2018-08-07

Facebook post from 2 years ago.

I have been playing chess seriously for 42 years, so in the 2016 Open Chess Championship when I play an 8 year old who plays almost as well as me, I get nervous. I am also amazed. I was playing 8 year old Luke Ye from Missouri.

There are some gaps in my chess opening knowledge, because chess is nearly infinite, and you can't know everything. Earlier in the week I tried to fix one of my gaps in my knowledge by studying a game played by world champion Magnus Carlsen in the French Defense. When I played the kid, he followed the world champion game closely, which by itself made me nervous, but he also started an attack against my kingside sooner than I expected. I was not quite prepared for this. Before the game I had asked Luke's dad if the kid had coaching, which he had, which means that some master or Grandmaster had taught him to play a certain way against the French Defense. I had the sense that the kid was following some sort of script by wrote, where he had been coached that if you put your pieces on specific squares then you can checkmate your opponent. Around move 15 he started an attack against my kingside and I spent over 20 moves defending. The kid was relentless. He just kept pursuing the idea of checkmating me on the kingside, somewhat to his detriment because it allowed me to be stronger on the queenside. I had my own plan, which took a long time to implement, but my plan was to weaken his pawn structure and trade the pieces down to an even king and rook endgame that was technically winning for me, which is what happened. I had figured that no matter how strong this prodigy might be, he wasn't going to be as strong as me in the endgame.

The two of us had spent spent about 75 minutes each on the first 25 moves. This is about the point that I felt that the game was turning in my favor, so I was able to move more quickly after that.

My opponent's 37nth move was a disaster. When I saw him reach for the pawn I thought "Don't do it!". He played such a good game up to that point, I didn't want to see him throw it all away on one bad move. I was winning anyway, but there was still a little bit of fight left in the game that would have been fun to play out. Instead he made a mistake and the game ended very quickly after that.

It is nice to win a game after a couple of tough losses. I now have 4.5 out of 8. At the very least I will finish the tournament with 4.5 out of 9. I don't think that the last round pairings will be kind to me; I will most likely play someone stronger than me, but I will give it my best effort. It would be very nice to get a draw or a win which would put me over 50%.

[Event "2016 US Open Chess Championship"]
[Site "Indianapolis Indiana"]
[Date "2016.08.07"]
[Round "8"]
[White "Ye, Luke"]
[Black "Coffey, John"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C11"]
[WhiteElo "2012"]
[BlackElo "1741"]
[Annotator "Coffey,John"]
[EventRounds "9"]
[TimeControl "90+30"]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3
Nc6 7. Be3 Be7 8. Be2 O-O 9. Qd2 a6 10. O-O b5 11. Qe1 b4 12. Na4 cxd4 13. Nxd4 Nxd4 14. Bxd4 Bb7 15. Qg3 Qc7 16. Bd3 g6
(Better is 16... Bc6 but I was worried about... 17. f5 Bxa4 18. f6, but then black can play Nxf6 19. exf6 Qxg3 20. hxg3 gxf6 21. Bxf6 Bc5+ 22. Kh2 Bd6 which prevents Rf4. That would have been really hard to calculate out in the game.)
17.Qh3 (If 17. f5 exf5 18. Bxf5 Nc5 19. Nxc5 Bxc5) 17... Bc6 18. b3 Bxa4 19. bxa4 Bc5 20. Bxc5 Nxc5 21. Qh6 Nxd3 22. cxd3 Qc5+ 23. Kh1 Qd4 24. Rad1 Rac8 25.
Rf3 f6 26. Rg3 Rc7 27. Qh3 f5 28. Qh6 Qf2 29. Rg5 Rg7 30. Rg3 Rc8 31. Rg5 Qxf4 32. Rxg6 Qxh6 33. Rxh6 Rg6 34. Rxg6+ hxg6 35. Kg1 Rc2 36. Ra1 a5 37. a3 b3 38. Rb1 b2 39. Rf1 Rc1 0-1

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