Irish Players Abroad

As any astute reader of my blog or visitor to dublinchess.com will by now know, I am off to Thailand this month to play in the Seventh Bangkok Chess Club Open 2007. See this Chessbase Feature for some more general information on the event. This event will be my first serious chess tournament in a while and an event that I am very much looking forward to for many reasons, not least of which being memories of my previous good fortune in 2004 when I made an IM norm very comfortably and finished third. Happy memories to be sure!

This year it turns out that there will be a gang of Irish players participating, which is a most welcome novelty. There is something cool about the idea of playing in such a beautiful and far off exotic destination. All the better then that there will be a substantial Irish contingent which has been helped by some generous sponsorship from London based Irish ex pat : Martin Crichton who came up with the idea after having previously played in the tournament himself, and being the first Irish player to do so.

One of the ideas was that such an event offered good norm chances and good experience of international chess for Irish players {my own norm being evidence of this} while being able to combine this with a holiday seemed both desirable and practical.Thankfully a good mixture of players will be going and this should lead to a good team spirit and added social dimension to the event.

From a personal point of view I have often found that I do better in such team like environments, as you get some sense of your own identity by having people you know [and who know you] around you. This means you have the familiar banter combined with either encouragement or playful slagging off, which is either a welcome ego boost, or a good way to bring you back down to earth and help to keep everything in perspective

Irish players traditionally have had all sorts of troubles adjusting to playing abroad and there have been many inconsistencies over the years. It might sound like making excuses but I think this accounts for many of the major failings of Irish players over the years. If there is some doubt about Irish players being able to compete at this level? Then consider this fine game by Stephen Brady against a player very much on the up at the time and now an established GM and serial British Champion: Jonathan Rowson.

Either Irish players simply had far too little exposure to international chess, or the fact of lack of exposure, combined with a lack of confidence, and maybe even an overly deferential attitude to titled players or foreign players generally perhaps has lead many players to fluff their lines, so to speak? Consider just some of the blunders made that would rarely occur between two top Irish players, or if they did occur, would be punished. Sadly such blunders seem too common a feature of Irish players when playing on the stage of international chess, and under the spotlight. Though far less now than in previous years.

Later this month a few more of us will be putting ourselves under such examination but playing for pleasure, and now being so much older and wiser [hopefully] there will be no pressure, and some high points worth noting by the end of the event. I think John Joyce could well do very well [have a look at this comfortable draw against GM Tony Miles from 1993 ] and see what he is capable of. Hopefully he has not lost all his touch.

The event will also see Brian Galligan gain more valuable experience of this type of event, as will Martin Crichton who has been too much of a spectator of such events for far too long. England based Irish International Andrew Smith should also have some interesting games and be a useful guy to have around [If I am not mistaken he was ateam captain at the last Olympiad too for one of the mens teams - I just can't recall which one]. In any event, a blog or and detailed report, will follow and chart all of our progress and any adventures we have.

Speaking of which, we have been promised an evening of entertainment courtesy of Thailand based ex pat business man :Conor Bracken who with fluent Thai, and nearly two decades of living in the vast metropolis that is Bangkok, is a resident expert and veritable mine of information on all things relating to Thailand. I can still recall the first trip in which he generously steered Martin and myself away from the usual tourist traps. He showed both of us the more authentic and cultured wonders that are to be seen by those who know their way around such an exciting and ever changing city. Thankfully he has again agreed to take time out from his busy schedule and so it should be a night to remember I am sure. Here is a little sample Thailand video clip from an evening out on that first trip.

Back to international chess in general, it has often occurred to me that when Irish players do play abroad it is so often the case that the Irish players are so conditioned to playing weekend chess, or playing against the very same players over and over, that when we do go abroad, our very best and most promising players perform much less than their true potential [and yes I would include myself in that category] . I think there is a major problem with making the adjustment. Added to this is the fact that, for the most part, there are so few active players of really good international standard here, and in Ireland the instinct to play for wins is paramount - if you want to win or do well in tournaments. Thus the standard is such is that the level of play varies greatly, usually this is on the low side but does fluctuate.

