6 months summary

Well, this year I decided to play as many tournaments as possible 🙂 So far I managed to participate in 5 events – I played in Italy, Austria, Macedonia, Hungary and Poland! Now it’s time to summarize it before holidays.

TOURNAMENT	SCORE	GMs & IMs faced	Rating perf.	ELO change
Gabicce Mare	6.5/9	5xIM	2477	+8
Graz Open	6/9	3xGM	2520	+11
Karpos Open (Skopje)	6.5/9	2xGM	2503	+9
Sax Memorial (Zalakaros)	4/9	2xGM, 2xIM	2328	-15
Lublin Union Memorial	5/9	4xGM, 2xIM	2488	+6

My rating in January was 2425 and on 1st July it will be 2444 so I gained nearly 20 ELO points which is positive, but as you can see I had one terrible result which destroyed my progress a bit. Still I am happy with quality of my play and I know what should I focus on to make a further progress.

Crown Tribunal in Lublin, Poland

My next tournaments are:

• Najdorf Memorial in my hometown (Warsaw)
• Mare di Fano in Italy
• Polish League (1st Division)
• …and I’m certainly looking for at least two more tournaments this year 😉

Chigorin Memorial 2016

Few days I ago I came back home from very nice trip to Russia a country with the largest amount of chess Grandmasters in the world. I was dreaming about playing strong tournament there for many years and finally this dream came true and I participated in the Chigorin Memorial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chigorin_Memorial) in beautiful city of Saint Petersburg.

I started very well, in the 3rd round I faced the former FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman and chose my secret weapon 1.f4 and managed to even put some pressure. The game finally ended in a draw.

photo by Sergey Sorokhtin

I played few more famous Grandmasters in this tournament but somehow I couldn’t break through but I beat all weaker players so with the score 5.5/9 I gained some rating points which is always a positive thing 🙂

Before each round I was walking a lot around the city, there were many nice things to see and I would certainly recommend everyone to visit this place and I hope I’ll be there again in the future.

…and here’s even a little video I recorded there. Maybe at some point I will start making vlogs 😛

My new chess club and first success

as usual news are coming so late on my blog… better check out my fanpage https://www.facebook.com/chesscoaching where everything is more up to date!

At the beginning of September I took part in 2nd Seniors League (in Jastrzębia Góra) with the team ‘Wieża Pęgów’. This is the first time I represented this club and I’m very happy we finished on a second place which is good enough to be promoted into the 1st league next year!

My personal result was unfortunately far from satisfactory. I started very well (4,5/6 and I nicely beat one GM with Black)  but somehow I lost three last rounds which was a disaster for me but hopefully our team having won 6 first matches didn’t need too much to secure our main goal 🙂

from the left: Jakub Szotkowski, Piotr Jagodziński, WGM Joanna Majdan-Gajewska, IM Piotr Nguyen, Filip Dowgird, Paweł Kowalczyk

I would like to thank my all teammates and our boss from ‘Wieża Pęgów’, next year we are going to do our best in the 1st league!

 

My chess holidays 2016

I haven’t written anything about my last three tournaments on this blog so I’m putting it altogether in one post 🙂

I have been quite active on my fanpage but I know some of you don’t use facebook so I’m writing here though you can see the content there even without an account and I posted some nice puzzles there!

My first holiday tournament was in Budejovice (that was my 11th time in Czech Republic playing chess!) and it was a GM round-robin tournament with average around 2430 so it was a good training tournament. I started poorly with 1/4 but later I won some games and finished on 50% at the end which was a decent result and all my games were very instructive.

Samson fountain at Ottokar II Square in Budejovice

The second tournament was in Warsaw, the city where I live in so I didn’t have to travel anywhere and it turned out to be the strongest tournament I have ever participated in! I had to face five GrandMasters rated above 2600 and that was a great experience for me. This time I started very well and I had good chances for GM norm but later I lost three games in a row and again finished with 4.5/9 but with average around 2480 the result is certainly positive.

during tough game where my problems started in this tournament

The last tournament I played in Fano (Italy); the city is located at the Adriatic Sea so I had a very good rest there. I traveled there with three International Masters from Poland and we were enjoying this nice event together. We didn’t prepare a lot before the games and we all scored 6/9 and we all gained few rating points!

