Lethbridge Open 2013

The Lethbridge Chess Open holds a special place on my chess calendar. It is without a doubt, the best tournament I attend every year for a few very obvious reasons.

First - the host. A toast to the host who boasts the most stout. Dr. Paul Viminitz hosts an excellent wine and cheese party at his place after the 3rd round that usually makes for some very lively discussions and a late night; Which in turn places incredible strain on our ability to play decent Sunday morning games. Paul also billets many out-of-town participants each year and I'm grateful to him for my many stays. Doggies and Beer, what more could I ask for?

Second - The Peeps. Many of the people I've met over the years playing in this tournament are exceptionally friendly and interesting folks. I've had the pleasure of speaking with local players at length about their chess and personal lives and I always walk away happy to help their chess in whatever tiny way I can.

Third - my results. Who's kidding who? It's hard to enjoy a tournament no matter how well-organized if you play poorly. Fortunately for me, plenty of things about playing in this event get me excited before I even sit down at the chess board. I've now battled in Lethbridge 5 times, winning outright once, splitting first twice, splitting second once, and out of the money altogether once. Not bad.

Fourth - The atmosphere. This is really the one that counts. Small town events like this are usually a lot more enjoyable than normal Calgary/Edmonton 5-round swisses, at least for me. I enjoy meeting new people, witnessing wicked blunders, and hearing about how new players approach the game and so on. Good people, good times.

Now, if only the weather, and my opponents were to have been more cooperative, I would have taken a nice walk toward the river valley in between rounds, but we can't have everything we want can we?

I'd like to personally thank Paul Viminitz for his always awesome hospitality, Andy Davies for his help organizing the tournament as well as managing to get Paul to speak more than 10 words at a stretch, Vlad Rekhson for not beating me in round 4, and Peter Imhof for directing. I'll hopefully see you guys all again next year.

Preparing for Battle.

Chess is a tough game. Equal parts stamina, knowledge, willpower, luck, among many other factors, winning a single chess game relies heavily on at least a few of these elements and rarely just one. Sometimes a lack of knowledge can be overcome by perseverance, persistence and stamina, while a lack of willpower and fight usually keep even the most knowledgeable master from the upper-echelons of greatness.

Today I'm going to talk about preparing for your chess games mentally. That is, deliberately trying to put yourself in the best state of mind in order to play your best game. We should never underestimate how important our moods are and how they inevitably affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Though it sounds painfully obvious, the vast majority of behaviour and conscious action are a result of unconscious brain churnings-- we are always downstream from ourselves so to speak. Knowing this, a good deal of mental sword-sharpening should help our play dramatically if we develop ways of putting ourselves into moods that are conducive to better play.

What does your perfect day look like? What are you doing? Are you with someone? What's the weather like? Where are you? What does it smell like?- Close your eyes and take a minute to imagine this. I'm serious. Do it.

What did you come up with? Playing video games with your best friend? Playing your guitar by a campfire alone in the mountains on a cool spring night? A simple image of  waves pounding against a rocky cliff? The more vivid your description, the better. Now why in the hell did I get to you to do that? Alright, I know you didn't, but here's why. This simple exercise of visualization, a skill as a chess player you've honed for years, can be incredibly powerful under the right circumstances. It acts as behaviour modifier to try and "click" you into gear so to speak, a flushing. It's a way of creating a positive mental environment when the conditions around you wouldn't normally get you all uppity. This is the mental equivalent of doing something physical in order to try and change your mood. A lot of people do this by going for a jog, doing a few push-ups, sprinting 50 yards etc. and as we all know, exercise is one of the best ways to keep a healthy mind, the endorphin's that are released during exercise produce immediate changes in the brain and often make people less anxious along with a whole host of other benefits.

Wait a second you ask, this sounds a lot like that bullshit book "The Secret". Yeah, it does, but stay with me for a few more minutes.

Getting to your "happy place" isn't terribly difficult. In my case, what I like to do is listen to music before games. I would sometimes go outside, pop on a song that I thought best fit my mood at that particular time and rock out, of course making sure that no one was around to hear and see my terrible singing and laughable air drumming. If I had time, I would sometimes close my eyes and imagine walking along a beach during a downpour. It can be anything for you. This kind of pregame preparation almost always served me well, I would be a better mood, better equipped to handle later stresses, and my games were usually of better quality.

