All About Chess...

Man vs Machine January 31, 2015 at 9:27am 4th Negros Closed Chess Championship   2014 Rd.5  Acaling  vs  Fritz 12     Kings Indian Defense For the first time in four years, the championship of our Province included an engine. The sponsors of the event wanted to test the mettle of our players against an engine in a standard time control. Only three players managed to draw. FM Severino, CM Abanco and yours truly. 1.d4 The last time I played 1.d4 in a tournament was 14 years ago .  Against an engine, you need to play as solidly as possible, so 1.d4 or 1.Nf3 is in my view, the only way to go.  1..g6 2.e3 Bg7 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.c4 O-O 5.Nc3 Honestly, during the game, I had no idea what kind of opening have we gotten into. One thing I know is that Black had constructed some kind of a King's Indian Defense. I only found out days later that this opening is in fact KID. 5..c5 6.Be2 cxd4 7.Nd4 It is important to avoid any isolated paw

Sometime during the summer of 1980, I was vacationing in my Grandma's house together with my parents, uncles, aunties and a number of my cousins. Then one day my cousins decided to play a game called chess. This was the very first time I ever laid my eyes on a board game with curious looking pieces played in a 64 squared board with alternating white and green squares. I was just an observer that time, intrigue by how the pieces moves. After a while somebody won (or was it a draw), and then they decided that they had had enough, so they put back the pieces inside the foldable chess board and stored it somewhere. That was my first ever encounter of a game that will soon made the biggest impact in my life. But it took me another three years before I finally learned to play the game. Fast forward to June of 1983, it was just the first few days after the opening of the classes and everyone was still on a cleaning mode and we hardly had any classes at all, just the basic orientation

He was the invincible whiz kid of the chess world. The child prodigy from the heart of Brooklyn who grew up and became a Cold War icon, and in the process toppled an Empire. But at the peak of his fame, he disappeared and self destructed. His reclusive behavior and his eccentric ideology made him as reviled as he was revered. Once a symbol of the American free spirit, eventually he became an international fugitive. How did a high school drop-out became a cultural touchstone, carrying the weight of a nation on his back and what price did he pay to get there?

                           2nd Negros Closed Invitational Chess Championship 2012                            Rd.9    NM Acaling vs. CM Montoyo    Sicilian Defense (B27) I would rather not mention in detail the controversy that happened before and during the game since everything turned out to be alright after it. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d5! Honestly, this is the first time I encountered this move, which means my opening reference is very old, but probably not yet obsolete :) There are many moves in this position 5..Nc6, 5..Qb6, 5..Qc7, 5..Bc5 but perhaps the most popular continuation here is 5..Bb4 while 5..d6 will transpose to Scheveningen type of position. A few days after the game I found out that the "stem game" according to a DB that I consulted (which contains only 2.5M games) was first played in 1996. The whole concept of the set-up -Nf6, -e6, and -d5 is nothing new, the idea was just lifted from other Sicilian

Whew, what a ride! A very tough tournament. Prior to the event, I thought (based on last years results) that to be able to win the event, you have to score not less than 7pts. If I’m not mistaken last years champ FIDE Master Sander Severino’s score is exactly 7pts. This benchmark may have been equaled or even surpassed had Ellan Asuela been able to play in the first two rounds. National Master Carlito Lavega ( incidentally his NM title was not included in the National Chess Federation of the Philippines’ ratings list, I wonder why?!) snatched the lead in the first three rounds, but by the middle rounds he was caught up by FM Sander Severino. The blitz playoff of Lavega and Asuelan.* (Photo by James Toga) These two were involved in a neck to neck race down the wire up to the penultimate round, with the leads switching from one to the other with every rounds. After the eighth round was completed, it became apparent that there was a new co-leader, and it was none ot

MIKHAIL TAL’S STARE was infamous, and to some ominous. With his deep brown, almost black eyes, he’d glare so intently at his opponents that some said he was attempting to hypnotize them into making a vapid move. The Hungarian-American player Pal Benko actually donned sunglasses once when he played Tal, just to avoid the penetrating stare. Tal's burning stare... Bobby had tolerated Tal’s stare when they first met over the board in Portorož, Yugoslavia. That game had ended in a draw. At his first game against Tal, in Bled, Bobby was already at the board when the twenty-three-year-old Mischa arrived just in time to commence play. Bobby stood and Tal offered his right hand to shake. Tal’s hand was severely deformed, with only three large fingers appended, and since his wrist was so thin, the malformation resembled a claw. Bobby, to his credit, didn’t seem to care. He returned the gesture with a two-stroke handshake, and play began. Within a