Blog # 6 - Day 5/ Rd. 6 – Wednesday, July 23

NOTE

1. This blog is duplicate posted: a) on the FQE Canadian Open website ("Follow the tournament"); b) on the CMA Chesstalk. But the FQE website has the great advantage that it includes a game-viewer. So my Rd. 2 game, and that of Mario’s, that are in the text, can be immediately played over. The URL for the blog there is: http://echecsmontreal.ca/co/suivre_en.html .
2. The advantage of the Chesstalk site, is that there is capacity for anyone to comment and discuss any CO matters. The URL is:
http://www.chesstalk.info/forum/forumdisplay.php?2-ChessTalk

Starting the Day Off Right – Wee Hours of the Morning

After midnight today (Wednesday), I continued work on the draft Blog # 5 (for Tuesday) and finished it, but did not want to try to send it out and post it when somewhat tired (error rate goes up). I went to bed at 2:30 PM.

Mid-Morning

I awoke at 5:00 AM – a bit shorter than I would regularly sleep, but not uncommon during tournaments. So I checked e-mails, posted on the 4 FB chess sites I manage/co-manage, and looked at the other 2 non-chess FB pages I manage. I started the draft for this Blog # 6, covering Wednesday. Then I reviewed my draft of this blog # 5 I had finished early Wednesday morning before I went to bed. I made a few minor corrections. Then at 7:30 AM I sent it out to the FQE (Roman) for posting. Then I posted it myself on Chesstalk.
I felt pretty good about the timing. All other prior blogs have been posted in the late afternoon or even just before 11:59 PM the night after the day blogged about. So…what is the new challenge?? What about a new goal of “scooping the administration” for the U 2000 section – that is, to get my blog sent to the FQE and posted on Chesstalk BEFORE midnight of the day blogged about, and BEFORE the FQE organizers get it up on the web. My blog would be the ONLY place to get the latest breaking news on the U 2000 section.
Well this thinking didn’t last long – the organizers/arbiters now seem to have asserted full control over the entire ship! Before 11:59 PM Wednesday, all (to my knowledge) section standings/pairings were on the net! This I can’t beat.  Congratulations guys! I’ll now trash my new goal, and go back to trying to get it out before 9:00 AM the next day.
At 8:00 AM I dressed to go get breakfast at McD’s in the train station below us. Mario was not yet up, and I needed to eat early, since I’m having lunch at noon with my adult daughter who lives here in Montreal. Since the hotel room, due to all this blogging, was becoming a bit claustrophobic, I needed to get out a bit and so had breakfast there. Then back to continue working on the draft of this Blog # 6.
Mario had gotten up while I was away and was at his laptop happily doing something, but, I think, as an employer who is paying him the big bucks, not attending to his position as “Official CO Blog Researcher”. As they say, good help is hard to find these days….you take what you can get, and try to grin and bear it! 
Mario went to get and bring back breakfast.
On Facebook, I PM’d my adult son and his partner who also live here in Montreal, to set a time for me to also get together with them, even though they had just spent last week with my wife and I up at Spirits’ Den (our hobby farm/swamp, about 3 hours drive north-west of Toronto). Then I returned to working on the draft of this blog # 6.
It is hard to realize that after our Rd. 6 game, we will have completed 2/3 of the tournament……as they say: “Time flies when you are having fun!” It has been most enjoyable, though I would have liked to play somewhat better chess in the first three rounds. But Mario and I hang out well together, and I’ve enjoyed spending some time with many of my chess friends. And though this blogging business is a bit of an albatross around my neck, it is fun to do (I try not to take it too seriously), and I get positive feedback that it is a contribution to Canadian chess.
I do admit that, with this blog pretty much up to the present now, it will be pleasant to not have to be trying to meet any working self-imposed deadlines. I like to pace, and I will be able to do that if I want. I find it clears my head; I also practice “contemplation” (different from meditation). You can go to my Canadian Spirits’ Den Contemplation Centre FB page for more on this: https://www.facebook.com/spiritsden?ref_type=bookmark ). I also saw a recent report that asserted that walking stimulates certain parts of the brain so that a mild happiness feeling is generated. So are all of you now going to start pacing while waiting for your opponents’ move??
Mario was doing who knows what! But boy he looks intense hunched over his computer . I think he is getting off a bit on his new life as the official “CO Blog Researcher”. And I’d like to suggest that you keep those proposals of marriage coming in to Mario (his exposure in this blog has apparently been quite favourable). I’d like for him to have a nice range of choice! In his new office, I guess in the public eye, he is now considered an equal subject of these fascinating blogs. Such is life (sigh). A prophet is without honour in his own country.
I won’t mention about him suddenly disappearing and ending up going for a nap. He did eventually surface again. At 11:30 AM I went down to go for a short walk before my daughter arrived. But it started to rain so I returned. In the lobby I met Rahul Gangoli of Toronto, who plays in both the clubs I do. We have been discussing chess improvement a bit, and so we’ve gotten to know each other. So we paced back and forth across the lobby together, discussing the tournament, chess learning, local chess politics, etc. We saw Mario briefly and he said my daughter had called she was running a bit late (not unexpected!).

