With the book taking up most of my energy lately, my page has been collecting digital dust. But, that will change from now on. First out: a brilliancy prize, since – during the last four years (or so) – I have been asked to judge the brilliancy prize at the Guernsey Chess Festival. In 2013 the prize was won by Jude Lenier and then, last year, it was won by Jude Lenier once more. I believe I did not have much of a choice and hereby present you with the evidence:
A real party game.
My Danish Team Brönshöj won both matches this last weekend and is leading XtraCon ligaen, the Danish first division. In our fifth round encounter with Nordkalotten I was lucky enough to get in my preparation against Jonny Hector:
A lot has happened since I last posted something. The reason – as previously stated – is that I have had a period of intense writing on my coming book “the Modern Tiger” (basically a huge update on my first book “Tiger’s Modern”). There is not a line in the book that I have not been over twice and I am very happy to have the end of it in sight. This weekend I played in a local tournament, Malmö Open, and after blundering a rook in round 4 I had to win the last three games in order to have a chance to share the first place. After two wins I was paired with the Black pieces against Bengt Lindberg in the last round. For those of you who are not Swedes; Bengt Lindberg is a Swedish IM who can not be taken lightly. I have huge respect for him. When he is in good shape he can win against anyone. And not just win. He wins on pure strength and does not rely on blunders or passive openings that make the higher rated player self-destruct. I have a miserable statistic against him with Black and with only an hour to prepare I asked myself: “With which opening will I stand most of a chance to win”? Well, if it was not obvious before how I usually answer that question, it is now official; the Modern…
It has been almost three weeks since I last posted and it is mostly due to the fact that I had to prioritize writing other things. I will try to post once from Guernsey, but otherwise it will be far between the entries up until mid December, when I will have more time again. From a chess point of view I had a horrible tournament in Västerås. I arrived in quite a pessimistic mood, since I had spent all my time preparing for the new edition of Tiger’s Modern and had no clue what to play with White. However, after blundering a pawn on f7 in round 4 and surviving that, I kind of felt that things were going my way. On the Saturday I played a decent game against Daniel Semcesen that I failed to win in a most horrible manner. (I was planning to post this game, but then decided against it.) Then I won against upcoming Swedish talent Jonathan Westerberg. (I was planning to post this game, but then I decided against it.) By the time this game finished I was starting to feel quite ill and when I woke up on Sunday morning my head felt like a pot of porridge. In this state I offered a draw after ten moves in order to save my energy for the last round. I did not plan to post this game. In the last game I was half a point after my opponent and decided to go “all in” and went down in flames against the tournament winner Normunds Miezis. (I was considering to post this game too, but eventually decided against it.) The upside of the tournament was the tournament itself. The director, André Nilsson, has an ambitious outlook on the arrangement and chess in general and the staff made everything run smoothly. I am looking forward to next year’s edition. So, what to post? In the end I decided to comment on a game that caught my eye during Manhem’s Chess Week and make all those who play the Giucio Piano happy, since it is a game where the pawns are exchanged on the d-file and White trades a knight for Black’s white-squared bishop. How to evaluate such a position?
Guernsey Chess Festival starts on Sunday.