May you discredit my new-age psychological nonsense and beat me up over the board later. Good night, and good luck.

World Chess Championship 2012.

Viswanathan Anand retains the world chess championship title once again. After what seemed like a rather uneventful 12 regulation games(only 2 decisive results), the players headed into a 1-day rapid/blitz, and if needed, 1-game sudden-death blitz playoff. Fortunately for Vishy, he managed to put Boris away after only 4 rapid games to retain the title after winning game 2 of the tiebreaks and drawing the other three games. Congrats Vish.

Contrary to the opinions of many, myself included at first, as well as Canada's own GM Kevin Spraggett, the players did not intentionally "phone in" the games or make peace unnecessarily as the high number of short draws might indicate. Accusations ran the gauntlet from the games being purposefully dull to the players willingly making draws to spite the organizers--this is simply not the case. Both Vishy and Boris know each other pretty well and have a good feel for how the other plays chess, approaches the game, and prepares. As a result, they have enormous respect for one another and agreed to draws in positions that most amateurs, even strong ones, were puzzled if not annoyed by. But for players of exceptional strength in all phases of the game, agreeing to draws in the positions they did were mostly motivated by an understanding and respect for the fact that the result would not be in doubt. Granted, in some cases the players agreed to draws in positions that still had play in them, but modern professional chess seems to have undergone a paradigm shift from a mindset of fighting, to meticulous and highly prepared debates, wherein this case, neither player seemed to want to offend the other without very good reason. The level of pre-game preparation was simply astounding on the part of both combatants, and it became clear quite early in the match that neither player wanted to take what they called "unnecessary risk". This meant choosing opening variations that most computers would deem "correct", but unfortunately for us perhaps, it meant seeing games of very little real excitement. This is simply top-class modern chess in a nutshell. Neither player really wanted to "go for it" and instead wanted to play the absolute best chess that was possible but regrettably, this doesn't make for good entertainment. 

Perhaps the most principled reason why we like watching sports, and let it stand that chess be considered a sport for a moment, is that we like watching battles. We want conflict--blood sweat and tears. This is especially the case for pro sport playoffs, where we know a team is going to walk away disappointed, and given that the structure of most sports don't allow for ties or some kind of split, save for boxing, chess, soccer and maybe a few others, a decisive result is guaranteed thereby giving the fans at least some modest immediate satisfaction. But in chess, a game of patience, stamina, and perhaps little luck compared to other sports, we as fans often feel cheated when the players seem to not be giving it their absolute best and one team isn't bloodied. Tough, chess isn't Hockey--Chess isn't marketed and promoted in that way. Sure you could change the rules so that draw offers either can't be made, or made before a certain number of moves etc, you could make all sorts of changes to try and "Americanize" it which I probably wouldn't have a problem with, but this years match had no such thing. So I can't really fault the players for simply adopting an approach that they felt would most maximize their chance of winning chess' highest prize, I wouldn't dare. 

This morning I watched the live broadcast as well as the post-game press conference and came to realize that championship chess is simply not what it was even 10 years ago. Computers(chess engines, databases, online instruction/training tools etc) as well as having entire teams to support players, have changed the pro chess landscape dramatically, so much so that I can't even really imagine what playing and studying chess would have been like 25 years ago. In some ways perhaps more exciting in the fact that amateurs could open up the latest MCO and find the latest trap in an opening that he could spring on an unsuspecting clubber, and have it work on perhaps more than one occasion, but the rate at which information spreads nowadays, stings like that rarely happen twice. Everyone will go home, pop open their fritz/chessbase/rybka whatever and immediately find out what the best reply was to their moronic play, and hopefully remember it for just long enough to make the offender toss it. 

We seem to want to leave every last word to the machine, and in doing so, have lost a part of what used to make chess so engrossing, the discovery- and in this match, the blood and the hunger. 

Burdens.

I recently played in the Calgary International Chess Classic due to a last-minute dropout. I managed to score 3/7 (I wasn't needed as a sub for rounds 3 and 4), and was more or less satisfied with my play. Being the lowest rated competitor in the event, as well as a sub for both the top and reserve sections, I had some reservations about setting particular goals or expectations. My goal--don't get zero.

