Brighton’s Flashbacks: Akshaya Kalaiyalahan

You meet people everywhere. Interesting, boring, exciting, unforgettable, or somebody like George Smiley – five minutes later you have no idea that you have ever met him.

In Brighton International Chess Tournament you could meet many interesting people. But there was one person which is difficult to forget.

Akshaya Kalaiyalahan

In tournament hall I have met 12 year old girl with Indian background, Akshaya Kalayalahan. (I do apologize if my spelling is incorrect, but this is the way how she is listed in ECF as well as FIDE databases. I have also seen different spelling – Kalai Yalahan.) Not very tall, keeping low profile, almost invisible behind the gaming table she took part in Major A tournament. She played interesting chess and some of “seniors” – I mean the people who are several decades older than she is, me included – had certain difficulties to play against her. It is probably either purely psychological problem, or a confidence problem or an Ego problem. Whatever.

Much to my surprise, she is not a novice in this kind of tournaments and if you take some time and do some research on the internet you can find out that she has already participated on several FIDE rated tournaments mainly organized by e2e4Chess.

She has quite interesting opening repertoire for a player of her age. Would you think that 12-year-old player will use in competitions opening like The English Opening – Botvinnik set-up for White and King’s Indian for Black? Or to be more precise – I can imagine a player of her age playing King’s Indian for Black easier than playing The English Opening for White. And I think that there are not too many coaches who would encourage her to play such an opening for White. (There is an article published by GM Nigel Davis on his website The Chess Improver “How To Prepare An Opening” which tackles the problem of “flank openings” in junior's category.) Nevertheless, she plays chess that way and she is happy with that so what?

Her mother used to stand back or she was sitting in the other room with some reading and she was looking forward to seeing some new positive result. Such a support must be expensive as well as time consuming and I guess she deserves a recognition for what she has already done for her daughter.

Now back to Akshaya; I would like to present here one of her games which is not without flaws; however, it is interesting game where Akshaya playing with White gave rather hard time to battle-harden-few-decades-older player Brian O’Gorman. Both players could have won, both could have lost so final draw seems to be a fair result. However, watch carefully Akshaya's technique in rather complex ending with quite non-standard material balance. She was very close to the victory. Perhaps next time.

So it was rather interesting game, demanding for both players, and fight until the dead end. What do you think?
I am sure we will hear about this girl a lot in the future.

Nottinghamshire League: Grantham-2 4 : 1 Nottingham Central-1

Nottinghamshire chess league continued by another round which brought together Grantham-2 and Nottingham Central-1 (formerly Navigation).
Before the match the league cross-table looked like that:

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Dif	Pn	Pts
1	Newark-1	10	7	1	2	31	19	12	0	15
2	Long Eaton	9	6	0	3	27.5	17.5	10	0	12
3	Nottingham Central-1	8	5	0	3	25	15	10	0	10
4	Grantham-2	9	5	0	4	21	24	-3	0	10
5	Gambit-2	8	4	0	4	20	19	1	0	8
6	Radcliffe &Bingham-1	9	3	1	5	19.5	25.5	-6	0	7
7	West Bridgford-2	8	3	0	5	17.5	22.5	-5	0	6
8	University-2	9	1	0	8	12.5	31.5	-19	-4	-2

On the top board we witnessed very likely one of the shortest games played in the league this season if not ever. 
John Harrison, playing with White pieces, in the Chebanenko line of Slav Defence he committed himself to move 5.c5 followed by 5...Nbd7 and 6.Bf4. Black, having fianchettoed his dark-squared Bishop, started biting White's pawn structure on the queen-side by b6 and a5. John, playing 11.bxa5, made a positional mistake which, followed by 11...bxc5, led to the worse but definitely playable position for White. Alas, the psychological impact of that mistake was tremendous and John, terribly frustrated, decided to throw in the towel.

