The weekend is here and it means new diagram for you to be solved!

White to move and draw:

Sometimes we meet rare variants on boards. Like in the case of Ruy Lopez 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 and now 6.Qe2 instead of usual Re1. What is the idea behind the white’s move and should black afraid of it? Or does black even have any weapon?

The move 6.Qe2 has this idea: the queen protects the pawn on e4 and the rook is going to d-column. The dark side of this plan is that it costs one tempi and white can miss it in the future.

The black’s usual reply is 6…. b5 7.Bb3 and now there is possibility to choose from two moves: 7…. 0-0 or 7…. d6. Today I would like to show you nice “Marshall-like” variant which appear on the board in the of the black’s rochade.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Qe2 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.c3 d5!?

If white accepts the sacrifice of the pawn, he must be prepared to defend his position. Like in usual Marshall attack. Let’s look at several short variants.

Side variant 10.h3

Weaker is 9…. Nxd5

I am going to “organize” thematics tournament of some chess engines to see the possible continuations in this variant and I will publish here the games a few days later.

Freechess.org (also known as Free Internet Chess Server – FICS) was the first place, where I started to play chess online seriously. Before that time I played on some servers, but Freechess.org gave me the real feeling of educated chess community for the very first time.

At these days FICS has more than 300000 registered users and this huge number makes it one of the largest internet chess servers where you can play chess over the internet for free.

Functions on FICS are quite expected from chess server. You can play single games with any time limit, you can play tournament (I remember one where I even took some prize), you can attend chess lessons or chat with other users. Of course, games could be rated or unrated – depending on your choice during setup the game.

There is also a choice of different chess rules and you can play games in suicide chess, bughouse etc.

To be able to play chess on FICS you need a client. Yes, playing through browser is not possible. Or do you know about any plugin to Firefox for example? I am using WinBoard client. The control of your activities on FICS through WinBoard is a bit user unfriendly – it is in “unix mode”, so you have to write your commands on classic command line. Maybe there are better clients for FICS from this perspective, but you know – old habit is old habit.

When I have time, I usually try to participate in blitz tournaments (5 minutes per game) on Saturday and Monday. My nick is nyxcia and I would be happy to meet you on FICS.

A few days ago (actually it was the second post on this blog) I reffered to the chess tournamtent in Spanish city La Pobla de Lillet.

The tournament has passed and it is time to publish its winners and congratulate them.

7.5 of 9. This is the score which was needed to take (or better said to share) first place in La Pobla de Lillet. FM Martinez Duany Lelys Stanley (Cuba) and GM Cuartas Jaime Alexander (Colombia) reached this amount, but due to better Bucholz the first place belongs to Cubanian player. The “bronze medal” stays in Spain thanks to IM Granero Roca Antonio.

In my invitation to the tournament I noted that it is a good tournament even for average players. The first “ELO under 2000″ player was Garcia Castellote Daniel (Spain) with 5.5 points who took 24th place of 82 participants.

See the complete results here.

You can watch one of the wins of the tournament winner below. The game was player in 6th round. I haven’t see too much games, where black develops his bishop that way, which is a bit extraordinary.

One of my favorite online chess shops New In Chess is just running 50% sale on chess books.

You can chose from 23 publications like Lasker’s Manual of Chess, The Complete Book of Chess Strategy, Tal – Botvinnik 1960, New In Chess 2006 Complete among others.

The sale will end up August 23th, 2009.