As if to illustrate my point,,I will now digress a bit here to expand on my general theory and discuss an excellent example of this with another well known top Irish player - and current Irish Champion no less : Stephen Brady . Incidentally there is also a short video interview available with him from just after he won his latest title in July of 2006 which may be of some interest. See Irish champion interview .

Noteworthy also is the fact that apparently, following some selection rule changes for Irish Olympiad teams at the last ICU agm, Stephen, along side the winner of the 2007 Irish championships, now has an automatic place on the Irish team to participate in the next Olympiad which is being held in Germany in 2008. It would be great to see Stephen return to the squad, and with only five players allowed to play instead of the usual six this time around for the 2008 Olympiad, it should be very tough and something of an a achievement to get on this team. [I'd probably have to win this years Irish champion title to get on the team, as otherwise my own chances of getting on the team would seem to be an outside bet.] Still it just may be prestigious enough to entice Stephen to step back onto the international stage, in a green jersey again! I am sure many of Stephens fans would certainly be vey pleased to see him make a return. Only time will tell?

Anyway getting back to my theory about Irish players playing abroad, I have often had a great quandary with regards to my own frustrations and experience of playing certain Irish players and then comparing it to playing strong foreign players. My all time classic puzzlement and frustration is possibly the above mentioned current Irish Champion Stephen Brady . For years I had underestimated him to a stupendous level, often arrogantly assuming that he was somehow so unpolished as to be fundamentally lacking in depth or substance.

It would never be denied by Stephen, or few others, that somehow, while his results were very good and very impressive, his play often seemed,at least superficially, to be not so convincing and indeed he took pride in being primarily a practical player, as opposed to a player that would ever easily dazzle you. By nature his humble persona masking a dogged determination and tenacity. In my case, his actual skill being obscured to me by my own arrogance.

Many losses over many years, and my stubborn inflexibility in assessing his true strengths and weaknesses correctly resulted in an incredible number of losses. [I think he has possibly the best record against me of any other Irish player, with a shockingly comfortable plus score over many games]. I don't think Stephen would mind me pointing out that many of these were classic examples of self destruct extremes by me, in which I would either refuse draws from drawn and winning (!) positions, and then go on to lose stupidly or overrate my position entirely, and again lose by either over pushing or not defending worse positions well enough. Though of course many games also just saw me being, out played, out prepared and simply beaten by a better player on the day.

After all the defeats at his hands, and a long overdue reassessment and mature adjustment by me, I went quite a while without losing any games, even gaining a two game plus score. From 2002 until 2006 I avoided defeat in several games and had a couple of decent wins that lasted to mid 2006 when I went back to my old ways and lost a game from a totally drawn position in a comical finish . At least he then went on the win the Irish again for the fifth time, with an impressive 8 points out of nine.

The reason for mentioning this brings me to my real source of puzzlement and frustration. Somehow I had always convinced myself that if only I played to the correct international standard I should be able to win game after game against Stephen and other similar strength Irish players. Somehow believing that they were not really able to play to that level if pushed hard enough. The problem was that that when such players did indeed play to such a standard I would get so freaked out over the board that I often went astray quickly, usually looking to gain an advantage where there was none, or just allowing my emotions or frustrations get the better of my judgments.

The really annoying bit about all this was that when I looked at some of these same players, in particular Stephen Brady , I noticed that whereas when he was playing against me it had often seemed like as if a mistake or two by me was fatal, by contrast when playing in international events there were opening variations and lines I was sure I knew or understood better than IMs or GMs yet they seem to get results against Stephen.

This was particularly infuriating because in my heart of hearts I just knew that I would never get away with some of the stuff that these players tried. For a long time I just put this down to confirming my original idea that if only I played to the correct international standard I should be able to win game after game against Stephen, and other similar strength Irish players, because logically they were somehow not really able to play to that level, if pushed hard enough. It seems laughable now of course and many painful defeats later I took some weird sort of comfort in being able to actually see what was really going on. So lets see what I think this is then?

