Full house at Bury

Last evening there were five matches taking place at the Bury St Edmunds Chess Club, the most there has ever been.   40 players packed the room, with analysis boards also available in the bar area.

This was the last match at the Club for David Wood (pictured right), who is moving to live and work in Colchester.   David has been a mainstay of the Club for the past couple of years, running three teams and always willing to assist with setting up and packing away.   He enjoyed a brief period of celebrity last year when he was amongst a dozen or so nominations for ECF 'Player of the Year'.   Someone had noticed that his grade was the lowest 'A' grade in England; he ended up with as many votes as Alan Merry!

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This will be the last article for three weeks.   No more until 27 February!

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Seven Portieljes

This blog's most recent post about 'Top eBay Chess Items', The Kitten Theme, featured a painting by Gerard Portielje (Belgian, 1856-1929) and noted,

A search on 'chess Portielje' brings up two other works by the same artist.

Afterwards I noticed another painting and started to wonder how many different chess paintings there are by Portielje. Using the following image as a starting point...

Google image search on 'chess Portielje'

...I numbered the rows from top to bottom as 1 to 3 with the paintings from left to right in each row identified as A, B, etc.. The 'Kitten Theme' painting (first row, second from the left) is thereby identified as 1B.

That identification scheme reveals the following pairs of chess paintings: 1A & 1C are the same, 1D & 2B ditto (although certain details like the cabinet on the right of the painting are not identical), 1E & 1F ditto; plus two unpaired paintings: 2A and 2F.

2C and 3C show the same painting, but it's not a chess scene. The other Google images are either not by Portielje or not about chess.

That makes six different paintings on the first Google search page. I found a seventh on the second search page, which leads to valsur 274753.html - Valerij SURKOV, showing four Portielje images (among many others by other artists): 1A/1C, 1D, 2B, plus the new painting.

I wouldn't be surprised to find more.

***

Later: I found a second Valerij SURKOV collection of chess paintings: valsur 337769.html - Valerij SURKOV. This page also has four Portielje images -- 2A, *, 1E/1F, and 2F -- where '*' is a painting not identified above. Change the title of this post to 'Eight Portieljes'!

I also searched my collection of ~10.000 chess images (most of them from eBay) for Portielje. In addition to 'Kitten Theme' (1B), I found several variations of 1E/1F, the best of which had the accompanying text:-

The title is 'The Chess Players'. This print was issued by the Denver Post, December 7, 1902 (printed in the lower left corner). [...] This was printed by the American Colortype Company as a supplement to the Denver Post newspaper.

Another variation mentioned, 'Originally this print appeared as a supplement to the CHICAGO TRIBUNE on 2/2/1902'.

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Gibraltar Masters won by Nakamura

After the final round of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters, two players finished on 8/10: top seed Hikaru Nakamura from the USA and French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (usually referred to as 'MVL').

The two then had to take part in a play-off.   After four close-fought draws, Nakamura eventually prevailed in the fifth (Armageddon) game.   He wins the first prize of £20,000.   He won this event last year too.

Anna Muzychuk from Ukraine won the women’s award, scoring 7/10.

Justin Tan finished on 6 points, with a performance rating (2463) just 17 points above his current rating.   David Spence had an excellent tournament, gaining 36 rating points, taking his live rating to 2176.   In the first six rounds David scored three points against five GMs!   He finished on 4½ points.

The best English performance was by Gawain Jones, who finished =3rd on 7½ points.




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Gibraltar latest

With just one round to play, the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters is heading for a dramatic finale.   No fewer than eight players share the lead on 7/9, with a further nine players (including England's Gawain Jones) on 6½ points.

Suffolk players:   Justin Tan is on 5½ and David Spence has 3½ points.

The final round starts early tomorrow (Thursday) at 10.00 GMT, with live games from the top players available here.   The final round pairings can be viewed here.