Harrison, John A. - David, Ivan

D15: Chebanenko Slav

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 a6 5.c5 Nbd7 6.Bf4 g6 7.h3 Bg7 8.e3 0-0 9.Be2 b6 10.b4 a5 11.bxa5?N bxc5   0-1

It was a debut for Andrew Hebert, a new Grantham player, who played with White pieces on the board 2. And his "opening night" was successful when he grabbed the full point for Grantham team. Well done Andy and carry on!
Another full point for Grantham gained Chris Holt playing this time on for him quite uncharacteristic board 5. 
Last point for Grantham team gained Trevor Palmer and Ben Mason who both drew.

Grantham-2		4:1	Nottingham Central-1
David I	172	1:0	Harrison J A	177
Hebert A	-	1:0	Griffith A R	160
Palmer T	147	½:½	Foster S	153
Mason B	149	½:½	Radford M	134
Holt C	146	1:0	Forster G	125

And here is the League cross-table after latest round:

Division 2 (2011-2012)  

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Dif	Pn	Pts
1	Newark-1	10	7	1	2	31	19	12	0	15
2	Long Eaton	9	6	0	3	27.5	17.5	10	0	12
3	Grantham-2	10	6	0	4	25	25	0	0	12
4	Nottingham Central-1	9	5	0	4	26	19	7	0	10
5	Gambit-2	8	4	0	4	20	19	1	0	8
6	Radcliffe &Bingham-1	9	3	1	5	19.5	25.5	-6	0	7
7	West Bridgford-2	8	3	0	5	17.5	22.5	-5	0	6
8	University-2	9	1	0	8	12.5	31.5	-19	-4	-2

4NCL: A Game From Match Pandora's Box Grantham vs Cambridge University

Chris Ross - Pandora's Box Grantham Chess Team player - has sent me his interesting game from the last match against Cambridge University. 

In his e-mail he wrote: 

"An instructive game from the recent weekend of the 4NCL.
Nevil Chan is a top guy, who plays slightly off-beat lines in the openings. Having prepped him for the match, I had the intriguing question on how to exploit his rather unorthodox opening repertoire.

Studying his games, I learned that he particularly liked developing his knights before the pawn structure was determined. Somewhat like in an Alekhine’s or Two-Knight Tango method. A dance of the knights, as it were.

Now, one of the main points of playing a rather unorthodox opening is to take the position into muddy waters, create complications and open up the opportunities for obscure tactics. How then, am I to set out to refute such aspirations?
Some data-base research, extensive theory-checking, a deal of careful consideration and my decision was made.
In the reality, so surprised was my opponent on move 5, that it took nearly 5 minutes over his practically forced reply. After my 6^th move, he considered for 53 minutes!!
Being nearly an hour down on the clock, this did make his defence later on in the game rather difficult and when he eventually resigned, he had about 30 seconds to make the time control, which he would never have achieved, naturally.

Enjoy."

I think this is a brilliant description and now have a look at this game.

Morozevich Wins Vladimir Petrov Memorial

Alexander Morozevich

The Vladimir Petrov Memorial took place from 15 to 20 February in Jurmala, Latvia.

Alexander Morozevich emerged victorious with a score of 5/7, half a point clear of Alexei Shirov and Igor Kovalenko.  All games were played at 15 minutes plus 6 second increment.

Morozevich, Alexander	RUS	2763	*	0	1	1	1	½	1	½	5
Shirov, Alexei	LAT	2710	1	*	½	0	½	1	1	½	4½
Kovalenko, Igor	UKR	2587	0	½	*	½	½	1	1	1	4½
Khairullin, Ildar	RUS	2638	0	1	½	*	0	½	1	½	3½
Fridman, Daniel	GER	2660	0	½	½	1	*	0	0	1	3
Ivanchuk, Vassily	UKR	2766	½	0	0	½	1	*	½	½	3
Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	AZE	2747	0	0	0	0	1	½	*	1	2½
Krasenkow, Michal	POL	2607	½	½	0	½	0	½	0	*	2

The more information including some games you can read on the website www.chess.com .