After round 3, I was faffing about and decided to show my piss-poor effort against IM Eric Hansen in round 1 to a few of the players hanging around the playing area. After showing the players some of the variations that Eric had shown me in the post-mortem, it became apparent that, like so many other games in King's Indian defence, if black doesn't play f5 he should get whacked. Adding in my usual snarky comments, GM Anton Kovalyov picked up on my lack of confidence and said "Why do you give them(masters) respect? They don't deserve respect." And later, "I get bad positions all the time, just fight and see what happens."

I guess something about his words struck a chord with me. I was called back into the International for round 5 after Mr. Shirazi chose to drop out and played out the rest of the tournament not knowing if another player would soon recoil and relieve me of my duty. To my delight, I managed to score wins over David Miller, a promising junior from Grand Prairie, and seasoned vet Dale Haessel from Calgary. Lady Luck seemed to be on my side..until Monday when I was handily outplayed by yet another junior by the name of Jafar Faraji from Lethbridge. Chess is strange game. 

Many people seem to believe that I'm quite capable of becoming of master-level chess player, and I'm almost there, but over the years I've noticed that I often have a self-defeating attitude about playing players better than myself. I see the 22(  )+ and almost immediately grunt disapprovingly. I figure they must be better than me, so why try? But in this event, thanks in part to Anton, I tried on a new mantra-- "You beat me, I won't". 

I won't speak for others, but it seems like becoming a master in chess is more of a psychological hurdle rather than a technical one, and a feat that requires a good degree of competence and confidence in grappling with the more esoteric elements of chess, and life in general. If you're the Dalai Lama of stress management, and the Rambo of confidence, equipped with two AK's of chess knowledge and enough ammo to last 70 years, you're probably well on your way. Don't be a baby like me and shudder at the first wiff of a challenge. "I don't wanna".

Confidence gets the ladies, and the rating points too. 

Rivals.

Mike Zeggelaar- Friend, taxi, enemy, rival, enabler, punching-bag, confidant, maniac--and not always in that order.

Zeggy, as he is affectionately known by around the Edmonton Chess Club, is a by now a pretty well known figure to most ECC members as well as a few others around Alberta. Known mostly for his, what some might call exuberant attitude and perhaps dogmatic adherence to sacrificial play,  he continues to ruffle my chess feathers on occasion. One such example occurred recently as we met in the Edmonton Active Matchplay tournament directed each year by the ever gracious and patient Terry Seehagen.

Every time I'm paired against Zeggelaar, whether it be in a weekend event, match, or otherwise I always get a little nervous, a flood of different emotions, expectations and feelings wash over me and existential thoughts sometimes creep up."Ah..not again" "Oh juice, come at me bro" "Why? Haven't I proved myself yet with a +9 score", they run the gauntlet. When the pairings are posted and he sees the pairing he's seen 58 times before, he'll usually walk over to me and say something like "Ohhh!" in an adventurous and excited tone. My favourite response of late has been to respond with a contemptuous smirk, though I haven't yet mastered the Mutombo finger-wag.

The first two games of the active match began strangely, or so it would seem, but that was just the beginning. I won game 1 with white, and completely capitulated in two game two, playing far too passively, giving him the kind of position he tends to play well. Tied after 2 games and heading into what would soon turn into an insane protracted blitz playoff marathon, I felt my chances would be good. What happened over the following hour and half is by the far the most intense, silly and emotionally racking chess experience of my entire life.

Active(25+10)    (1,0)   - Active(10+2)  (0,1)        - Blitz (5+0)      (0,1) (0,1) (1,0) (0,1) (1,1)

Yes, those scores are real, I didn't make those up. 2 active games, tied. 2 shorter active games, tied. 5 overtime blitz matches later and I finally, somehow, managed to escape the beast in front of me. In each playoff, I had white to begin and played black in game two. Take notice of just how many times I had to win with black in order to keep the match alive, and conversely just how many times he let me slip through his wrestlers grasp. In game two of the of the second blitz playoff, I managed to flag him with just seconds left on my clock with only 1 pawn left on the board, I fell to the floor in amazement and exhaustion after that one. Many cigarettes left the box during this match. In game 2 of the third blitz playoff I was up 2 pawns in an endgame that was clearly won, and what did I do? Give away an entire rook! Wow.. and on it went, topsy-turvy from beginning to end until I finally regained my composure and nerves, shaky hands gone, and ingesting enough nicotine to make Tal weep, I managed to take the last playoff convincingly 2-0. Thank you Zeg for keeping me from a noose, I tried my best to hang myself but you wouldn't let me, you're a true friend.

