Kenilworth Kibitzer

16 year old Filipino GM Wesley So is on a tear in the 2009 World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk (one of several odd locations our UFO-abducted FIDE president favors for big events).  The 128-man knockout tournament is significant because the winner secures the final qualification spot to the eight-man candidates tournament to determine the challenger to the winner of the Anand/Topalov world championship match.  The format for the World Cup is 2-game matches to be followed (in the event of a tie) with rapid and blitz tiebreaks.  The short matches are highly conducive to upsets, creating a 'March Madness' atmosphere.  This year, Wesley So is making the most of this unusual opportunity, having progressed to the fourth round after having notched some impressive upsets.  In the second round, So knocked off evergreen GM Ivanchuk, 6th seed of the tournament, due in part to Ivanchuk's trying to turn a draw to a win against Wesley's French Defense, the game can be seen here:

While preparing for the National Chess Congress with some bullet games...I stumbled across this...Good Luck to everyone playing from the KCC!!

On December 3rd, future International Master Yaacov Norowitz is going to give us a lecture on playing on colored square complexes.  Simply put, in a given position the combination of pawn structure and pieces on the board may give one side powerful control over connected squares of the same color.  That side can then try to convert their control of these squares into a positional bind, a mating attack or even a carefully constructed defense in an otherwise hopeless situation.  This can be seen very easily in positions where a fianchettoed bishop (say on g7) is eliminated, leaving the adjacent squares f6 and h6 without pawn or piece cover and open to invasion by enemy pieces.  Sound simple?  Perhaps, but this is a legitimately difficult concept to execute, and mastery of it is the mark of a high class player.   With any luck, Yaacov can shed some light for us.  In the meantime, we'll take a look at Karpov-Shirov (Biel, 1992) which is annotated very nicely by Kasparov amongst others.  In this game Karpov creates a well calculated light-square domination theme almost out of the ether.   We'll pick up the game on move 17 of a Meran Semi-Slav, where Black seems close to playing ...c5, unleashing his light-squared bishop and ensuring at least equality.

Inspired by the Kenilworth Karpov's unprecedented undefeated run in the GSCL (unless you consider last year), a league championship trophy has been designed.  See below, where Liverpool has temporarily borrowed our league trophy for a little celebration of their own.

West Orange fielded a weaker than usual lineup and felt the squeeze from the Karpovs, with wins from myself and Steve Stoyko, and a gamesman-like draw from John M.  Particularly noteable was my off-the-cuff invention of a gambit in the Sicilian Dragon with 7. e5!!!   I seemingly dropped a pawn for no compensation, so you can imagine my opponent's surprise when in turn he lost the exchange some 40 moves later.  A sting a the end of the tail, typical of a deep sacrifice.   We're now 2-0 and one step closer to hoisting the non-existent league trophy.