Last Friday a surprise message showed up on my Facebook feed. It began, “Hi Dana! I hope everything is going well. I just moved to Santa Cruz…” and it was signed Steven Zierk. (Well, you don’t really sign anything on Facebook… it signs the message for you.)
This was a total bolt from the blue for me. As you know, I just wrote a post a couple weeks ago (The GM Factory Continues) about Zierk achieving his third GM norm. At that time, I had absolutely no idea that he was moving to Santa Cruz — in fact, I had not heard anything from Steven for several years. My first thought was, “This is fantastic! We’ll have our first grandmaster since Jim Tarjan moved away.” My second thought was, “Why is Steven moving to Santa Cruz, where there is absolutely no one at his level?”
Short history of Santa Cruz chess: When I moved here, there was an active chess club with experts and masters, and it seemed as if there were lots of “hidden masters” around who didn’t play in tournaments any more but might still show up to play at the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company or at the chess club now and then. The most hidden of the hidden masters was GM Jim Tarjan, who worked at the library and seemed determined to remain completely under the radar. He retired from the library and re-emerged into tournament chess in 2014, and made a big splash last year with a victory over former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. Unfortunately, Tarjan moved to Washington state not long after his retirement, and I have never had a chance to meet him.
Anyway, in the 20-plus years I’ve been living here, all of the “hidden masters” have seemed to drift away, the chess club has long since fallen by the wayside, and the chess scene has become almost moribund. I don’t know whether Steven’s arrival will change that, but I certainly hope so!
As for Steven, he went to school at MIT and graduated in 2015. In the past year he has been pursuing his GM norm vigorously, playing in “8 to 10” norm-qualifying tournaments, he told me, including the one in North Carolina where he finally bagged his elusive third norm. Because he has already met the rating requirement, actually achieving the GM title should be a formality; there is a FIDE executive council meeting this month that should make it official.
Steven is thinking about graduate school in mathematics, but that is at least a year away and in the meantime he wants to see how far his chess career takes him. He is definitely looking for teaching/coaching opportunities, so if I have any readers in the Bay Area who might be interested in a grandmaster coach, please let me know.
Somewhat to my surprise, Steven was happy to play some speed chess. I’m a terrible 5-minute player and did not offer any real opposition; I think we played about twelve games and he won all of them. I was very impressed by his tactical sharpness. Here is a really nice, though not completely sound, example.
Black to move.
FEN: 2kr3r/ppbn1ppp/2p5/4P2q/3P2bP/1B1Q1NB1/PPP3P1/R5KR b – – 0 1
I’m White, and the opening was a King’s Gambit. Steven has taken a really interesting approach to the opening, returning the gambit pawn and another pawn to boot, so that Black is now a pawn down. But he has a lot of compensation. My center pawns at d4 and e5 are shaky and static targets. My king is, as always in the King’s Gambit, somewhat exposed. My knight is a little bit weak. My rooks are not connected.
The most natural move for Black here is 1. … f6, but I think that Steven did not like the looks of that because of 2. ef Bxb3 3. fg. I’ve looked at this with Rybka and the tactics are somewhat murky. Both sides have chances. Instead, Steven chooses a line that keeps the initiative firmly with Black.
1. … Nc5! 2. Qe3 …
I thought, “So what’s the big deal? He trades his knight for my bishop and I get pressure on the open a-file. That seems like a good deal for me.”
One of my big weaknesses in speed chess is that I don’t think hard enough about the in-between moves. Steven now rocks me with two powerful zwischenzugs.
2. … Bxf3! 3. ef Rxd4?! …
I absolutely did not see this coming, and even after Steven played it I didn’t see what the point was. I don’t know why I was so blind, but let me spell it out: both of his last two moves were aimed at removing all the obstacles on the a7-g1 diagonal. Once everything is gone, the bishop is going to come to b6 and win my queen.
Ironically, 3. … Rxd4 is probably not the best move objectively. But I think there is so much to learn from this combination about a GM’s thinking process. You and I look at the position and see a bunch of pieces stacked up on that diagonal — knight at c5, pawn at d4, queen at e3. The GM looks at the position and sees dynamic potential, sees all the obstacles being swept away in three moves.
If this were a tournament game, 3. … Rxd4 would probably be a little bit too romantic. Black gets a simple and safe advantage with 3. … Nxb3 4. ab Qg6 5. Kg2 (5. Qf2? Rxd4 is a stronger version of the game) 5. … Qxc2+ 6. Qf2 Qxf2+ 7. Bxf2 Bb6. Material is even but Black has all the pressure.
However, for a speed chess game 3. … Rxd4 is just overwhelming.
4. Qxd4 Nxb3 5. ab …
If 5. Qg4+ Qxg4 6. fg Nxa1 7. c3 Rd8 Black has no trouble getting the knight out.
5. … Bb6 6. Qxb6 ab 7. Ra8+ Kd7 8. Rxh8 …
Position after 8. … Qxf3. White to move.
FEN: 7R/1p1k1ppp/1pp5/4P3/7P/1P3qB1/1PP5/6KR w – – 0 8
I imagine that on move 1, Steven got to this position in his analysis and thought “Black is winning.” Which is pretty darned impressive, thinking eight moves ahead in 5-minute chess.
For practical play between humans, especially in a 5-minute game, I think that the evaluation “Black is winning” is pretty accurate. White’s pieces are very disorganized and his queenside pawns are ripe for the picking. I certainly felt as if my position was doomed. However, for a computer it’s quite a different story; Rybka continues to insist that White has a small advantage right up until the end of the game. If White can somehow coordinate the two rooks, then his advantage in material might force Black to seek refuge in a perpetual check. For example, Rybka gives 9. Kh2 f5! (Not 9. … Qe2+ 10. Kh3 Qxc2? 11. Rf1! and the rooks will begin to coordinate.) 10. ef Qe2+ 11. Kh3 Qe6+ as a more or less instant draw.
Instead the game finished 9. Bf2 Qg4+ 10. Kf1 Qd1+ 11. Kg2 Qxc2 12. Re1 c5 13. Rb8 Qxb3 14. Rxb7+ Ke6 and White ran out of time. Ironically, according to Rybka, after 15. Kg1 White is still a half-pawn ahead. Even so, I would rather play Black.
A fun game! I look forward to more.
For readers who might be wondering about how USCF National Master Evan Sandberg is doing in the World Series of Poker, he is still very much alive. It looks as if he had a great run on Day 4, building his stack up to 1,106,000 chips, which puts him in 142-nd place (out of 310 remaining players). However, even though he has done fabulously well so far, he is just barely above the median, and the current chip leaders have more than 5 million chips. What a hell of a game poker is, where you can have practically the best day of your life and still just barely keep up with your opposition.
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