WINTER 2010

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Social Page of the Week: the meeting with a young man with French cultture of New Rochelle at the Chess & Checkers' House in Central Park

This March 21, 2010

Wishing to play a faster game with my chessmates who are beginner players I have decided to change my opening and to shift from a closed game to an open game with the two knigts opening, but there will be variations and probably I will move to a semi open game where the center is both controlled by the pawns and the other pieces." If the center is blocked, this is referred to as a closed game.  If the center is not blocked with pawns then the game is an open one.  Different opening may tend toward being closed (such as the French Def 1.e4e6) or tend towards being open (such as the Sicilian), but there are both open and closed variations of many (if not all) openings including the above examples.  ...In an open game, things tend to happen fast as pieces can easily move accross the board, this can lead to some embarrassingly short games if you overlook or misjudge your oponents attack.  In a closed game things tend to brew more slowly since the pieces have more difficulty moving about the board.  In a closed game pieces have to maneuver around the center which takes time, but if you overlook an attack it may be just as deadly, you just are slightly less likely to be caught by surprise (in my opinion). " (Open-Closed Game; Chessopedia)

This March 7, 2010

Today I have been invited by my friend Alberto of 70 years old to play Chess in Central Park. I played well and had again the occasion of improving my game. So did Alberto. Then the meeting ended with both of us going to the bathroom. When I came back Alberto had alreadty left but I met a young man named Mathieu Christin who was reading my book Advanced Chess that I had left on the table. He told me that he learned Chess at an early age but did not practice much and so he lost badly the game we played. Then he told me he came from New Rochelle and speak French. Finally he told me that there is a huge population of French speaking people in this quiet Westchester County, at the southeast of New York. I had never thought of that and went to do some reseach in my encyclopedia:

Settled by French Huguenots in 1688, the city which was also the home of the political theorist Thomas Paine, the promoter of Democrcy in France and the U.S. before their revolutions, is named for La Rochelle, a city in western France. This city was a stronghold of Protestant Huguenots during the Reformation in the 16th century and the two centuries religious civil war that followed their massacres by the queen mother, Catherine de Medicis, on the Saint Bartholomew's Day." (Ref.: En Carta)

Having explained to my mate that Chess obeys to Bayesian Statistics and that with a strong opening he can still play good chess without having to play much I got his e-mail as well as of anoother chessmate and promised to send them the URL of my manuscript on Chess - http://mapageuniversitaire.com/CHESS/ech-ti.html - as well as the one of my Chess Journal - https://roro267.tripod.com/Journal_dir\SNESM.html.

Since this winter I have introduced some modification in my opening, By the end of 2008 my opening was: 1.e4 d6 2.d4 e6 3.Nf3 Nd7 4.Bd3 Ngf6. The goal was to challenge my mate for the domination of the center. By the end of 2009, the opening was refined in order to prevent an early attack on the king's knight. I introduced further refinement to lead the pawn of the king's rook early in the attack in order to have also this rook soon in the offensive - as early as the 8th move -after the castle on the king's side: 1.d3 d5 2.h3 e5 3.e3 Nf6 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.Be2 Bf5 6.O-O Be7 7.Nh2 O-O 8.f4 e4. The overall goal is to have more pieces leading this offensive. Recently in the beginning of 2010, having experimented with better players the vulnerability of the system and in order to keep the original intention of leading the offensive on the crucial F column and avoiding early exchanges in order to do so, other refinements were brought to my game. At the end of the opening and in the beginning of the middle game, after the completion of the 14th move, before any exchange, I had, for example in this uploaded game, with the Blacks more pieces attacking the F column - three against two for the Whites - and even more than that in good position for an attack on this column as you will see with the end of the game:

1.e3 e6 2.d3 d6 3.h3 h6 4.a3 a6 5.Nf3 Ne7 6.Nc3 Nd7 7.Be2 g6 8.Bd2 Bg7 9.O-O O-O 10.a4 b6 11.a5 b5 12.e4 f5 13.Qc1 Kh7 14.Re1 b4

15.Nd1 c5 16.Ne3 Bb7 17.Nc4 Qc7 18.exf5 Nxf5 19.Kh1 Rf7 20.Bd1 Bd5 21.Ne3 Nxe3 22.Rxe3 Raf8 23.c3 Bxf3 24.Bxf3 Ne5 25.cxb4 Nxf3 26.gxf3 Qc6 27.Kg1 Rxf3 28.b5 Qxb5 29.Rxf3 Rxf3 30.Bc3 Bxc3 31.Qxc3 Qb7 32.h4 Rh3 33.Qh8+ Kxh8 34.Kf1 Rh2 35.Ke2 Qxb2+ 36.Ke3 Qxf2+ 37.Ke4 Rxh4++ mate!

First, you can see the 18. ... Nxf5, then the 23. ...Bxf3, then the 25. ...Nxf3, then the 27. ...Rxf3, then the 29. ...Rxf3 and finally the 36....Qxf2+ before the next move which was the mate. In all, six moves on the F column against four on the C , three on the B and on the H, two on the E, zero on the G and on the A columns, after the 15th move. The fianchettoes of the two black bishops with no bad bishop (as it is for the Whites), after the completion of the sixteenth move, gave also the Blacks a good domination of the center squares: e4, e5, d4 and d5 - overall the four central cases against three for the Whites.