Afternoon

About 12:20 PM my daughter arrived, and I assured her it was no problem and that subject to her schedule, I had just taken the afternoon off from my full time blogging job with the FQE!  I offered to take her to a nice pizza place Mario and I had found about 15 min. walk away. She said that would be fine, but she knew of a nice little Chinese place that had great food, further west on Ste. Catherine. So we walked that way. Guess what….closed this week! But my daughter is quite resourceful. The immediate Plan B was to go Japanese, at the restaurant close-by where she had taken my son for his 35th birthday (both had lived in Montreal for years). It was great – crab, eel, squid, tempura, teriyaki, fish, mango and green ice cream………..
She belongs to a dance cooperative, and was in the process of general contracting for the coop a new dance floor in their studio. Tough doing this in a co-op. It was driving her crazy….she was about ready to resign since everyone was all over the map about which bid to accept. And of course, she hadn’t had time for personal dance exercise now for weeks. I told her that good chess players, when they go into chess administration, all seem to suffer the same phenomenon……..their ratings sink like a stone. She said she’d put on 10 lbs.! So we walked back to the hotel, and she happily trooped off to conquer the world. A delightful 2 hours.
Mario was slacking again when I got up to the room – totally sacked out, the room in complete darkness, with the curtains all closed. As an employer paying him big bucks as my researcher, I thought I needed to deal with this harshly. But then I considered…..maybe he is meant for me, to be a role model? So I quickly hopped into my bed, and went out like a light for over an hour.
When I got up, Mario advised that the blog was still not up on the FQE site, though sent out to them at 7:30 AM. I advised that it might be that they don’t schedule to post it until the poster gets to the playing hall late in the afternoon before the round.
I then continued filling in the afternoon portion of this blog # 6, and Mario did his now familiar non-researching mucking around. At 5:45 PM I went down to Timmies to get a nice coffee to nurse me through the opening of Game 6 (I am white again – now have 2 W’s; 3 Bl’s)

Round 6

I was paired up a bit. But it should have been more. The arbiters were, unfortunately, still using my higher FQE rating for pairing, rather than my lower CFC rating (which I have unsuccessfully tried to get corrected now three times – I’ve given up). I lost. I got myself early into a bad bind, and just had to play defensive all game. But it is somewhat interesting. Our game finished at about 9:00 PM. The game is below.
So I watched some games for a while and then went back upstairs to work on this blog # 6, and deal with some other matters I then entered my game and started analyzing it for this blog. In the meantime, I did go up and down to get a glimpse of the remaining games in the hall. Mario (win) and Omar Shah (win) then came in, and went out for a late dinner.
I also collected the results I needed for my blog from the hard copy results posting sheet, so I wouldn’t be dependent for the U 2000 section on when the arbiters got it posted. Danny Goldenberg and Alexandre Ber helped me complete my missing data, despite being busy. Thanks guys. So at 11:00 PM I had all the game data I needed. Mario and Omar then came in. They looked over the top board Rd. 6 game. I continued working now on the draft blog. I went out to pick up some juice and donuts, and then returned to complete the draft blog, except for my Rd. 6 game, which I still still analyzing.

My Games

(Because new readers come to the blog from time to time, I want them to have the following information, and so I am repeating the template of it each day – I’d ask the daily readers of the blog to tolerate the repetition)

As I’ve said in prior year’s blogs, I like to think “class” games, like those in the U 2000 section, down in the middle of the bowels of the tournament, have some interest. I believe in some ways they are more educational to class players than GM games, if properly annotated. They are understandable, because we all think similarly – GM moves are many times incomprehensible to us class players.
For years now, I’ve used a chess website, Chess5 (http://www.chess5.com ), as my own personal chess games blog and back up storage site – I have gotten to know the owner/administrator Eydun, quite well over the years. I introduced Canada to his website, after I first saw it. Canada is now one of the main posters to this on-line databank. I post all my games, using what I call my “Comprehensive Annotation System (CAS)”, hoping that this makes them even more helpful to viewers. In prior years, this is where I have posted my Open games for those interested to play over. Click on the heading link “public games”, and you get a list of games posted this month so far. There is an option to go back and look at posted games from prior months. In past years, my Can. Op. games have been posted there during the tournament. But I am not doing that this tournament, since I am now blogging on the FQE website, and there now is a gameviewer in my blogs.
My games may not be dramatic, but I am told I am a somewhat messy (I prefer the phrase “somewhat unorthodox”) and adventurous player (I lose a lot!), and that my games, win or lose, are often interesting to play over (some friends say, so they’ll learn how not to play chess…sigh). However in this tournament so far, I must admit I have played quite conservatively, even passively, in the first three games (all losses). My Rd. 5 game showed more spirit – a win. The Rd. 6 game is kind of messy, and I never really was in it. But in any event, the viewer will decide.

