In my last two posts I wrote about two of my “great escapes” in the 2013 CalChess Labor Day Championship. (The first was a game I won against Myagmarsuren after blundering or sacrificing the exchange; in the second I drewm against Rand after being 3 pawns down on the board, and 10 pawns down in Rybka’s analysis.)
Today I’ll show you the third in my trifecta of miracle saves. This came in round five. I was Black against Igor Traub [who won the expert section — see below], and we reached the position below.
Position after 64. Ke3. Black to move.
FEN: 8/4k3/1p1n2p1/p1pBp1P1/P1P1P3/2PPK3/8/8 b – – 0 64
What’s your evaluation of this position? Should it be a win for White or a draw?
I had a practical problem here, which was that I was down to less than 3 minutes on my clock. (Traub still had 30 minutes or so.) I could feel the game slipping away from me, and I squandered two of my remaining three minutes before deciding on one last desperate gamble: 64. … Nf7!
I wish I could say that I calculated this all the way to the end, but to be honest I played it mostly on instinct. I just thought that in lines like 64. … Ne8 I would die a slow, agonizing death. By contrast, 64. … Nf7 is very forcing — White will have to trade his bishop for the knight or otherwise sacrifice the g-pawn, which would be a huge risk. My opponent didn’t think very long on his move, because he was sure that all possible K+P endgames would be won for White.
Well, a few moves ago that was true, before White pushed his pawn to g5, but it’s not true any more! In fact, Black draws by force after 65. Bxf7 Kxf7 66. d4 Ke6 67. de (After 67. d5? White has a beautiful protected passed pawn — but Black has a fortress!) Kxe5 68. Kf3 Kd6! (Only this move — not 68. … Ke6 69. Kf4 Kd6 70. e5+ Ke6 71. Ke4, and White gains the opposition.)
69. Kf4 Ke6 70. e5 Kd7 71. Kf3 Ke7!
Position after 71. ... Ke7. Draw.
FEN: 8/4k3/1p4p1/p1p1P1P1/P1P5/2P2K2/8/8 w – – 0 72
This is a good position for your mental database. Amazingly, White cannot make progress. Black will simply shuffle his king back and forth on d7 and e7 until one of two things happens. (1) If White plays Ke4, Black immediately plays … Ke6 and White’s king is forced back. (2) If White plays e6, then Black of course plays … Kxe6. Even though White can then gain the opposition with Ke4, it doesn’t do him any good, because he has no way to penetrate Black’s fortress. The static position of the pawns on g5 and g6 is a real bummer for him.
When we agreed to the draw, there were 28 seconds left on my clock! It was the second game in this tournament where the 5-second time delay saved me. The reason is that in a no-brainer position like this, I can shuffle my king on d7 and e7 all day long. As long as I take less than 5 seconds to move, my clock will never drop below 28 seconds.
As predicted in my last post, Bay Area Chess has posted the results of the tournament very promptly. In the expert section, Traub tied with Joshua Cao for first place with 5-1 scores, and Traub won the trophy on tiebreak. His near-miss against me cost him $200, because if he had won our game he would have had undisputed first with 5½ points.
In the master section, International Masters Ricardo De Guzman and Wen Liang Li tied for first with 5-1 scores, with De Guzman taking the state championship on tiebreak. But I think that the real story of the master section — really, the story of the tournament — was the amazing performance by Michael Wang.
This baby-faced 11-year-old looks as if he must have wandered into the wrong section by mistake. Surely he meant to play in the scholastic tournament for under-1200 players down the hall? But take a look at his results. Round one, beat Rayan Taghizadeh (another young prodigy). Round two, beat National Master Colin Chow. Round three, beat International Master Emory Tate to move into clear first place at 3-0. Round four, he finally lost a game to Wen Liang Li. But he wasn’t done! Round five, beat International Master Vladimir Mezentsev. That’s two IM scalps and one NM scalp in one tournament — for an expert! Finally in the last round, Wang lost to De Guzman. Final result, 4-2, with the only losses coming to the two tournament winners.
Conclusion: I think Wang walked into the right section after all. With apologies to Traub and Cao, they weren’t actually the top experts at this weekend’s tournament. Michael Wang was. But he won’t be an expert any more, because his rating is going up from 2163 to 2228 (unofficially).
True story: In round five, two 16-year-old players, Joshua Cao and Jerome Sun, were playing on the top board of the expert section, right next to Igor Traub and me, who were on board two. Cao asked Sun, “How old are you?” Sun said, “16 years old.” Cao: “So am I!” Sun: “Dude, hardly anyone our age is left playing chess.”
At this point I cleared my throat and pointed out that a couple of over-16 types were sitting on the next board. (I’m 54 and Traub is, I would guess, in his upper 50’s.)
Still, Sun’s comment is interesting. The scholastic tournaments have dozens or hundreds of players, almost all of them under 12 or 13 years old. The number of them who are still playing at age 16 is really small — basically, the ones who have broken free of the pack and gotten their ratings into expert or master range. Where are the lifelong amateurs, who once were the backbone of the membership of the U.S. Chess Federation? I think that chess’s business model has changed. We’re now a sport for kids under 13 and experts over 14.
At least that’s the way it looks in the San Francisco Bay area. Maybe your part of the country is different.
