Friday, July 31, 2009

SWCC Round 4


Last night in the SW chess club championship, Reid beat Steven Davidson, a 1580 player with a nice endgame tactic wherein he forced SD's King away and took a Rook, upon which Steven resigned. He was a very good sport, and sat with us to go over the game afterwards. Very gracious, sportsmanlike player.
Evan played John Becker (2050) on board 2. They went all the way to the end in a three hour game in which JB had 3 minutes left, and were tied in a drawish endgame when Evan's knight was trapped and JB was able to force Evan's king away and promote. Evan was very disappointed, but JB agreed it was a great battle.
I will post one of these games later today.
The boys played great, but Dad (me) really bit the big one. Against Rohan, who I knew had a great knowledge of Ruy Lopez and all its variations, I wanted to avoid that line as Black. I played the dubious but surprising Latvian Gambit which was recommended to me. I'll post a little bit of that when I have a moment. I didnt have enough time to practice it with a couple busy workdays, but tried anyway. I was able to achieve a playable and confusing opening with a strong kingside attack, but I was overly aggressive and lost to a tactic I didn't see. At least I gave him a fun, unusual game. The "Spanish Torture" of the Lopez would have lasted three hours and I would have ended up losing anyway I'm sure.
Great tournament, SWCC, lots of fun. Thanks for all you do.

5 comments:

Jerry said...

Hey Mark,

Do you have a subscription on ICC? If you do there is this one place where you can go to learn the Latvian Gambit, if you think you don't have the hang of it yet you can look it up on ICC. It is a video taped lecture by Boris Alterman. If you can't find it I can help you find it or maybe you can even find help by asking your ICC friends.

Good luck with your Latvian Gambit!

Mark Seghers said...

Thanks Jerry, I'll check it out!!
- Mark

Jerry said...

Oh yeah I just remember something.
You said you didn't like the Ruy Lopez right Mark? Well then you can play the Ruy Lopez Schliemann which is an opening I play to defeat many strong players. This is how the line goes: 1)e4 e5 2)Nf3 Nc6 3)Bb5 f5!?

f5 is the interesting move that I play which is for tactical players instead of the dull mainline with a6!

Jerry said...

Evan what happened? You were drawing and then blew it. Honestly that happened to me last Thursday against Andrew because of trying a weird opening but you had him tied up because of the time difference. He had two minutes and you had eighteen!! You should listen to an old friend of mine, Ryan Steinborn.
Even though his rating isn't so high he make good comments. He once told me "When you have more time and your opponent has less time use your time to think instead of moving fast and hoping that your opponent loose on time." Well good job anyways because Ryan wasn't there for you when you had to face the loss and because you survived the middlegame.(Can you believe it he didn't take you down as quick as how he should and you're improving like Tal ,he took chess seriously when he was 12 and he became a grandmaster, growing up.)

Mark Seghers said...

Thanks Jerry, Schliemann seems cool, i'll have to learn more before trying however!