Chess: Tournament Galore

After 29. Nc5

Game 7 of the World Chess Championship didn't end in a draw! Yay! And it was actually the underdog (Gelfand) who won (over Anand), which makes this series intense finally. The key points in this game was shutting down pieces so that they had no safe places to go. As you can see from the diagram, Black's bishop has no where safe to play. Even worse, the bishop is very useless- it's being blocked by its own pawns. It also ended with a forced mate with a rook and two knights, not something you see everyday (actually, first time I've seen it in a non-chess puzzle fashion).

There was also a local chess tournament today. The way that this chess tournament was that there were four sections. There was the Novice section for kids from K-6 who have no official USCF United States Chess Federation) rating, the Reserve section for kids from K-8 rated under 850, the Premier section for anyone rated under 1250, and the Championship section for anyone above 1200 (chess ratings follow an elo system, where one gains rating by winning and lose rating by losing; for some reference, most of Hawken would be under 1100, I'm rated ~1500 officially, a national master is rated 2200, the highest rated player currently is rated 2835). Most importantly, it was G/30, meaning each player has 30 minutes to play (with 5 second delay)- which sucks for players like me who like to spend way more time that we should on moves. I didn't end up playing because it was a Super Cup where basically there are multiple of these tournaments during the season, and the results are cumulative throughout. It was still interesting nonetheless. There is a tournament on Saturday that I will probably attend though, if only to see how much I have improved after senior project.