Okay, time for me to interrupt the melodrama over the word “melodrama” by posting a new blog entry!
For the first time since I started this blog in October, I went to the Santa Cruz chess club last night. I’ve been just a little bit too busy with things like blogging. 😎
A little history: Unlike San Francisco’s Mechanics Institute, the Santa Cruz chess club is not fortunate enough to have a permanent location. When I first moved to town, eleven years ago, it was the SCO chess club, named after and based at the company headquarters of the Santa Cruz Operation, a computer software manufacturer that no longer exists. We met in a classroom-type room that was located near a snack bar. The snack bar had a working soda fountain, so one of the advantages of meeting there was the chance to drink free Cokes! There were certain disadvantages, though. Because we met after business hours, the building was locked, so whenever anybody arrived they would have to knock and someone would have to get up from their chess game to let them in.
Eventually, around 2001, the company kicked us out because there were too many teen-aged kids in the club. As far as I know, the kids never did anything wrong, but the company was worried about liability in case, I don’t know, a kid hurt himself playing chess. It was pretty stupid, but in retrospect we wouldn’t have been able to stay at SCO much longer anyway. The dot-com boom collapsed in 2001, and as you can read in the Wikipedia entry that I linked to above, the company was bought out and the original company no longer exists.
So for a year or so we met in the German-American Center in Santa Cruz. This was arranged by Gerhard Ringel, who had connections there. We had to pay rent, though, so instead of being free the chess club was now $1 or $2 a week. However, most nights this didn’t cover the actual rent, and Gerhard paid the rest out of his own pocket. This was a wonderful gesture on his part, but obviously it couldn’t go on forever.
By the way, Gerhard is probably the closest thing to a famous person in our club. He is well-known in mathematics for his proof of the Heawood Conjecture, which tells you how many colors are needed to color any map on a non-spherical surface (e.g., a doughnut). Curiously, though he was a very accomplished mathematician, he was a rather average chessplayer. At an age of 82 years or so, he was a little too slow and cautious to compete with the club’s whizzes. But he was always a great gentleman. He doesn’t come any more, and I hope that he is still in good health.
Fortunately, around 2002 a new Borders bookstore opened in downtown Santa Cruz, and the club found a new home there. Amazingly, Borders seems to be willing to tolerate our presence every Thursday night at no charge, as long as we don’t take up too much space in the café. I guess we’re supposed to buy something while we’re there, but no one enforces this, and enough people buy a cup of coffee or tea voluntarily that the bookstore doesn’t complain. So for the time being we’re pretty stable. If any readers of this blog are ever in Santa Cruz, come to Borders around 6:30 on Thursday to play chess!
The format of the chess club, ironically, has never changed since the SCO days. We split up into quads (the lowest-rated quad may turn into a quintet or sextet) and play three 25-minute games a night.
I’m not the world’s best 25-minute player. Usually I play a couple of games that I’m pretty happy with, and then I come home and replay them on the computer and watch in horror as Fritz tears all my ideas to shreds. Basically, that’s what happened last night. I played an unsound piece sacrifice and drew against Todd McFarren, and then I played an unsound piece sacrifice and won against Jim Parker. Against Steve Sullivan I didn’t have to play an unsound piece sacrifice, because he played his usual Borg Defense (that’s the Grob reversed). This was probably the most interesting of my three games, because it shows that if you just stick to sensible development, good things will sometimes happen:
Dana Mackenzie – Steve Sullivan
1. e4 g5 2. d4 h6 3. Ne2 (I like this deployment, even though it wastes a tempo, because on g3 the knight will “tickle” two weak points in Black’s position, f5 and h5. Besides, Black has already wasted a tempo with … g5 and … h6, so White can afford to waste one.)
3. … d6 4. Ng3 a6 5. Be2 Nc6 6. O-O e5 7. c3 ed 8. cd Bg7 9. Be3 Nf6 10. Nc3 g4?! (A sensible person would castle here, but Steve always likes throwing forward his g- and h-pawns, and he rarely castles.)
11. f4 h5 12. e5 de 13. de Qxd1? 14. Raxd1 Ng8 15. Nd5 … (Up to now I had been sort of playing on autopilot, and so I was a little bit surprised to discover that I was just winning a pawn for free! As it turns out, I win even more than that because of a cute tactic… see below.)
15. … Rb8 16. Nxc7+ Kf8
Black thinks that he has limited the damage to the loss of a pawn, but in fact White can force the win of an exchange here. Do you see how? (Answer below.)
However, this wasn’t the end of the game. Many players would have resigned after White’s combination, but Steve has a hustler’s approach to chess — there’s no value in resigning because something strange can always happen. And this time, something strange almost did!
About 50 moves later we got to a position where I was totally winning, with a rook, knight and four pawns against Steve’s bishop and knight and no pawns. But I had only a minute and 9 seconds left. I made my move, and then Steve sat and thought. “Okay, maybe he’s finally going to resign,” I thought. He pondered a little bit longer. “What’s he thinking about?” I wondered. It just wasn’t like Steve to spend so long over his move when he’s trying to blitz me in time pressure. I looked over at the clock… and horrors! My clock was still ticking, and it was down to 18 seconds! Somehow I had missed the button after making my last move. Quickly I pressed the button, and Steve made his move, and fortunately the game was so completely won that I was able to checkmate him in less than 18 seconds (in fact, less than 10 seconds).
Whew! I’m so glad that I happened to look at the clock just when I did. I can only imagine what was going on in Steve’s mind as he watched my clock tick. “Just a few more seconds… just a few more seconds… !” But of course, he couldn’t move or breathe or say anything. In the end, he was undone by the fact that he’s a good speed chess player, so I knew something was fishy when he took so long over a meaningless move.
By the way, some of you might feel guilty about winning a game because your opponent missed the clock button. But I know for a fact that Steve would not feel the least bit guilty! As I said, he has a hustler’s mentality, and for him, a win is a win.
Solution to diagram. White does a neat little two-step with the bishop: 17. Bc5+ Nge7 18. Ba7! Black can’t take on a7 because of 19. Rd8 mate. The game actually continued 18. … Bh6 19. Bxb8 Nxb8 20. Rd8+ Kg7 21. Nxh5+ Kh7 22. Nf6+ Kg7 23. Rxh8 Kxh8 24. Nxg4, and White has won an exchange and three (!) pawns. A fitting punishment for Black’s lack of development and his overeager push of the g- and h-pawns!
