Archive for March 17th, 2010

The Kenilworth Chess Club Championship Awards ceremony will take place on March 25th, prior to the 3rd/final round of the ongoing Quads.

Following a report on the April 1st GSCL matches, I’m shelving the Chess Coroner for at least 4 weeks. At this point, I have no damned idea where it’s headed : Blogspot, WordPress or bye-bye.

The Blogger-forced move, the lack of a significant audience and a lingering desire to finally achieve an ICCF Master-rating (+ other things) have me, at the moment, leaning away for good but a long holiday may, once again, re-charge my batteries, keep me away from correspondence chess (the only vice Mikhail Tal didn’t partake in!) and bring me back here.

As for my other blogs, the Checkmate site will be finished & turned over to a new administrator ASAP while the Garden State site will return in September; league & future employer permitting.

In
CBM 133 Sergey Erenburg recommended a setup with 3…e6 against the Fantasy
Variation 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3. In
CBM 134 Lars Schandorff followed up with 3…dxe4, a recommendation for
Caro-Kann players who do not like the “French”-type structures after 3…e6
and prefer a free development of their c8-bishop. Our reader Marcus Schmücker
took the article by Lars Schandorff as a starting point to delve deeper into
the material and to look for alternatives for White. His interesting suggestion
after 3… dxe4 4.fxe4 e5 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.Bc4 Nd7 goes 7.c3!? (7.0-0 was analysed
by Schandorff). ChessBase Magazine Online.

This is a real Rambo-style comeback: after the shock 0-2 loss in round one Magnus Carlsen has won six games in a row, and caught the leading Vassily Ivanchuk in the overall score. Israeli GM Boris Gelfand shocked former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik with a 2-0 wipe-out. Gelfand and Grischuk are now a point behind the leaders. Wednesday is a free day. Round four report.

In last week’s Playchess by Dennis Monokroussos
presentation we saw Tony Miles play the funny 1.c4 b6 2.d4 e6 3.d5 Qh4 against
Anatoly Karpov, with the then-world champion eventually winning. This week,
in part two, Miles plays the even more provocative 1.e4 a6! and wins the game
with confident ease. The lecture is at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday night –
watch out for daylight saving time changes.