The 4 U 2000 Leaders Post Rd. 6

1/ 2.  – 5 ½  pts. (Undefeated) – 2 players – Germaine, Michel (1947 – QC); Petit, Raymond (1789 – QC);

3/ 4. – 5 pts. – 2 players - Weston, Paul (1963 – QC); Thanabalachandran, Kajan (1798 – ON
5/ 14. – 4 ½ pts. – 10 players.

Our section started with 13 top players who I termed the “favourites”. They were all in the 1900’s. But a number of them were not in the full Can. Op.; they were only in the Mini-COC and so they should not have been in our favourites group, which should have been only 8 players. 6 of them are now among the leaders set out above. Here are the true remaining 2 non-leader favourites and their scores – I kind of like to keep tabs on them since, though they may not be doing well early on, they are quite capable of suddenly again rising to the top:

1. Have, Didier - 1992 – QC – 4 pts.
2. Sarra – Bournet, Marc – 1911 – QC – 4 pts.

My Round 6 Game

The time control is 40/90 min. + SD/30 min, with a 30 sec increment from move 1.
Here it is – it is annotated using my own “Comprehensive Annotation System (CAS), Fritz, and my own annotations – I asked for feedback on my system, and have received some good analysis, critical of the method. That is good – I intend to consider it carefully after the tournament, to see what I can learn   But I do hope you enjoy playing it over, and that much of the analysis, particularly tactical, is instructive and sound:

Early Thursday Morning

At midnight Thursday, Omar left – had to catch the Metro back to Larry Bevand’s, ED of CMA. I went out to get some juice and donuts to keep me going while I continued to work on the blog. I worked on the blog ‘til 1:00 AM, but couldn’t finish it – the text was all completed, but analyzing the Rd. 6 game the way I do it, move by move with my chess engine, called my “Comprehensive Annotation System (CAS), was going to have to go into tomorrow. It does require a time commitment. I hit the sack at 1:00 AM, a bit earlier than usual, but my one medication sometimes does wipe me out by early morning, and I just can’t fight it to stay awake.

Mid-Morning Thursday

Thursday morning, I managed to get 6 1/2 hrs. sleep. Quite nice really….more than I usually get under non-tournament conditions. I checked e-mails, posted on the 4 FB chess sites I manage/co-manage, and looked at the other 2 non-chess FB pages I manage. Then I continued analyzing my Rd. 6 loss for this blog # 6.  But since I am meeting with my son for lunch (he lives in Montreal; his partner couldn’t join us…had to work), I needed to have breakfast early and I didn’t know when Mario might be up. When I got back he was still asleep, but got up about 8:30 AM.
I continued analyzing. It was going to take a few hours with my super-detailed annotation system. I went to lunch with my son, and returned and finished it.
At 3:30 PM, I sent the blog and game out to Roman to post, and I posted it on Chesstalk.

The U 2000 Leaders’ Rd. 7 Pairings (top 14)

Round 7 on 2014/07/19 at 10h10

My Rd. 7 Pairing

34 69  Richardson Kai 1709 2  2  Armstrong Robert J. 1845 30

The Top Section Leaders After Rd. 6

First prize is $ 4,000. There are 42 registered players (one shown actually in U 2400).
Here are the 6 Co-Leaders:

1/ 6. – 4 ½  pts.

GM Tiviakov, Sergei (2656 – Netherlands)

GM Kovalyov, Anton (2636 – Canada – top FIDE-rated Canadian, playing for Canada)

GM Van Kampen, Robin (2636 – Netherlands)

GM Hansen. Eric (2596 – Canada)

GM Ghaem-Maghami, Ehsan (2586 – Iran)

GM Fedorowicz, John (2422 – USA)

The Top Section Leaders’ Rd. 7 Pairings

Round 7 on 2014/07/24 at 18

Invitation.

Unfortunately, the website format FQE uses, does not allow for any comments, questions, etc. concerning the blog material. This is why it is being duplicate posted on the Chess ‘n Math Association national chess discussion board, Chesstalk. There this can be done. So, I'd like again to invite everyone to join into the discussion on Chesstalk by making comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms :) , etc. Anything to do with the Can. Open is welcome. I will try to respond on Chesstalk if that seems appropriate.

Bob Armstrong, the U 2000 Blogger :)