The 17th annual King's Island Open will take place at Kings Island Resort, near Cincinnati, November 14-16 or 15-16. The event will be 5 round Swiss played in 7 class sections. Total projected prize fund $25,000, minimum guaranteed prize $20,000. FREE analysis by GM Arthur Bisguier!

I will be playing at the Delaware Quick Chess Championship which will take place at Bear Library, Bear, DE September 20, 2008. The event is 5 rounds Swiss, with a time control 29 minutes per game (G29) for each player. Wish me luck!

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I played against FRITZ 10 with reduced strength of about 2000ELO. Two games I played as white were finished pretty quickly and machine won both of them fairly quickly. I was kind of surprised that 2000 ELO Fritz plays on master’s level. To check how good is “handicapped” 2000 Fritz 10 really is I set up a game Chessmaster 10^th  (2200) vs.  Fritz 10 (2000). And guess what, FRITZ dominated the game but later it did a mistake and following position occurred:

ChessMaster10 (2200) - FRITZ 10 (2026)

                           BLACK TO MOVE

The funny thing is that even though Fritz (black) is like 10 points up it is a dead draw since there is no way for black king to escape from white rook’s checks without capturing it. But if it does it’s a stalemate because white king has nowhere to go. I was shocked that Chessmaster tricked Fritz 10 this way; Fritz looked far more superior during the whole game.  The result: DRAW. After I watched that game I decided to play 1800 Fritz myself and won it with confidence. Here is the endgame position we had:

Yury Markushin (1601) - FRITZ 10 (1800)

                              white to move

I (white) queened first and after the queen exchange I was 2 pawns up and won easily.  I will play 1900 Fritz tomorrow.

Copyright by www.ben3w.com 

The tournament took place in the heart of Washington D.C. in the very nice (but expensive) Westing Hotel. It was a big tournament about 300 registered players, 5 Grandmasters (Sergey Kudrin, Sergey Erenburg, Alexander Stripunsky, Alexander Shabalov and Leonid Kritz ) and many more IMs and FMs.  I went to Washington with 4 other players, two of which were members of Central Delaware Chess Club (the club I belong to) and the other two players played for Milsbury Chess Club (Maryland). We arrived to Washington at around 4pm, while the first round starts at 7pm. Myself and Dean Miller played in U1700 section, Leon Tschantre played in U 1500, Clinton Young played in U1900 and Darrel West was brave enough to play in OPEN (!).

I had white in the first round and played with Paul Nago who has 1650. I won the game and was pretty satisfied with the result and with my game too. After the game we went to the analysis room with Dean, who showed me couple of good moves I could have made, but didn’t. He also showed me many better ways to win (or draw) for my opponent which were proved too be wrong after detailed analysis (at least some of them).

The second round starts at the 11 am next morning, so I watched a bit of Olympics and went to bed. In the morning we all met up at the restaurant right above the playing hall and Clinton showed a few interesting games he played before and was proud of.

In the second round I played with James Loo, as black. He surprised me in the opening but I did quiet okay. He’ve gotten some positional advantage in the middle game since my pieces were somewhat uncoordinated. But, after the exchanges took place and I reorganized my pieces on the board I felt that we are at least equal. After few more moves I hit James with a combination which literally depressed him and I won a good pawn for free. He did not give up and after another 5 moves I played a tarrible blunder loosing a minor piece. He won that game… I felt very upset about that. It’s very depressing to loose a won game.   

But, oh well, it is life. The next game is coming up and I have to play well.  On the next round something funny happened. I played as white and after about 45 minutes and 15 moves made I’m getting informed that I’m playing in  the wrong section, on the wrong board (I played in U2100 instead of my U1700 and did not even realize it). I went to find my board and find out that my clock was ticking all that time. I had 1:10 min for the 40 moves now. My opponent has full 2 hours. It was a 12 year old Indian kid, who played very well. The first question he asked me when I finally arrived: “Are you Yury Shulman? ”, joking. We played closed variation of Semi-Slav, I played rather quick and traded pieces ASAP. In the rook endgame he did a mistake and lost the game. Now I was 2 out of 3 with 2 more to go. I was happy, I managed to win even though so much behind on time. The whole game took me only 25 minutes.

