Ginger GM

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Reykjavik Report

I had previously taken a trip to Iceland in 2005 for the Reykjavik open. My memories were rather hazy to say the least but I had become very fond of this windswept city perched on the edge of an ocean.

Some characters that I enjoyed sharing the odd Viking beer with stuck in my mind. For a start there was the American trio, Ylon Schwartz, an American 2255 player who was visiting Reykjavik with his friend Ben Johnson and finally John Bick, a crazy but fun guy from New Orleans.

In round two, I had the challenge of facing Ivan Sokolov with Black.

I remember making a deal with Ylon that if I somehow managed to win then he would have to play the Classical Dutch in the next game, bearing in mind this deal was made at around 6am in morning it was unlikely that anything would come of it but somehow the miracle happened and I managed to win. To my disappointment Ylon’s opponent played 1 e4 the next day.

Maybe it helped that I made a bit of a fool of myself at breakfast the morning I was due to play Sokolov.

I was attempting to find a seat for breakfast and I managed to miss the chair completely. Instead I fell directly onto my back. This happened in front of about 40 chess players with egg and milk thrown in a 10-meter diameter around me, hitting various chess grandmasters in the process. Hard to take a person seriously after watching this happen to him…

Anyway rather then persisting with chess I later found out that Ylon had made it to the final table of the World Series of Poker in Vegas this year, picking up over £3 million in the process! Good on you son!

For me, what makes a place is the people and you can’t find a better bunch a people then in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik. The Icelandic players really are the nicest bunch of people that you are likely to meet and many thanks must go out to Bjorn for organizing the tournament. I was made to feel very at home, the bars and cafes are great to explore and it was nice to see some friendly faces again.

There were only a couple of negative things to report. For a start I feel rather guilty that my girlfriend visited for 3 days and the only places we visited were a gay bar (the chess quiz was arranged here) and another bar and, guess what, another bar, sorry about that…

The other major problem was the way that I played chess. For example the following disaster happened in round two. I was Black playing against the young French player C.Vernay. So far I had been very pleased with my play. I had tried out a new opening, the Czech Benoni and after extensive manoeuvers we reached the following position:

My hold on e5 should give me a pleasant advantage and I thought that I could build up slowly without any risk of losing. This should be true but somehow I managed to lose! The game continued:

34…Nd7 I had wanted to continue with 34…Nh7 but I got worried about the following plan: 35 Bc2 Ng5+ 33 Kg2 and all of a sudden I have to look out for 34 Nd3 followed by 35 e5. If White can ever play the advance e5 then his position will be fine. 35 Bc2 Re7 36 Nd3 Ne5+ 37 Nxe5 Rxe5 38 Ke3 Around here may opponent offered me ‘another’ draw. This would make it his 3rd of the game, now that pissed me off. I normally reply to draw offers but not this time. 38…Rb7 39 Rf1 I am probably not better anymore as White has pressure against f7 but what happened next was just plain crazy. 39…Kg7 40 Ref2 Rbe7? What the? I should have played 40…f5! Followed by 41 gxf5 Bxf5! 41 Kd2! I was hoping for 41 Rf6 Bf5! 41…Rd7 42 Rf6

I should just sit tight here by keeping the Black rook on e5 when the game will probably end up being a draw but I overestimated my chances and I thought that I spotted a winning try. Well it was a winning try but only for my opponent! The game continued:

42…Ree7? On its own this move is not so bad but the plan attached to it is simply awful. Black must aim to stop White from playing e5 at all costs. 42…g5 followed by …Bb7 …Bc8 …Bb7 would have just be a draw. 43 R1f2 Rd8? 43…Re5! = 44 R6f4 Rf8 45 Rf6 Rd8

And now to my shock White played 46 e5! After so many draw offers I didn’t expect a winning attempt!

Things went quickly form bad to worse after 46…dxe5 47 Ke3 White slowly improves the positioning of his pieces he is clearly better now. My position crumbled after 47…e4 48 R2f4 Rh8 49 d6 Ra7 50 Bxe4 Be6 51 Bd5 Bxd5 52 cxd5 Rb8 53 g5 Rb5 54 Re4 +- and White won easily.

The next disaster happened in round 5. I had won my last two games to get back to 3/4. I now faced another young player I.Caspi from Israel. A win would put me back into contention and this looked very likely when I reached the following position.

I had chosen to play 1 f4 in order to avoid any theory and this had worked perfectly, I was a clear exchange up. On top of this Black’s bishop on b2 is trapped. I could instinctively tell that there was a forced win in the position but the more I looked at the position the more I couldn’t find it. I was looking at some of the following variations:

a) 24 Rd8+ Re8 (24…Kh6 25 Qh4 or 25 Qd2 is an easy win) 25 Bxe5 Rxd8 26 Qh4 this line is obviously risky as White has given the exchange back but Black is weak on the dark squares around his king. 26…Re8! and it is not clear how I should continue, one thing is for sure it is not clearly winning.

b) 24 Bxe5 Rxe5 25 Rd8+ Kg7 (25…Re8 26 e5) 26 Qd2 Ba3 27 Qd4 f6 all forced so far so quite easy to calculate. 28 Rd7+ Be7 (28…Kh6 looks dangerous) and here I thought that I had spotted the winning combination 29 Rxe7+ Rxe7 30 e5 fxe5 31 Qh4 winning a piece it was only when I reached the position after 28…Be7 that I noticed Black can play 31…Rf7! with a good position!

c) 24 Rd8 + Re8 25 Rxe8+ Qxe8 26 Bxe5 Qxe5 27 Qd2

And I released that I would win a piece here leaving me a rook up but I suddenly got worried about 27…Qxc3 28 Qd8+ Kg7 29 Qxh8 Qd3

When I thought that my rook would be a problem as 30 Rg1 runs into 30…Bd4! In my head I could not find a safe square for my rook but I had completely missed that I could play 30 Rd1! As my bishop on f3 is guarding the rook! WHAT A PATZER!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some kind of GM I am! In the game I choose variation ‘b’ above but played 29 Rxa7 which should still be enough to win but somehow Black managed to draw. As soon as we shook hands my opponent pointed out the combination above reaching the position above. I then said something dismissive like, ‘ but my rook is trapped, I could even be in trouble here’. To which my opponent slowly glided the rook from f1 to d1, oh what a fool I felt like!!! He then wondered if I would like to analysis the game… tear his head off more like! Once I had calmed down I spoke to him and he seemed like a really nice guy, after all it is was my own fault that I played like a such idiot!

I found it hard to recover from this game and I ended up on 6/9 which is a respectable score but the highest rated player that I faced was 2410 or something similar, so a rating loss of 6.5 points, not the end of the world!

After this game I tended to spend a bit more time in the bars of Reykjavik and I even found the only poker club in town! Myself, Luis Galego and a bunch of Icelandic players descended on the place.

I was warned that the police did regular raids on the venue and if that happened I would have all my money confiscated, luckily the ruling on poker is very grey, like it used to be in England, so the police don’t take it too seriously.

Well I had a good run – the first time I was there, I won 500 euros or something similar but I lost most of that on the last day after a horrible ‘90000 Krone’ bluff got called. The problem playing with other currencies is that you sometimes forget how much you are betting, especially after a couple of jars!

To sum it up, get yourself over to Iceland for next year. It’s a great place with great people!