Rivalries are great,especially when styles and ideologies collide--Kasparov-Karpov, Federer-Nadal, Hockey's Canada-Russia, Palmer-Nicklaus, Ali-Frazier, and in our own small Alberta Chess bubble--Gardner-Huber, Hughey-Yearwood, and recently, and of course most importantly, Sequillion-Zeggelaar.

Style.

I pop on my most unassuming outfit-- A black baseball cap, a grey sweatshirt, khaki-casual dress pants, and well-worn white Reebok's to complete the ensemble. Am I dreaming? Wondering through a dark hall
confused, a large, grey Victorian-style door appears in front of me. "What's this?" I wonder aloud, a spotlight beams on me from above and Morgan Freeman's voice fills the chamber, "This is the door to insanity my son, you've been selected from a random sample of customers to participate in our survey." "What sur--" "Go ahead, it won't hurt". The door opens slowly to reveal a modest gathering of Ewoks, 8 short in stature, 2 with round heads, 2 with larger noses and hooves, another 2 clothed in Gothic robes, 1 with a crown, and the last a little more curvy than the rest. The crowned beast speaks in a strangely familiar Austrian accent -"Welcome to the party.. IT'S NOT A TUMA!"
           My eyes dart open suddenly to a reveal a chess board beneath me, I wipe off my lip-crud, come to, and realize I fell asleep waiting for the pairings. Looking around, I notice Mike Zeggelaar blathering once again about his "attacking style" to some club veterans, I grin and sit patiently for a moment until a familiar voice pipes up "The pairings are now posted on the door, please have a seat at your board, and we'll start the clocks in 1 minute".

And back to reality~~What does it mean to have a chess style? Most take it to mean that a person has a disposition towards certain types of play, whether it be positional, tactical, defensive-prophylactic, initiative based pirate-like gambiteering, computer-like "correct" and so on, with many symbioses. These dispositions usually reflect on that persons personality to some degree and their approaches to combat and life in general, although there are many contradictions and situations where a preference must be put aside for practical reasons.

In the chess world we have many examples of great champions who had more or less clear-cut styles. Mikhail Tal was known around the world for his great attacking games and daring sacrifices- a gambler. Mikhail Botvinnik on the other hand was much more scientific in approach and generally preferred to play in a way that would be considered "correct", as did Bobby Fischer who's style would later be characterized as universal. Anatoly Karpov and Tigran Petrosian tried to clamp their opponents and reduce potential counter-chances, gently squeezing their opposition until they fell over. So who are you?

People play chess for a variety of reasons, to win, to smash, to grief, to prove, to create. So why do you? Simple enough question perhaps, but probably incredibly difficult to answer, with reasons that stem from the practical, artistic, competitive to psychological. I think this is an incredibly important question that may lead you to reconsider your approach to the game and may even lead you to play a better, but even more important, a more enjoyable game of chess.

Story time-- One of my favourite books is written by IM Josh Waitzkin titled "The Art of Learning". In it he discusses his disenchantment from chess before moving on to martial arts. In his youth he was considered a prodigy and won almost everything in sight, grade championships, state junior events, national competitions and so on. His meteoric rise up the junior ranks was impressive and many took notice. He played chess first and foremost because he loved the game. He loved to analyse deep endgames of the champions of old, and play dazzling attacking chess, relishing the moment when the positions would turn crazy and almost incalculable; An adventurer at heart. His play on the chess board was in-tune with who he was as a person and he enjoyed the process immensely. Fast-forward many years into young adulthood. Things got tough. GM's were big and scary, he had moved on from his long-time friend and coach Bruce Pandolfini, and chess became less about enjoyment and more about results and pleasing fans. "I felt like I was watching myself play chess from from across the room." These concerns coupled with his new trainer telling him to play like Karpov, instead of Kasparov whom he admired, eventually led him astray and out of the chess world. He wasn't playing chess for himself anymore, but for other people and for reasons that he didn't care for, like a hockey player being told and nudged to play tennis instead. You wouldn't play the clarinet if you loved heavy metal would you?

