Last Sunday my chess club organized Xmas blitz tournament and I thought it was a good idea to close my chess year by attending this event.

The time limit was 2×10 moves, 11 round. There were 52 players attending the tournament and my starting rank was 31. It was more or less funny tournament for me, I wanted to test some variants during it, so I didn’t want to be to pushy regarding my result. But still – I always want to be better then my starting rank at the end of any tournament.

In the first round (opponent’s ELO 2158) I blundered badly after some incident in the tournament room, which I was listening to instead of thinking about my moves.

2nd round. I played against one of the weakest players in the tournament (ELO 1321) and I created better position in the game. My opponent had a worse time and finally he lost the game because of fallen flag.

3rd round. Another strong opponent (ELO 2040) and one of strangers in the tournament. I was a quite better against him, grabbed a pawn, but I lost it later. We agreed on a draw both having few seconds on clocks.

4th round. One of known opponents, we play a lot of tournaments together (ELO 1846). He has active score with me and also this game finished better for him. I lost a piece and resigned then.

5th round. This was probably my best game in the tournament. My opponent (ELO 1447) played a variant, which I studied a lot. So I knew what is unpleasant and I played it. I gained huge positional advantage in the middle game and I won the game after all.

6th round. I met this opponent after a few years (ELO 1929). I won our game after nice sacriface a few years ago (the game was very important at that time as we both went to win a tournament) and I thought I could have some chances again. And indeed! My opponent lost a piece, but I was very bad on time. So we agreed on a draw and I must say it was very nice of my opponent, because he could easily won because of my bad time.

7th round. Again one of the old and known opponents (ELO 1553). Our last game he opened 1.b4 and won. Guess what? He did it again! But this time I managed the game better and one point went to my pocket.

8th round. I am back on the top 10 tables. But was terrible defeated. I lost my queen almost in the opening phase, so I resigned against my opponent (ELO 2022).

9th round. It was a quite easy game, my opponent (ELO 1418) fell in known trap (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Nxd4 8.Nxd4 Qxd4 9.Bb5+).

10th round. We are going to the final. My opponent had ELO 2015 and he won instead I was a pawn up during the game. But then my position went worse and also my time was bad. I lost the game.

11th and the final round. My team-mate (ELO 1807) was my last opponent in the tournament. I wanted to play something romantic so I chose King’s gambit. My opponent mixed several variants and play it very passively. So I gained nice attacking position and decided the game very quickly.

I grabbed 6 points out of 11 rounds which meant 19th place for me. Very nice place, which I did’t hope for before the tournament! I can call it “a success”, I think. I was even #3 of my club as there were a lot of players from many different chess clubs. My performance was 1822 (my ELO is 1735).

This Xmas blitz tournament was my last tournament of this year. Was it a good chess year for me or not? I am going to summarize my chess year in a few days in a special post.

Last week started IECG Cup 2009. I take a part in this event as each year. Together with another almost 600 players!

The Cup is divided into several stages, preliminary groups can take 13 months of play. Then there are further stages and after approximately 6 years the winner is known. Quite long period, right? But it the base of email/correspondence chess. It takes ages to win something.

I am the weakest player in my group by far, so I don’t expect any great result. It is the same each year. I will try to learn something from the stronger players and try some new openings, which I would like to add to my usual repertoire. I think it is a good opportunity to test them as I cannot lose anything in this tournament.

When I am writing this posts, I just realized you don’t probably know the IECG server. I will intriduce it soon as another place, where to play chess online. Stay tuned!

If you follow me on Twitter you may remember I attented the first blitz tournament of new season on Friday. I have to admit it could be my first blitz tournament ever as I don’t remember if (and when) I have attended blitz tournament before. But I was looking forward to this tournament also because of the fact it was first occasion to play competetive chess after more than one month.

It was quite strong tournament. The average ELO of the best 10 players was 2091, my ELO is 1718 and my start rank was #15. At first four rounds I gathered one point, when I lost one game on time and another one in time pressure. This resulted in ‘bye’ in the round #5.

Second half of the tournament went better for me.In the round #6 I won quite easy game, then I lost another one against a fellow from my club. The penultimate round brought the best game for me – I am going to show it to you below. And the last game – I overlooked mate in two in much better position and I lost the game.

If I would have won the last game I would have finished on very nice 8th place. But any “if” is not counted. The last lost game resulted in my 13th place of 21 with 4 points from 9 rounds.

From the point of view how strong the tournament was, it is nice place. On the other side, I wanted to grab half point more. So I rate this tournament as an average one for me.

And now is the place for the game mentioned above. I had black pieces and I decided to play for win desperately. Here is the critical position of the game and black is to move. Would you find his move?

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.

The biggest chess festival in the Czech Republic is Czech Open. Each July many players from many countries go to Pardubice and they spend there 2.5 weeks full of chess and other activities. During this festival the European Amateurs Championship in active chess is organized and I played in the category with ELO < 1800.

My final result was nothing special - 5.5 out of 9 meant 27th place out of 95 players. My starting rank was 31, so I can hardly call it "success".

I played some good games, also some easy games (mostly against unexperienced young players) and I am going to show you a part of one later.

What I like on Czech Open is the atmosphere. This year it was my third Czech Open where I attend and I am sure I will go again next year(s). It is a great feeling when you are in the big hall playing with hundreds of other chess lovers. Of course, you can take into consideration also the competitive part of the festival - no one wants to be the last one in the final table. Plus it is the European Championship, don't forget about it! And frankly, for players of our strength it is the easiest way how to grab the title of European Champion.

And it is time for the promised sample of my game. It is the game from 3rd round. My opponent was a weaker player, so he tried to oversimplify the game from the beginning and he probably hoped in draw with pure kings on the board. Of course, it was not the way I would like! At the position you can see below black will play 17.... b5 closing his bishop totally. It didn't take too much time to decide to play "against" this really bad bishop.

[Event "European Amateurs Championship in active chess under ELO 1800"]
[Date "2009.07.22"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Slavik, Petr"]
[Black "Halousek"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Setup "1"]
[JsCom "startply 0"]
[FEN "r4rk1/p4pp1/bp2p1np/q2pP3/3P4/2NQ1N2/PP3PPP/R2R2K1 w - - 0 17"]
18.Qd2 b5 19.a3 Qc7 20.b4 Qb6 21.Ne1
Bb7 22.Qe3 Bc6 23.Nd3 a6 24.Nc5 a5 25.Qd3 axb4 26.axb4 Rxa1 27.Rxa1 Ra8
28.Rxa8+ Bxa8 29.Qxb5 Qxb5 30.Nxb5 Bc6 31.Na7 Be8 32.b5 Bxb5 33.Nxb5 Nf4
34.Kf1 Kf8 35.g3 Nh3 36.f4 Ke7 37.Kg2 1-0