            The next morning I had white pieces again. In five round Swiss somebody plays 3 games as white, but somebody - only 2. So I got lucky with 3 games as white. The opponent was very late and after 30 minutes I start thinking that if he’ll be “no-show” for one hour I win the game by forfeit. But that never happened. He came 35 minutes late. He played very confident chess and after only 22 moves I had a hopeless position. I had absolutely no good moves his bishops completely dominated my “bad” knights and a rook and his rook was coming to get me…  But that’s what makes chess the greatest game of all times. Even when there is seems to be no hope a chess player finds something… some extra resource, some good move or tactics and  hope is back and life is great again. It happened to me in this game against Gee Young. I found a nice way to sacrifice a material and if he accepts it, we’re at least equal or it even turns the table around. I won that game and now 3/4 with one game remaining.

The last game supposes to be the toughest it will decide who will get what. I played with Adip Bhargov, from India. I was black this time. I got very familiar position in the beginning of middle game but made a wrong decision and lost two pawns. Now I’m facing rook and pawn endgame being 2(!) pawns down. The chess is one single game where price of an error is so high. Whatever you do, does no matter how well you play in the endgame it is almost impossible to get even a draw.

I won one of his pawns but it wasn’t enough and he won the game and got 3 rd place. I got 5 th in U 1700, picked up 55 rating points and became a class B player. Next goal is to break 1800.

Clinton Young got second in U1900 with 4 points.  GMs Sergey Erenburg and Alexander Stripunsky won 40^th Atlantic Open with 4.5/5.

Yury Markushin.

Official Website: www.chesstour.com

This was my last game in the Delaware Grand Prix Tournament Event #4 Round #5. The event was G29, which means 29 minutes per game for each player. Take a look at the game and I hope it will help you to avoid mistakes I have made. How to get the most from this game? First, go over the game moves by yourself and only after that read my comments going over the game 2nd time. Enjoy and learn! 

First time I heard about chessboxing I thought it was another April joke. I just could not imagine the royal game of chess combined with a brutal boxing in a single “game”. It seemed almost like playing tennis with rocks or sprinting underwater. Later, I figured that April fool’s day is gone long time ago, but chessboxing is a reality.  Anyways, chessboxing is a combination of chess (game of brains) with boxing (game, no, sport of punches). According to WCBO (World Chess Boxing Organization) the chessboxing match starts with a 4 minute long round of chess, alternating with 3 minute boxing rounds. There are maximum of 11 rounds possible: 6 chess rounds and 5 boxing rounds. Checkmate, lose on time in chess or knockout in boxing means loosing. WCBO writes that to be eligible for a professional chessboxing an athlete must be in excellent physical condition, be under 35 years old and most importantly to have at least 1800 ELO. It means that professional boxer needs years of training to achieve the chess standard. However, I think, an average chess player needs a lot more time to become a good boxer. There are about 60% chessboxers came from the boxing world and only about 40% from traditional chess. I would be feeling very nervous if  knew that after 4 minutes of chess I would have to face an angered pro boxer who just fell into that cheap “forking trap” and lost a piece. Most likely I will not be able to continue that won chess game after those 3 minutes of boxing … This sport is more suitable for boxers, not for the chess players.

This year was very important for chessboxing since World Chessboxing Championship took place in Berlin, Germany about a week ago. Nineteen year old mathematics student from Krasnoyarsk University, Russia Nikolai Sazhin defeated the current champion Frank Stoldt of Germany and became the second Chessboxing World Champion.  

Nikolai has 1911 Elo, while Frank has 1960 Elo, but only 25 boxing fights.

Frank  Stoldt commented after the game: "I took a lot of body blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration, That's why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for my king." (chessbase) 

More about chessboxing:

http://site.wcbo.org/content/index_en.html

http://www.chessbase.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing