Gens Una Sumus!
Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club #696
January 23, 2015
He was a pitiful sight to behold. Over and over he calculated and miscalculated the variations, and couldn’t understand how I could save myself. Of course he couldn’t—he was looking for something that wasn’t there.
—Anatoly Karpov, quoted in The Inner Game of Chess: How to Calculate and Win,
by Andrew Soltis, revised edition, p. 300 on a Candidates’ Match game
he managed to draw from a lost position against Lev Polugaevsky
1) Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club News
Three rounds into the Winter Tuesday Night Marathon International Master Elliott Winslow, National Master Tenzing Shaw and Expert Josiah Stearman have the only remaining perfect scores among the 111 participants. It is still possible to join the eight-round tournament with three half-point byes.
From round 3 of the Winter Tuesday Night Marathon:
 |  |
| White to move (Shaw–Uzzaman after 70...Rf1) | White to move (McCarty-Snead–Whitehead after 37...Be2) |
 |  |
| Black to move (Tsodikova–Steger after 46 Kh1) | Black to move (Bayaraa–Poler after 29 Ng3) |
 |  |
| White to move (Simpkins–Cheung after 36...c5) | Black to move (Eastham–Palmeri after 18 f5) |
| For the solutions, see the game scores for round 3. |
Mechanics’ Institute Grandmaster-in-Residence Nick de Firmian has compiled the following attendance statistics that track the growth of the Tuesday Night Marathon from 2000 to 2014. There are five tournaments a year - typically eight rounds each.
2000 - average 51 players per event
2001 - average 54 players per event
2002 - average 68 players per event
2003 - average 78 players per event
2004 - average 77 players per event
2005 - average 71 players per event
2006 - average 63 players per event
2007 - average 75 players per event
2008 - average 68 players per event
2009 - average 65 players per event
2010 - average 59 players per event
2011 - average 57 players per event
2012 - average 70 players per event
2013 - average 88 players per event
2014 - average 94 players per event
2015 - Winter TNM 111 players
Tuesday Night Marathon regular Ashik Uzzaman writes:
Filmmaker Jeffrey Plunkett recently started a crowd-funding campaign in IndieGoGo named Pushing Wood
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pushing-wood-a-documentary.
I wrote a small post on it http://dragonbishop.blogspot.com/2015/01/pushing-wood-chess-documentary-by.html.
Lauren Goodkind was recently featured on InMenlo.
http://inmenlo.com/2015/01/19/lauren-goodkind-is-on-mission-to-get-more-females-playing-chess/
The January 2015 FIDE rating list has two Americans in the top ten.
1. Carlsen 1990 NOR 2862
2. Caruana 1992 ITA 2820
3. Grischuk 1983 RUS 2810
4. Topalov 1975 BUL 2800
5. Anand 1969 IND 2797
6. Aronian 1982 ARM 2797
7. Giri 1994 NED 2784
8. Kramnik 1975 RUS 2783
9. Nakamura 1987 USA 2776
10. So 1993 USA 2762
MI member Sam Shankland has been rated around 2650-2655 the past month and has been moving in and out of the top 100 live rating list on a daily basis.
No Americans are rated in the top 10 female players in the world, but MI member Daniel Naroditsky is one of the best junior players (under 21) in the world.
Top-10 juniors:
1. Rapport 1996 HUN 2716
2. Wei Yi 1999 CHN 2675
3. Fedoseev 1995 RUS 2668
4. Artemiev 1998 RUS 2659
5. Dubov 1996 RUS 2632
6. Naroditsky 1995 USA 2622
7. Bukavshin 1995 RUS 2622
8. Anton Guijarro 1995 ESP 2617
9. Nyzhnyk 1996 UKR 2616
10. Cori 1995 PER 2603
FIDE top rated countries
Top-10 countries:
1. Russia 2744 228
2. China 2697 35
3. Ukraine 2686 86
4. USA 2668 87
5. France 2657 48
6. India 2655 36
7. Hungary 2653 52
8. Armenia 2653 37
9. Netherlands 2635 33
10. Poland 2631 39
The second column is the average rating of country’s top 10 players, while the third column is the number of Grandmasters in the country.
