Cannes Open, R4,R5 and R6

It was some strange symmetry from my previous article and this one.
In the first third part I won the first game and than on the day with double round I played two draws.
In fourth round I won again, and than today when we had double round I played two draws.
My score is now 4 out of 6, and the final days will give an answer about my tournament here.
While I am writing these lines, some of the games are still not finished, so I don´t have standings or pairing for tomorrow.

27th Cannes Chess Festival

A view from the playing hall

The first third part of the Cannes tournament ended today.
The first round was played yesterday, and today was double round, which is never easy.

I am on two out of three points right now, and should not be dissatisfied.

However, there were some points where I could do better, especially in the second round (at the morning) when I outplayed Russian GM Vladimir Dobrov, just to find my self in drawish endgame.

It was also interesting in round one and three....

Elitserien round 6, Grande Eksjö

In Swedish league, Elitserien, today was played the two remaining matches from round six.
Now, everything is ready for final weekend in Västerås, in the middle of March.
Before clocks started, in Eksjö and Västerås, in the noon, everybody would bet on two easy wins for Stockholms clubs.
Indeed, Team Viking did their job and won convincingly against Västerås S.K. (6-2), but the second match, in which I took part, ended in unexpected fashion, 4-4.
Of course that this result was by far more than we expected, but at the end of the day it was Rockaden who should be happy with 4-4.

Abundance of possibilities (Part 2/2)

This is the second part of this article, when I will publish the rest of my analysis in this interesting position.
For those who missed the first part, there is not the big point to read this one, but of course there is a link for the first part:
Part 1 .

After we explored some of the White´s possibilities, the biggest part is still to be analysed.
There is one very important candidate move in this position, and one which are not mentioned in the first part.
Let´s see the both.

Abundance of possibilities (Part 1/2)

After the previous game in Swedish league, I wrote that I will analyse that game on this blog in depth, but the game showed more complicate than I thought in the beginning.
I don´t like to make superficial analysis with computer lines and some usual empty phrases, which can give a game a colour so it looks like that a job is done, but it is not.
Instead, I shall show two positions from my practise which I already analysed in depth, and later used in the training sessions.
For this time I will show the position which is from my two years old game.

Resistance or Defence? (Part 3/3)

This almost unreal position came in one of my games in Marienbad.
I don´t have anything more to show on this subject from Prague tournament, so now I shifted to Marienbad.
One of the games that I considered to analyse on this blog was against Sergei Matsenko from Russia, because it contains   some elements of good defence, but it is to much theoretical and I decided to keep some secrets in that theoretically very important game.
This game is against Czech Republic IM Peter Pisk, who plays mostly solidly, without taking to much risks.

UPDATE: "Open Pierre et Vacances" CANNES 2013 - The list of players

On the same day when I published an article on my blog, about open in Cannes, on the official page of the tournament organisers updated the list of players.
As their list is in alphabetical order and the ratings of the players are from the moment when they sent their application for a participation in the tournament it is not so clear to look at the list.
I did a job, and updated the ratings of the players in the 
A group for first half of the players.
For the rest of players in A group you can look at official page on the following link: Cannes 2013 A group .

XXVIIe open d'échecs d'hiver de Cannes

Non, non, non....this blog not shifted from English to French.
I just could not resist the temptation to write the title of Cannes tournament in French....
Couple of times in my reports from Czech republic I wrote that I will play in one very interesting Open tournament during winter-spring of 2013.
This part of the year is full of interesting open tournaments.
There are Gibraltar Open, Reykjavik Open, Moscow Open, there were Aeroflot Open, and of course the tournament in which I played three times Cappelle la Grande.

Resistance or Defence ? (Part 2/3)

This is position from my game from round number 5 in Prague.
I was White, and I had big problems to break hard resistance of my opponent, Russian WGM Irina Semenova.
I just won a pawn, but it is clear that she got a lot of compensation.
I have some problems of coordination of my pieces due to pinning on the first rank.
My task is very difficult because there are some pawns hanging as well, so the first thing is how to stabilise the position.
There is something very interesting that can be understand wrongly, and I want to explain.

Solution for the combinations

There are a lot of combinations when solution is at the same time, nice and hard to find.
This combination against Czech International Master Milan Babula is only nice.
For a serious player it should be matter of technique to find a solution in positions like this.
Why I coloured Black king and this pawn structure in the centre?
The king, because it stacked in the centre and has to be the main goal of white´s attack.
This pawn structure, because this is the only thing that protects Black in this position.

February combinations

February is the shortest month, and that´s why in this traditional article with combinations it will be only 5 combinations.
However, this time I focused on quality not quantity.
All of them are from my mobile tactics app, except the first one which is from one of my old games.
With a huge number of solved combinations during the last half year I think that I eliminated some problems in my play.
It has to do with my last post, but I will let explanation about that for the second part of that article.
All of the combinations in this post hides something deeper for tactical understanding.

Resistance or Defence? (Part 1/3)

In my final rapport from Marienbad GM tournament I wrote that  one of the most interesting things that I noticed in my play in 2013 is higher level of defencive abilities.
I also wrote that I am not sure if this is due to increased level of motivation which leads to increased level of resistance in some positions, or it is simply that I play better in defence compared to before.
It takes so much time to recover from two hard tournaments, and one league game and than to analyse nineteen games in depth so I can draw the right conclusions.
For this article I´ll try to show some examples from my games, and let readers draw their own conclusions.

Elitserien round 5, Disaster in Västerås

Yesterday was played fifth round in Swedish league, Elitserien.
It was not successful day for my club, nor for me.
That Eksjö SK is weak team in single rounds was known even before this round, but we could not expect to loose 6,5-1,5.
I was white on the first board, and my part in this tragedy was full.
I lost my game (second in a row, if I count the last game in Czech Republic), although it happened so much in it that maybe is better to publish some moves and than leave to readers to decide for themselves.
During this weekend majority of clubs played more than one match, so there significant influence on the table.