It seems highly likely that there will be a tie for first place, in which case there will be a play-off in the afternoon.   The tie-break rules state:

"In the event of a tie for first place, there shall be a speed play-off.   If there are four or fewer players tied for first place, there will be a speed knock-out play-off for the first prize of £20,000.   If three players tie for first place, the player with the highest performance rating will be seeded directly into the Final of the Play-Off; the other two players will contest the Semi-Final.   If more than four players tie for first place, the four players with the highest performance ratings shall qualify for the play-off to decide the first prize."

Top seed Hikaru Nakamura is amongst the players on seven points, and must be favourite to win the huge first prize.




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February 1966 'On the Cover'

Fifty years ago, chess photo credits were more haphazard than they are today. I imagine the photo on the left was taken during the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles.

The issue of Chess Life had only 20 pages with surprisingly little content. Five of the pages showed only crosstables and game scores for non-U.S. tournaments.

Left: World Champion Petrosian
Right: 'WHAT AGAIN! (Photo by Robert Parent)'

Chess Life

Tigran Petrosian, who won the world chess championship by defeating Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963 by a score of 12.5-9.5, will defend his title against Boris Spassky in a 24-game match that will begin on April 11.

Chess Review

Robert J. Fischer stretched his record for winning the United States Championship to seven straight times at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York city, December 12 to 30, 1965. As this tournament, directed by E.T.McCormick, was also the U.S. Zonal tournament, Fischer, along with Robert Byrne and Samuel Reshevsky who tied for second place, qualified to compete in the Interzonal Tournament later this year...

On my zonal pages, World Chess Championship Zonals, I've adopted the practice of numbering the World Championship cycles. The events mentioned here would have been in cycles no.6 and no.7.

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Tata Masters round-up

After 13 hard-fought rounds the super-strong Tata Steel Masters tournament ended on Sunday with World Champion Magnus Carlsen winning by a clear point from the rest of the field.   His nearest challenger, Fabiano Caruana, surprisingly lost in the final round, when a win would have drawn him level with Carlsen.   This is the fifth time that Carlsen has won this tournament.

The final table can be seen here.

Michael Adams, the only English participant, had a disappointing event, winning only one of his games (and losing four).

In Carlsen's final game, he reached the following theoretically drawn position after 57 moves.   Carlsen was White against Diren Ling.   It's Black to play (57... Re2+):

Carlsen now spent the next 42 moves, trying to force an error.   It finished amusingly (see following position):

97. Rg3+   Kf1   98. Kf3   Rf2+   99. Bxf2   Stalemate!





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Instructional Videos : Caruana

The three previous videos in this series on the players in the forthcoming 2016 Candidates tournament (see the previous post Instructional Videos : Aronianand follow the links back) have all shown analysis from recent editions of the Corus/Tata Wijk aan Zee tournaments. The current video is from the 2016 Tata event that finished yesterday. GM Caruana finished tied for 2nd/3rd, one point behind GM Carlsen. In this clip Caruana discusses his game with host GM Seirawan.

Tata Steel Tournament 2016 ! Fabiano Caruana Post Game Analysis After Round 2 (22:05) • 'American GM Fabiano Caruana giving analysis of his game against World Champion Magnus Carlsen, Wijk Aan Zee 2016.'

Which do I prefer : the click of wooden pieces on a wooden demo board as in the Aronian discussion or the click of a mouse as in the Caruana discussion? It's hard to say.

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Suffolk Juniors play in Surrey

Nine Suffolk Juniors travelled to Yateley Manor, near Camberley, in Surrey for the South of England Junior Championships.   This event attracts some of the strongest juniors in the country, many of whom are seeking a 'norm' to qualify for the National Junior Squad.

The best individual result was by 9-year old Adam John, who scored 3½/5 in the Under 11 section, gaining a half-norm.   His brother Alan also achieved a half-norm in the Under 13 section, scoring 3/5, as did Tom Roy, with 3/5 in the Under 11s.

Other scores were:
Ralph Martin (u13) - 2½/5
Toby Martin (u9) - 3/6
Amy John (u9) - 3/6
Tia Martin (u8) - 2/6
Tania Roy (u7) - 1½/6 (and 1/6 in the u8s)

The results for Alex Sheerin (u14) are not currently available.




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