Consider the following incredible examples below. In the first game we see me defeat Mel O Cinneide in a very flawed game after 20 moves of sharp critical theory in which we were actually breaking new ground. I actually had looked at the position some time before this game in my opening preparations, even discussing the various complications with former Irish champion Joe Ryan . The possibility of meeting Stephen Brady with this exact position being a distinct possibility for both of us and the variation being of interest to all concerned. Indeed at the 2005 Irish championships, which I won with 8/9, a critical /crucial defeat of Stephen had come about after he had declined to enter such an opening debate at all by playing the 3...dxe4 line of the French for the first time in quite a while. Perhaps he had a sixth sense about my preparation?

As to the position itself? Well I had originally assessed it as being a comfortable advantage for White with the plan I give in the notes to the game versus O Cinneide. During this game I had forgot the work I had done and actually played fairly poorly and required some luck in gaining what turned out to be an easy enough win . Subsequently I went back and had another look at the critical moment in the variation and found a line that I think, as good as wins for White, [something I kept to myself of course].

So imagine my consternation when I seen the second of the examples under discussion. This sees a very decently rated GM make a complete mess and blunder big time against Stephen. What happens next? Well unbelievably Stephen returns the favor and goes on to lose without much fuss . What was screaming off the screen at me when I first saw the game was that I could not help thinking to myself, that if I had made such a blunder against Stephen he would have effortlessly refuted the move, and oh it would probably be a critical game in the Irish championships or some other such important game!

Think I am joking? See what happened to me in 2001 when I was leading the annual Malahide Open, which had a very decent first prize of 1000 Euro and all that I needed to do was either win [outright first] or draw and get about 450 Euros [shared first with a few others]. In this game I was never able to decide properly which I should be doing and so instead of playing for a draw ,which without meaning to seem too casual, I could easily achieve against Stephen with the White pieces just about nine out of ten times if I wanted, I convinced myself that I should have an advantage from the opening, and when this was not happening for me went off balance and got totally outplayed.

It at least assured me that for all these years I had been facing very competent players indeed, and that the problem was more to do with the nature of the situation that pertains to the best Irish players generally. Often players who were capable of playing to a very competent and good international standard were so unused to competing at such a level regularly that while capable of doing so, they [we] were not at all conditioned or used to playing that level on cue. It was very much a hot and cold sort of thing with individual results varying greatly.

Nowadays, and in more recent times generally, as if to mirror [in a very minor way] the changes within Ireland generally, there are a great many more accomplished international players who have the confidence and self assuredness to get all manner of results in international events, [though still it has to be admitted quite sparsely] . Who would have thought of world class players like Michael Adams being held to a draw by a 2300 plus Irish player like Mark Heidenfeld ? Though lets not overlook the like of pioneers such as Phillip Short with his two impressive GM draws from the first telecom event, one against Michael Adams and the other against GM Suba all those years ago.

Chess Old Age - The Year That Was

2006 was an eventful year for me on the chessboard, but for all the wrong reasons! After a brief return to good form and some renewed interest in chess in the period 2004/5 I managed in 2006 to lose my way and go so off the chess rails as to leave a trail of disasters and comical reversals. I will share some of these with some light annotations that point to how it feels to be entering a sort of chess old age.

Looking back at some of the events I have played in throughout 2006 I cringe at the level of lazy, unpolished and indifferent approaches taken by myself. These range from outright apathy and boredom to sheer stupidity, though some of these lend themselves to comedy in a tragic/comical sense.

It was a year that saw my return to the Olympiad team, and what a hilarious affair that turned out to be, as the whole enterprise turned into a fiasco for me and ultimately a profoundly wasteful endeavour. Though it was something that needed to be done and at least I had a few laughs with members of the team, so it was nice to have normalized relations with the team members. On the chess board my few efforts were so atrocious that I actually was so happy to just get out of the whole situation! See my blog on Turin Memories for some details.

