Tom Waits was lucky to get the draw from Salo Flohr in the Moscow tournament

Chess lecture from Matt Slomski next Wednesday

USCF National Master Matt Slomski will be lecturing at the Rochester Chess Center next Wednesday, January 24th in an event sponsored by the Community Chess Club of Rochester. Matt's lecture is on Initiative and will begin at 5:30 pm following pizza and other eats at 5:00 pm. The event is free for CCCR members and $5 for  non-members. I've copied the notice from the CCCR blog site below so you can have all the details.

This is the third lecture provided by CCCR to its members and the public. What a great job they are doing and this is a fantastic idea. The inaugural lecture from Lev Paciorkowski last November was very informative and a great success. Unfortunately I missed the lecture from Clif Kharroubi in December, but I understand it too was highly successful. It's so great to see these presentations.

 Special Event 

Lecture Series continues with Chess Master

Matt Slomski

Topic: Initiative

Sponsored by the Community Chess Club of Rochester

Date: January 24th, 2018 

Time: 5:00-6:30pm at the Rochester Chess Center

Free for CCCR members; $5 for non-members.  All are welcome!

5pm-5:30pm: Free pizza, cookies & apple cider for all who attend 

Matt Slomski's chess lecture

5:30-6:30pm: Lecture (Introduction, Presentation, Q&A, Closing notes)

6:30pm: Registration for CCCR G/80d5 games (optional, following lecture)

Note: The lecture will be video recorded. 

Matt Slomski, USCF Master.  Rating 2070.

This lecture will include Q&A to willing participants from Chess Master Matt Slomski.  

Here is how that will be accomplished: 

In this lecture, Matt will request that those interested in being asked questions by Matt fill out a short questionnaire with your name and chess rating.  During the lecture, Matt may call upon only those people that are willing to respond to questions.  Matt will tailor the questions to willing participants based on their chess rating (with questions being more challenging for higher rated participants). If the participant has no chess rating, then beginner, intermediate or expert can be noted on the questionnaire. Please note that everyone is welcome and participation in questions from the lecturer Matt Slomski is optional.  Thank you for your interest, and we hope to see you at the lecture.

Some endnotes on Bill Lombardy

William Lombardy (1937-2017) is remembered in several articles in this month's Chess Life magazine. I haven't read the entire issue but I especially enjoyed the G-rated account of the R-rated adjournment in Lombardy's game with Edmar Mednis at the 1978 US Championship in Pasadena.

I saw an inexpensive copy of Lombardy's Modern Chess Opening Traps at a local used book store, and I regret now not having scarfed it up.

This morning I was looking at some variations of the Sicilian defense and I came across the following Lombardy game in the database of my new Fritz 16 (Did I mention that I recently purchased Fritz 16 through the Rochester Chess Center?).

Lombardy-Langeweg,   1/2 - 1/2
OHRA-B Amsterdam1978
Sicilian Alapin


So what the heck is with Black's 13...Re8? Doesn't this completely drop the bishop on b7? There must be a transcription error but I can't figure out where it is. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Moving on to Fritz 16

 

This is my birthday present for last year - I just picked it up yesterday from the Rochester Chess Center (accept no substitutes). I haven't had time to play with it yet but hopefully I'll give it a good workout (or vise versa) over the weekend. I've upgraded from Fritz-12 which I bought through the RCC years ago (the latest games in its database  are from the end of 2009).

I've been using Stockfish 8-64 with my version 12, and it runs circles around the default Fritz engine (thanks to Mike Runnells for help with this). I imagine I'll end up doing the same. According to Mike (who has a number of engines) Stockfish 8 is almost as fast as Houdini 6, which in his experience is the fastest at the moment. Remember: Stockfish is free! Simply visit www.stockfishchess.org and start your download. Mike also sent me a link to a site benchmarking current engines - one of the posts I'm backed up on.

I'm really interested in how others use their engines and software. I've been using Fritz to put my games into a database (I have a small one for Rochester players as well - available to anyone who wants it) and analysis, opening development, tactical and game studies, etc.

After I break this out I'll tell you how I like it and how it compares with Fritz 12.

World Rapid and Blitz Championship in host country Saudi Arabia is over

If there's going to be an exclusion of players from certain nations, that should be the decision of FIDE - not the decision of the host country. I hope they don't ever again do this.

Happy Birthday, Evgenij Miroshnichenko

There are some people you don't even know but it's a joy to see their face.

 Photo by David Llada.