White to play and mate!

Double points if you're clever enough to tell me who the players were. If noone replies I will post the player identities tomorrow.

Boris Spassky vs Efim Geller 1968 Sukhumi

This is what I mean by being inspired. This might not be releveant in terms of what openings I play, but it's a great game to play through.

Looking for Inspiration

We've all seen those lists 'Who's the greatest player of all time' but what does that really mean. Opinions are often reached by varying parameters and often include players that have never been World Champion. Of course incumbant World Champions have often avoided playing the best players of their time, something which continues to this present day, so that increases the problem of defining the 'greatest'.

What I want to suggest here, is that rather than looking for the greatest players, that what we should look for is the most inspirational. In that case would any list be different to those pertaining to the greatest.

I study a fair few games during a weeks online activity, nowhere near enough to greatly improve, but what I need to do is study games that keep me inspired and in a busy family life keep me interested in the game of chess. So finding the right players to study is quite important for me to keep this passion for the game alive.

Yet again there are a number of quick draws at the British Champs (1 in 7 moves another in 9), I would hardly call this inspiring chess. So who should I study? The players I do like in particular are Kasparov, Alekhine, Spassky, Keres, Tal and Smyslov. Is there a pattern here, and given those names are there others I should be looking at. Some may say, "surely you must like Capablanca" the fact is that whilst his endgames are superb, I don't consider them inspiring. "What about Fischer?", no thanks, the hype around him bores me to tears and so many of his 'greatest' performances were against poorer players IMO, whilst others were intimidating performances given with the political muscle of cold war USA behind him.

Any thoughts let me know.

Armageddon Chess - Is it fair?

You could easily substitute Armageddon Chess for its football equivalent the penalty shootout. Everyone agrees it's awful that it should decide a tournament, everyone says they hate them, they're only good for the following things and that's provide low quality drama, suspense and a brief adrenalin rush, usually at the expense of quality play.

I've just finished watching the Biel tie-breaks on the playchess server and after all blitz games were drawn we ended up with Onishcuk/Carslen in an Armageddon game, simple rules White gets 5 mins, Black gets 4 mins, White must win and Black only has to draw. Which to his credit Carlsen played brilliantly and is now declared the tournament winner.

Isn't this a bit shallow though, surely it's almost impossible for White to force a win. If Black plays the opening safe White will inevitably be forced to play sub-standard moves in his quest for the point, after all isn't chess about the position on the board and not a pre-determined outcome.

Is there an alternative to these games, well yes in short, noone wins outright, the tournament is simply tied and winnings shared equally. What's the disgrace in having a tournament finishing with players tied 1st equal? Absolutely nothing IMO.

I enjoyed Biel even though the players were some of the lower echelons of the elite, but Carlsen, Radjabov and Onischuk played excellent stuff and whilst Judit Polgar wasn't her sparkling self, she was still very solid. I therefore think it a crying shame that this sort of chess can be the differentiating factor.

Oh well, let's hope this situation doesn't arise at Mexico for all our sakes.

British Chess Championship

Nicholas Pert destroyed Barrett today in 25 moves even though he did find himself in the following triple pawn position after just 12 moves,

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4 c6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.g3 g6 6.Bg2 Bg7 7.0-0 0-0 8.Ne5 Ng4 9.f4 Nxe5 10.fxe5 c5 11.e3 Nc6 12.Bxc6 bxc6

Meanwhile Jacob Aagaard systematically broke down Graeme Oswald after his c and d pawns advanced too far up the board for the defender to be comfortable with, leaving Pert and Aagaard the only 2 players left with 100 percent records. Both better watch out for a certain Mr Rowson though, who won his 2nd consecutive game after his time troubles in round 2.

British Championships 2007

Graeme Oswalds reward for a cracking win over Glenn Flear yesterday is a chance to battle with Jacob Aagaard today, both players are 3 wins from 3 and are currently tied with Stephen Barrett and Nicholas Pert who play each other. Round 4 starts today at 14:15 BST you can follow the live games from the link on my sidebar.

Quick Draws, how to avoid them?

Was Radjabov vs Motylev Biel Rd8 really a 10 move draw? Playchess and the live site both say so, I'm not sure if ICC agrees they may have posted an extra few moves.

Surely this is a really bad way of promoting the game of chess, so how can the situation be addressed?

Well of course there's the Sofia rules which could be applied to all tournaments, but I would much rather, prefer to see them adopt the increased points scoring system for wins the same way other sports such as Football and Rugby have done.

There are those that would object of course, because there are concerns that players tournament positions could in effect be manipulated. In my opinion I doubt very much if this would be the case, I would in fact excpect players to get more combative and more creative and thus create magnificent games to be replayed, over and over again 50 years from now, much the same way as we play through a Capablanca, Morphy, Alekhine game looking on in awe at the way the pieces dance around the board.

No criticism is directed at the 2 players involved today, Radjabov may well have been tired from his previous slugfest with Van Wely that he wasn't up for a fight today. He may also have glanced over at Carlsens game and seen that he was losing, and thus the tournament lead was up for grabs given that they play each other in round 9.