts, the first native born Canadian to be so honored.

Anderson was inducted into the Canadian Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. You will find bios of him and the two GMs to play in both US and Canadian Championships (Duncan Suttles and Peter Biyiasas) at http://web.ncf.ca/bw998/canchess.html#FAME.

Suttles and Biyiasas both have Bay Area ties. The former was born in San Francisco and played a number of tournaments in California in the early and mid 1960's while attending the University of Nevada at Reno. Biyiasas moved to Northern California in the early 1980s and continues to make it his home.

The following game was played in the first round of the preliminaries at Munich 1958 and is annotated by Anderson. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 This is the Four Knight's Variation that has been popular with many Masters, notably Reuben Fine who used it on many occasions. 6.Ndb5 Bb4 7.a3 Bxc3+ 8.Nxc3 d5 9.exd5 exd5 In this position the Yugoslav Grandmaster Trifunovic tried against Ivkov the simplifying 9...Nxd5 and an even game was soon the result. We believe that with best play. White should still get the advantage (a small but enduring advantage). 10.Bd3 0�0 11.0�0 h6 12.Bf4 d4 This is the new move that is being tried out this year. In answering this, Fridrik Olafson, the Icelandic Grandmaster, has consistently chosen 13.Ne2, a move that is sound but not aggressive enough. We had analyzed this position just before we went over to Europe and had come to the conclusion that we would like to try out the new move 13.Nb5. Little did we guess that we would be given the opportunity, in the first round against a Grandmaster! 13.Nb5! a6 Stahlberg played this after much deliberation. He was perhaps surprised at our move. An interesting move is 13...Nd5 14.Bg3 and white still appears better.(not 14.Bd6? a6) 14.Nd6 Bg4 15.Qd2! This is better than 15.f3 when 15...Be6 16.Nxb7? Qe7 17.Nd6 Nh5! wins for Black. 15...Qd7 16.h3 Be6 17.Rfe1 Here White misses a better chance. With 17.Nc4 Rae8 18.Ne5 White would have won a pawn. 18...Qd5 19.Nxc6 Qxc6 20.Be5 with a pawn plus and an attacking position, Black would not have been able to hold out too long. 17...Rfd8 18.Re2 Nd5 19.Bh2 Qe7 20.Ne4 Rac8 21.Rae1 b5 22.Kh1 Qf8 23.Ng3 Nde7 24.Qf4 Bc4 25.Qe4 Bxd3 26.Qxd3 Ng6 27.Nf5 Qc5 28.Qf3 Kh7 29.Qg4 d3 After some difficult positional play White emerges with a tremendous Kingside attack for 30.h4 and h5 are threatened. Stahlberg finds the best resource, a clever pawn sacrifice, to give his pieces "some air". 30.cxd3 Nd4 31.Re5! Qb6 32.h4! Nxf5 33.Rxf5 Qd4 Definitely Black's best counter-attacking chance. 34.Qxd4 Rxd4 35.h5 Nh8 A sad position for the Knight but it will not remain here too long. 36.Be5 Rd5 37.Rf3 f6 38.Bc3 Rxh5+ 39.Kg1 Rc6 40.Re7 Ng6 41.Ra7 The first sealed move. Stahlberg asked us whether we were playing for a win and we were forced to tell him that this was the case. With a shrug of his shoulders he continued. 41...Kg8 42.Ra8+ Kh7 43.Ra7 Kg8 44.g3 White's previous moves were for gaining time on the clock. His last move is essential to restrict the Black Knight. 44...Rd5 45.Re3 Rd8 Certainly forced because White had a winning maneuver in Re8+, Rb8 and R8b7 threatening. 46.d4 Rcd6 47.Kg2 R8d7 48.Rxd7 Rxd7 49.Re6 Ra7 I thought during the game that 49...a5 was best although it loses a pawn by 50.Rb6 Black gets his Knight into play by ...Ne7 and ...Nd5. 50.Bb4 The winning move, although a hard fight still remains. 50...Kf7 51.Rb6 Nf8 52.Bc5 Nd7 53.Rc6! Winning the pawn by 53.Rxf6+ would not win the game. 53...Ra8 54.b4 h5 55.Kf3 g5 56.Rc7 Ke8 57.Ke4 The second sealed move. White's pieces are now too active and the King entry is the key to the win. 57...a5 58.Kf5 axb4 59.Bxb4! The Rook must not be allowed to enter White's position. 59...h4 60.gxh4 gxh4 61.d5! h3 62.Rc3 Kf7 63.Rxh3 Nb6 64.d6 Re8 65.Rh7+ Kg8 66.Rb7 1�0 Canadian Chess Chat, October 1958, page 5-6.

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* When: From October 11 � 30, 2008
* Where: Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn
* Overall Prize fund: 1,5 Million Euro* Patron: German Finance Minister Peer Steinbr�ck
* Main sponsor: Evonik Industries AG

The match will consist of twelve games, played under classical time controls, in the period from October 11 to October 28, 2008. If there is a tie at the end of these games a tiebreak will be played on October 30, 2008. The prize fund, which will be split equally between the players, is 1,5 million Euro (approximately 2,1 million US dollars) including taxes and FIDE licensee fees.