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Meanwhile, I puzzled over this for a long time.
White to move and DRAW. Not easy, at least for me.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
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Yesterday in St. Louis in Round 7 of the Sinquefield Cup, Fabiano Caruana, who is having a great year, defeated my guy Wesley So. It was hard to watch, frankly. So, with black, tried a Nimzo-Indian Defense but got the move order wrong and Caruana struck hard. Rough. With this win, Fabi broke through to 2800.3. Wesley dropped to 2757.1 which is still ahead of Leinier Dominguez Perez and Alireza Firouza. Over the board hostilities continue today. Ratings and circuit points count for a place in the Candidates tournament according to an arcane formula which I don’t fully grasp. For my part, yesterday I won my OTB games. One of them was against a 10 year old girl whose family were having lunch at the place where we were playing. She saw us and with great excitement asked if she could play. I had just finished destroying my fully grown Turkish opponent with black in a Berlin against the Spanish Game in 25 moves, so I was free. You never know with kids, so I played normally. It was evident from the start that she had learned basic opening ideas: develop and castle. Pretty soon, however, she was out of ideas, and I started talking her through our moves. I let her take a few real blunders back and try again. She was clearly quite bright and sponged it up, even after hanging mate in one. It was nice to see her manifest enjoyment in playing.
Every home, especially with kids, should have a chess set or two. This is a life-long gift and childhood is exactly the right time to get into chess. Chess and LATIN. Chess and Latin and CATECHISM.
Speaking of catechism, things are terribly confused and confusing in the Church right now. Our best defenses are prayer, mortifications for reparation, good works and review of the content of our faith. This new resource is helpful:
Bp. Athanasius Schneider’s catechism entitled Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith published by Sophia Institute Press.
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I guess it’s time for my children and I to learn the game of chess. Any advice on a good board?
For children that is, plastic?
Here are some ideas.
For an inexpensive, simple knock-around set try this. Right now $14.50:
HERE
It doesn’t have “storage” for the pieces. The board is vinyl and rolls up. Set weight 16.0 oz.
Another one is similar, right now $27.00. You can choose the colors of the boards and pieces. (I like the standard green (or blue)/beige board and cream/black. But hey! Go crazy!) The main difference is that the pieces are heavier, which feel nice to the hand when you move. Don’t brush that off as a factor! It makes a difference. Set weight 2.25lbs. With this link you can also add things like storage bags for the piece, fancier carrying bag in all sort of colors.
HERE
Overall, this would be my choice, because you can customize and the pieces are heavier.
Some combos at Chess House offer a “mouse pad” style roll up board. I have one of those but I am not especially fond of it. I’m sort of old fashioned. They look great, but they are a bit bulkier for my carrying bag.
Those sets have 2.25″ square and are 20×20.
This next one is smaller and could fit on a “student desk” or small table. One guy’s review said he uses this on “to play at the bar at my local”. It’s handy for travel. I had a two of them in Rome for working out variations and I might get a couple more. It’s only $8.40! The board has 1.5″ squares and is 14×14. The pieces are very light, but they have felt bases, so they’re not just open.
HERE
Lastly, a great travel set. Magnetic. It all goes into a really compact pouch. I have it in my backpack when I travel. The board is 9″ with 1″ squares and the total weight is 13.4 oz. Terrific.
HERE
I’ve thought about doing some surgery in the evenings and, minutatim, swapping out the magnets for stronger magnets. These work, but it would be better if they were a little stronger. I would then also need a mat finished paper for the bases. Interesting project.
Finally, a link to all their sets under $50. HERE
I had a little correspondence with the folks at Chess House. They were really nice.
There is one candidates spots given based on total points accumulated from several tournaments across the year (the “Grand Chess Tour”; the Sinqfield Cup is the final tournament in the Tour). Anish entered the Sinqfield Cup with more Tour points than Wesley.
Wesley did well in the Sinqfield Cup and Anish did poorly, so Anish is not going to get points from this tournament, but he can retain his lead over Wesley if Wesley does not do too good. Nepo and Fabi are Anish’s final two opponents and are at the head of the pack with Wesley, so by helping them do well (by losing) he’d make it harder for Wesley to finish at the top, and the points Wesley earns from the Sinqfield Cup would not be enough to overtake Anish’s lead coming into the tournament.
Another interesting dynamic is a Candidate’s Tournament spot based on year-end ELO rating also up for grabs. Wesley leads Leinier Dominguez by 0.4 points right now (i.e. the margin of a draw against a lower rated opponent – razor thin). If Wesley does not get the tour points spot then he could get the ELO spot. If Leinier surpasses Wesley, Leinier would have to play another tournament to satisfy a sub-requirement of the ELO spot that you play 4 classical tournaments in the year. The only remaining tournaments this year would have a lower-rated field (2650’s vs. 2750s), and so Leinier would need to win a lot of games (draws would drag his rating down). That is a risky strategy… we saw Magnus lose significant ELO in a similar situation in the Qatar Masters (he was paired with significantly lower-rated opponents because he lost the early round “wristwatch” game). So Leinier could end Sinqfield ahead of Wesley, and then our guy Wesley would be praying Leinier does poorly in the tournament he squeezes in to meet the 4 tournament rule.
Alireza is 6 points behind Leinier/Wesley, so it is difficult but not impossible for him to try to mount a final push for the rating’s spot too, especially if the final two rounds of Sinqfield see Leiner/Wesley losing and Alireza winning (a stark change from the tournament so far, but again not impossible).
Awesome! Thank you, Father.
Just in time for Christmas. My boys were watching other boys play chess after Mass just recently. Now they want to play. Good wholesome fun.
Trick is to use your own pawn to gain time to catch black’s
a6 is the best first move, this forces the black king to c6 or allow white a queen. The king moving over allows e7 and a pawn run down. Moving white’s pawn forward once more buys the time needed but can be done whenevs.
Matthew111 says: trick is
Show us the moves!
1. a6 Kc6 else white pawn advances to queen
2.Ke7 h6
3.Kf6 h5
4. Kg5 h4
5.Kxh4 Kb6
6. a7 Kxa7 draw
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