Other glorious highlights/low lights for me, that indeed made me feel old, was the City Of Dublin event in which I was so jaded that when playing a critical game against rising star Karl Mc Phillips and repeating a variation that I had won in the Leinster Championships of 2005/2006 I seem to just lash out the moves and then after achieving easy equality made a huge tactical blunder and was punished promptly.
[ CLICK ON THE DIAGRAMS TO PLAY THROUGH GAMES ]

Though I did get some measure of redress with a fairly easy win at the 2006/2007 Leinster Championships. It was a competent or even one might say clever win though I had faltered early on when I had allowed a chance for an advantage by going for a win of a pawn [an illusion which nevertheless came to pass] instead of the succesful conclusion of some accurate opening play and some advantage for Black out of an otherwise sterile Queens Gambit Declined type position.

Still when Karl missed his chance early on and the game proceeded along the lines of him having sacrificed a pawn for activity I was pleased enough with how I dealt with his efforts to attack me and simply grab all the pawns before counter attacking. I might be getting old I thought, but apparently I can still play a bit?

Following my loss to Karl in the City of Dublin event I then had a remarkable loss to one of my old adversaries Mark Quinn when after playing rather a nice game I ended up with an easily winning endgame a full exchange up only to make several awful moves in succesion and only then blunder yet again to actually lose! It had been a time scramble but I had about 3-4 minutes versus about 1 minute! Mark was as surprised as I and those watching were and went on to win the event jointly with Karl.

After winning the 2005/2006 Leinster Championships jointly with GM Alexander Baburin with a nice enough last round win versus Karl McPhillips I had some high hopes for 2006/2007.

Alas it was not only not to be but here again it seemed that a sort of Chess Old Age had consumed me and here too, despite some competence and even skill by me I blew it all with a vintage loss in the last round that deprived me of a joint first place victory.

This merely matched my awful play from the first round in which I blundered in the opening from a promising position to end up with a sterile drawn position that I tried to create some winning chances from only to get a lost position and have a miracle escape.

The event was remarkable for the fact that despite there being many strong players participating, no one player dominated or even stood apart. Many of the results were unusual or error prone with lots of draws. In my own case I accepted a draw versus a Czech GM Jan Votava when the position was very good for me indeed, if not virtually winning.

Then allowing a well known Bxh2 check themed piece sac that forces a perpetual against Gavin Wall [though following a totally pedestrian opening by me I was never better anyway].

The last round against John Redmond however was to be yet again more evidence of my seemingly inevitable decline as I played what was a nice opening and middlegame only to first fail to play the most accurate move and retain a nice advantage to go horribly wrong with a one move blunder that left me defenseless and turned the game in an instance. By then I was only equal but it seemed to underline my chess at the moment so well.

At least it was good to see John Redmond after so many years [which again makes one feel old!] as I think it must have been about 16-18 years since I last seen him. John was a strong player who like many before him had emigrated to the UK and had unfortunatley been a loss to Irish chess ever since. He played in the big international in Liverpool and had got his first fide rating back in September but nobody knew this at the time of the Leinster Championships.

Thus Sam Collins [duly impressed by John] got more than he bargained for when the round before he had a truly miraclous escape against John. If nothing else this game was easily one of the most wonderful I have seen in quite a while. I simply loved the themes in this game and if anyone can get a hold of this game I suggest they look at it. The end saw John spoil all his good play when he blundered to allow an opposite bishop endgame become a typical drawn position.

Then at the end of the event it was refeshing and pleasant to retire to the Pub after the tournament with many of the players enjoying a bit of craic with GM Jan Votava, IM Mark Quinn, IM, Gavin Wall, Gordon Freeman , IM Sam Collins plus John Redmond and myself all exchanging stories and experiences over a few drinks in a most relaxed and civilised way. It reminded me of days gone by when this was the norm for such tournaments and at the same time this nostalgia for days past did make me wonder if I was entering my Chess Old Age.