Arch of Augustus just nearby our playing hall

…now I’m back to my usual work and my next tournament will be next month, the Polish Team Championship, 2nd division which will be held in Jastrzebia Góra by the Polish Sea so I’m looking forward to yet another good rest 😛

Bad result in Zalakaros 2016

At the end of May I travelled to Zalakaros in Hungary to compete in a very strong international tournament. There were many GMs and I had 37th number on the starting list so I was full of hope to play with the best players but sometimes life is not easy and we need to accept a bad result… (Detailed results: http://www.chess-results.com/tnr207899.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=9&turdet=YES&flag=30&wi=984) From the very beginning I had a tough pairings, most of my opponents performed clearly above their rating but of course that’s not the only problem I had and a player who wants to improve needs to find other sources of bad result.

After extensive analysis of my own games I have drawn some conclusion (I’m not going to share it fully here but I can tell one of the biggest problems was related to proper and patient calculation probably caused by too many blitz games played over the Internet) and now I’m preparing a training plan which will improve my play.

There were many players from Poland there!

The tournaments are not only about playing rated games, it’s also about analysing games with friends, meeting new people and spending free time well and in my view Zalakaros is a good place for it 🙂 The conditions at the playing hall were clearly above average level of European Events, all games in the main tournament were transmitted live, the players could analyse games afterwards in analysis room, enough space at the chessboard and there were free refreshments for the players each round. Zalakaros isn’t a big city but it’s a typical holiday city especially for older people so it was a nice place to have a good rest 🙂

 

My impressions after 4th Polish-Hungarian Friendship Chess Tournament

A week ago (7-8th of May) I had a chance to participate in a very well organized event held in Katowice, 4th Polish-Hungarian Friendship Chess Tournament. I have played in Katowice previously only once and it was more than 4 years ago in Polish Academic Chess Championship and I wrote about it on my blog. As far as I remember that was the first time the organizer from Katowice tried to push chess tournaments in Poland to the next level that time and he did manage doing so. After 4 years I can only confirm the direction was very good and we have real chess festival in Poland now 🙂

There were around 600 participants(!) in one huge playing hall the International Conference Centre. There were many kids, I think more than 50% of the players were kids and organizers provided lots of activities for them. Top games were transmitted online and there was even live commentary which is still the domain of only high level tournaments around the world. On the first day I was even invited to the studio and  I was talking with IM Daniel Sadzikowski about my game and my future project which is coming very soon.

 

You can watch it here, it’s 10 minutes long (starts at 6h26m24s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wWoYkIpSmk&feature=youtu.be&t=6h26m24s

After the first day I scored 3,5/5 unfortunately loosing 5th game to strong GM. I didn’t recover on the next day and finished with 6/9 which wasn’t that bad but certainly I tried for more. The tournament was won by my old good friend GM Kacper Piorun who made huge progress recently and is currently in top 100 players in the world.

Detailed results: http://chessarbiter.com/turnieje/2016/ti_1947/results.html?l=en&tb=10_

 

My impressions after Graz 2016

This should have been posted almost a month ago 😀 as usual I was busy with some other stuff but finally here it is.

Graz 2016 was very strong tournament, I had 24th number on the starting list and there were 15 Grandmasters (3 of them are in top 100 in the world)! The winner with 8/9 was GM Li Chao from China whose rating exceeds 2750. I scored 6/9 (4 wins, 4 draws and 1 loss with average of my opponents above 2350) which is very decent and I gained 6 ELO points 🙂 I played very interesting chess, sometimes I was choosing extremely risky options but it paid off at the end.

Detailed results: http://chess-results.com/tnr181947.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=9&flag=30&wi=821

The atmosphere was great, there were many chess sets to analyse the game afterwards which is very important for chess culture in my view. Around the playing hall one could also find very nice chess related painting worth 28000 Euros. This is the position from the game played by Frank Marshall in 1912 and the solution is considered to be one of the most brilliant combination ever played!

Black to move. What did F.Marshall play?

I also found some time for sightseeing as the City of Graz is quite nice.

With quite big group of players from Poland.

…At the moment I have some rest and I also enjoy watching FIDE Candidates Tournament but I think I should play some tournaments soon. I don’t have any clear plans yet but if you know about any strong tournaments (best with the possibility to make a GM norm) please let me know 🙂

London Chess Classic 2015

Today I came back home from London. I think I could write entire article just about my travel as I missed my flight and basically was stressed more than during the whole tournament 😀

…but let’s better talk about positives. I played in FIDE Open and the field was quite strong, there were 28 GMs, 34 IMs and I was 63rd on the starting list so it was a great chance to show my potential. I managed to outplay every weaker player I faced quite convincingly and each game against stronger player was full of fight. I played 2 guys from world top 100, GM E.Postny and GM H.Melkumyan, even though I lost those games I played very agressively and had some chances. After 6 rounds I had 4 points but still without a win over someone strong so the real test came in the last three rounds where I made 2,5 with average above 2450! I beat 2 GMs and made a draw with 1 good IM.