Brighton's Echoes: When Even A Grandmaster Struggles....

Igor Rausis

Igor Rausis (born April 7, 1961, in Komunarsk, Ukrainian SSR) is a Latvian chess grandmaster who originates from Ukraine. He was Latvian champion in 1995. From 2003 to 2007 he represented Bangladesh but from 2007 he has played for Czech Republic.

Rausis played for Latvia in Chess Olympiads:

• In 1996, at second board in the 32nd Chess Olympiad in Yerevan (+2, =8, -2);

• In 1998, at third board in the 33rd Chess Olympiad in Elista (+2, =8, -2).
• In 2002, at second board in the 35th Chess Olympiad in Bled (+1, =1, -1).

Rausis played for Latvia in World Team Chess Championship:

• In 1993, at first reserve board in Lucerne (+0, =2, -2).

In the 2008 Chess Olympiad, Rausis was Bangladesh chess team coach but in 2010 he became Algeria chess team coach.

This information I have borrowed from Wikipedia.

Last week Igor Rausis took part in the Brighton International chess tournament. 
He "suffered" two loses at the very beginning of the tournament in the rounds 1 and 2, which were followed by two draws, so before the round 5 he had 1 point out of 4! You can imagine what such a result can do with the psyche and ego of any player not only GM! But I was watching him closely, hoping that I can learn something, and I really could. It was amazing how much energy he had spent to focus himself on every single game from round 5 on, how stubbornly he sat at the table, he remained focused, focused, focused, ..., and kept analysing, analysing and analysing. Having seen that I realized that there are certain qualities which separates "us", the ordinary mortals, from "them" who are more successful in the game of chess!

Alex Longson

His first "victim" on his path back into the business became Alex Longson. A nice British guy who is rated 2281 at the moment, but Igor says he is much stronger than that. He also praised his knowledge of opening theory...
The game itself was rather messy! Igor started with 1.Nf3 but the game quickly went on into the Semi-Slav and Alex lured Igor into Moscow variation. Igor was not interested and he retreated his Bishop on h4 first and then on g3. Finally he pushed h-pawn forward which is sort of modern treatment of openings. And what happened later was an awful mess on the chess board and you can see it.

GM Rausis finally finished on the 5th place making 5 points out of 9. After such a terrible beginning not bad result whatsoever.

Rnd	Table	Pno	Name	Flags	Fed.	Rating	Score opponent	Score player	BH	SB	TPR	W-We total	W-We per game	Colour	Float	Result
1	4	5	FM Bigg, Andrew J		ENG	2304	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0	+0.00	-0.75	b		0
2	2	1	IM Rudd, Jack		ENG	2300	1.0	0.0	1.0	0.0	1569	-0.75	-0.26	w		½
3	5	7	Willmoth, Robert F		ENG	2154	0.0	0.5	3.0	0.75	2109	-1.01	-0.38	b		½
4	1	10	FM White, Michael J R		ENG	2229	2.0	1.0	4.5	1.25	2128	-1.39	-0.83	b		0
5	5	2	Longson, Alexander		ENG	2281	1.5	1.0	10.0	2.0	2054	-2.22	+0.22	w		1
6	2	3	FM Sowray, Peter J		ENG	2367	3.0	2.0	14.0	4.0	2182	-2.00	-0.18	b		½
7	4	9	IM Vuilleumier, Alexandre		SUI	2359	3.0	2.5	19.5	6.25	2216	-2.18	+0.31	w		1
8	3	8	Ueti, Silvio Shigueo		BRA	2150	1.0	3.5	25.0	10.25	2285	-1.87	-0.39	b		½
9	3	4	FM Croad, Nicolas		NZL	2307	6.5	4.0	29.5	13.0	2268	-2.26	+0.25	w		1
Total								5.0	40.0	21.5	2315	-2.01