This little story should have some value for us. It illustrates clearly the idea that chess can be played in many ways, approached from different perspectives and meaning derived from a plethora of lenses. If you love playing dashing attacks, probably 1.c4 isn't for you, at least not all the time. If you're in love with solid, safe positional chess, gambits shouldn't be the first thing to pop into your mind. You should play chess in a way that satisfies your creative ambitions and excites you, and in the long-run you'll not only enjoy playing and studying more, but the results should follow as well. Don't try to be something or someone you're not, be you. Try to emulate your favourite players and play chess in a way that gets your blood pumping. Cultivate your strengths and shore up your weaknesses.
              Remember when you would come home and tell your mom about how you got rejected by Jennifer, the cute girl that used to sit beside you in history class? What did your mom always tell you? "Don't worry hunny, she doesn't care about your new Nike's, just be you, there's always another girl." And what did you think at the time? "Bullshit". Well girl or no girl, new Air Jordan sneakers or not,  no one likes a faker, especially you. Maybe mom was right..

Shame.

"Win with grace, lose with dignity!"  -  Susan Polgar


Neither. As some of who you've had the displeasure of having to play me, you probably know just how appalling some of my post-game behaviour has been;especially when I lose. I tend to not want to do post-mortems or look you in the face, and quickly look for the nearest hole to curl up and die in. I'll come home and bitch about my loss to my non-chess playing friends and bemoan my fate. "Why must I lose to this idiot?" Screams Aron Nimzowitsch.


I think part of the reason why I take losing so badly is because I'm highly attached to results, an ego-maniac; a dangerous position as I'm sure you're all aware. For those of you that simply love the game and play it for it's own sake, some of what I'm about to talk about might seem alien. But first, a little story :)


Back at the 2009 Lethbridge Open, I was paired in the third round against a young guy named Tom Fox, a student at the U of L. Getting outplayed throughout the game against my lower rated opponent, I began to sink. "Jesus, why doesn't he just play the knockout now, IT'S RIGHT THERE SEE!?" He bails me out eventually and allows me to reach a winning rook and pawn ending. His 1 rook and A and B pawns vs. my 1 rook and A through D pawns. A sigh of relief blows through me. I get excited, "thank you Caissa, maybe you're not a bitch after all." Not 10 moves after this self-dialogue,  I pick up my king and move it to the only square that loses, allowing a skewer picking up my free rook. In complete amazement, emotions firing out of control, I gently raise my right hand and backhand with fury my king into the wall just to the right of us. I offer the offending hand over the board, not looking at him, which he shook--I darted out of the room as soon as I could. Afterwards, mulling the game over in my head over a delicious cigarette with nerves calmed, I realized just how surreal that moment must have been for him. I hoped with anxiety that I'd get the chance to apologize for my chemicals had gotten the best of me. Minutes later he walks into the parking lot with his friend Greg Holmes, and I walk over to try and excuse my poor manners, he accepts my apology. I'm whole again. 


I play to win, plain and simple. Winning is everything to me. If I don't win, I'm a loser, but If I win, my opponent must have been sick, off his game, didn't care etc. Unfortunately, very very few wins give me real satisfaction, the kind of endorphin rush that ought to make a person proud and show his game to friends. As I mentioned in a previous entry, winning games is nothing without the satisfaction of having dragged your opponent through the mud, to make him wish he had never sat down to play you the first place. I want my opponents to feel the same way about their chess as I do about my own little sad life. Winning isn't the icing on the cake of having played a decent game, no win, no cake, no icing, nothing. It's a very precarious situation playing chess only for the satisfaction of results, ego boosts and sadism, for of course you can never get it all the time, a fleeting sense of enjoyment, a drug. And like most drugs, the longer you use, the less pleasure you get from them, the scale starts to tip the other way and before you know it, you're sitting on the other side wondering what the hell you did to get there, you're lost at sea, no paddle, and just angry. "Don't do drugs kids" says the hypocrite, "drugs are the perfect solution to every problem you have right now, they're so good that they'll ruin your life"..and I can't stay away. 


The road to chess improvement is paved with bad materials. The car can't seem to go fast enough, the road signs are never where you want them, all the other drivers are either maniacs or idiots, the driving manuals are too complicated, text too small, brakes too touchy, and constant breakdowns. Did I check my oil before the left the house? 16 moves later, "cluck, cluck, cluck" goes the engine. "OnStar, roadside assistance, how can I help you?" "You can't" click.