South Bay high school student Kesav Viswanadha writes about his road to the International Master title at http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12916/796/.
2) Jacob Yukhtman (1935-1985) and Stephen Brandwein
The Czech Benoni in Action, by FM Asa Hoffmann and Greg Keener, has an interesting anecdote on page 79 about the late Jacob Yuchtman and longtime Mechanics’ member Stephen Brandwein.
“I first met Yuchtman in 1973 at the Chess and Checker Club of New York, commonly known as the ‘Flea House’. I remember a short, stocky man with a smile like a Cheshire Cat, but when he was displeased with something, a dark cloud would come over his face. A brilliant blitz player, there was no one to compete with Yuchtman at the Flea House and he soon moved to ‘The Game Room’ at West 74th St. Here, one could play chess, Scrabble, backgammon, and gin rummy day and night. The resident champion of The Game Room was master Steve Brandwein. He and Yukhtman would play countless hours of blitz with about equal results. I sometimes played these two myself, but could only manage to win about 25% of my games against either of them. ...”
3) Here and There
International Master Boris Kogan, who died of colon cancer on Christmas Day in 1993, is best remembered for playing in three U.S. Championships and winning the Georgia state championship seven years in a row (1980-1986). He was also the coach of Stuart Rachels, helping him advance from being a young national master to sharing the U.S. Chess Championship. What isn’t so well known is that Kogan was a very promising player (Soviet Junior Champion in 1956 and 1957), before making the transition from player to coach at a very early age.
The 1974 Southern Open still ranks as one of the biggest and strongest ever held in Nashville. It ended in a five-way tie, in this order:
1. Kim Commons, Los Angeles 5½ (7)
2. Larry Christinsen, Riverside, CA 5½
3. Milan Momic, Muscle Shoals, AL 5½
4. Bruce Albertson, White Hall, PA 5½
5. Kenny Thomas, Memphis, TN 5½
This information and the following games were supplied by Peter Lahde.
Sicilian
Gared Radin–Kim Commons
Nashville 1974
1 e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Bc4 Qb6 7. Nxc6 bxc6 8. 0-0 e6 9. Re1 Be7 10. e5 dxe5 11. Rxe5 0-0 12. Na4 Rd8 13. Qe2 Qd4 14. Bg5 h6 15. Bxf6 Bxf6 16. Re4 Qd6 17. a3 Rb8 18. Re3 Qc7 19. Rd1 Bxb2 20. Nxb2 Rxb2 21. Bb3 Ba6! 22. Qe1 Rxd1 23. Qxd1 Qd6! 24. Qe1 c5 25. Bxe6 fxe6 26. Rxe6 Rb1! 0-1 (If 27. Re8+, Kf7 wins)
English
Dave Truesdel Jr.–Larry Christiansen
Nashville 1974
1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. g3 Bb4 4. Bg2 0-0 5. Nf3 Re8 6. 0-0 e4 7. Ne1 Nc6 8. Nc2 Bxc3 9. dxc3 d6 10. Ne3 Re5 11. Qc2 Be6 12. Rd1 Qd7 13. Nd5 Bxd5 14. cxd5 Nxd5 15. Bxe4 Nf6 16. Bf3 Qh3 17. Bf4 Rf5 18. Bg2 Qh5 19. e4 Rc5 20. Be3 Re5 21. Bf4 Re7 22. Re1 Rae8 23. Qe2 Qxe2 24. Rxe2 Nxe4 25. Rae1 f5 26. g4 g6 27. gxf5 gxf5 28. Bh3! Ng5! 0-1
4) This is the end
The following position occurred in Sherwood–Kolla. With the black king unable to get to b7, Black shuffles his knight between a8 and c7. How should White proceed?
White to move.
Show solution
This is the same position, but without the h-pawns. Can White win this?
White to move.
Show solution
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