I shared 8th place, my performance was above 2500, I got 4th International Master norm and gained more than 40 ELO points so on January I’ll finally cross 2400! My detailed results: http://chess-results.com/tnr197807.aspx?lan=1&art=9&fed=POL&flag=30&wi=821&snr=63

In front of Olympia where the event took place

I also had a chance to follow the best players in the world live in action. Unfortunately they were playing more less at the same time as I was playing my games so I was unable to enjoy it as much as I wanted… Still that was nice to sit in their playing hall and experience it live, not online.

just before handshake Caruana vs Nakamura

There wasn’t a lot of time to visit the city but I managed to see a thing or two 🙂 One thing which caught my eye immediately was… chess set (made 12th century!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen

Lewis Chess Set in the British Museum

What can I say more? I’m just looking forward playing more such tournaments!

How I scored 3rd International Master norm

At the beginning of this year I have announced (see here: https://piongu.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/i-play-better-chess-when-i-write-about-it/) I’m going to play more chess and you can expect big comeback 😀 And here it is. In July I’ve played two tournaments, one just a day after another and in the second (Najdorf Memorial in Warsaw) I managed to get my 3rd International Master norm quite easily with confidence. I secured it after 8 rounds so I could even loose the last game 😀

 

Indeed the performance 2531 is quite stunning, I recovered nearly 60 ELO points and what’s the most important – I played against really strong field (5 GMs, 3 IMs, 1 FM – average rating 2488) – detailed info under this link: http://www.chessarbiter.com/turnieje/2015/ti_1274/results.html?l=pl&pr=59_. But… about my previous tournament there’s not much to say, I played couple interesting games but the overall score was much below expectations. My performance there was 2230, so how on earth it is possible to perform 300 ELO points better just within couple days?

In last years when I was playing only occasionally I always had a feeling at the end of the tournament that now I can play on a good level. In other words, if I had played the next tournament right away I would have performed much better. See what I wrote one year ago – “As usual now I feel like I would play much better chess if I play next tournament but next month I’m doing some other stuff so I can forget everything again just to recall it during the next tournament”  (https://piongu.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/289/). It’s obvious after the tournament one can remind himself quite many things, some opening lines, the way to calculate during the game etc. so one should perform better in the next tournament. But can it really make such a huge difference? And on the other hand one could say that it’s more likely to become tired playing one tournament after another without any break… It all sounds like some kind of storytelling which happens very often to chess players (The subject was very well covered by psychologist and GrandMaster Jonathan Rowson in his great book “Chess for Zebras” Gambit 2005) and maybe in some way it is but that were at least my thoughts and the reason why I necessarily chose to play two tournaments instead of one. That was my theory and it worked perfectly. Of course I don’t rule out any other influences on my score like the fact it was less hot during the second event or simply I was playing much stronger opponents against whom I usually play more responsibly and just better. One thing for me is clear anyway  – The best way to prepare for the tournament is to play the tournament! That can’t be a rule of thumb for all players, especially for some old guys with poor physical condition but for the players like me that looks like the way to go 🙂

…and here is me playing against the legendary GrandMaster Oleg Romanishin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Romanishin) – probably the toughest opponent I have ever met. Playing against him was really inspiring. He crashed me terribly 3 years ago but this time I managed to make a draw.

Polish Championships in Blitz 2015

This weekend I’ve just played 2 blitz tournaments 🙂 Although I never consider myself as a decent blitz player I think this time I played quite well and even gained some blitz rating points what’s very good prognosis for my upcoming tournaments in July.

Results of team championships: http://www.chessarbiter.com/turnieje/2015/tdr_1759/final_standings_teams&15.html – where I scored 12,5/14 for my team GOSTMAT Gostynin and we managed to win bronze medal!

with my team Gostmat Gostynin!

Results of individual championships: http://chessarbiter.com/turnieje/2015/ti_1758/final_standings&15.html – where unfortunately in the last 3 rounds I missed some chances and I ended up on 20th place which is not that bad and overall I took away some points from some strong guys.

All in all… that was successfull weekend!