The Hand is Quicker than the Eye

See if you can make sense of this now-famous video of the Armageddon match (don't you love that term?) that decided the 2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship. Double or triple-click on the screen to see the clip on YouTube full screen. Try to figure out who actually won and who moved out of turn. I certainly can't.

Thanks in no small part to this clip, chances are a national championship will never be decided in this way again. From Chicago's own Betsy Dynako.

Vicary is Brilliant

Best game in women’s championship wins prize

You don’t hear the word “brilliancy” in everyday usage, but in chess the word has a popular and specific meaning, referring to a game that is, well . . . brilliant. International Master Jeremy Silman defines brilliancy as “A game that contains a very deep strategic concept, a beautiful combination or an original plan.” Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan has published an entire book of brilliancies, plural.

And sometimes, when you play a brilliancy, your achievement is duly recognized, as it was for Woman FIDE Master Elizabeth Vicary, a competitor in the recently concluded U.S. Women’s Championship in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Elizabeth didn’t win the tournament—Irina Krush did that—but thanks to a special prize from the Web site Goddesschess.com, Ms. Vicary won $300 for a thrilling game against Woman Grandmaster Camilla Baginskaite, in which she defeated the higher rated player with the black pieces, playing the Bogo-Indian Defense. (I confess I don’t know that opening well, though I have always liked the sound of it. It’s named for the late Grandmaster Efim Bogoljubov, who played it frequently.)

It was an exciting game. One commenter on Mig Greengard’s Daily Dirt blog called it “a kitchen-sink attack . . . Thrilling to watch - I was on edge for the final 10 moves or more.”

Sacking the Exchange
I haven’t seen the game annotated anywhere, but Elizabeth herself comments on it in a blog post at the USCF site. Note that she likes “sacking the exchange,” as she does with 21...Rxb4, allowing her rook to be captured, for which she gets only a knight and a pawn in return. The term refers to giving up your rook for a minor piece, the intention being to get some kind of compensation for the sacrifice, such as a positional advantage or a better attack. See what GM Robert Byrne had to say about it 20 years ago.

As you may know, great chess players are not compensated the way rock stars and major-league ballplayers are. The figure above is not a typo; $300 is what you get for a brilliant chess game. Barely enough to make a dent in Elizabeth’s stay at the Stillwater Quality Inn during the tournament, though I guess it’s better than a poke in the eye with a stick.

Play through the game, and enjoy. Congratulations, Elizabeth.

Endgame: Congratulations to Eric Rosen for winning the recent blitz tournament at Evanston Chess and to Vince Hart for taking first place in the club’s “economy open.” Vince blogs about his chess adventures occasionally (hat tip: Chessdad64), so maybe we can expect some commentary on this tournament, if he is so moved. . . . Congratulations to Ron Washington and the other woodpushers at the North Avenue Chess Pavilion, who got some high-profile coverage last week from the Chicago Reader, in addition to our recent post. The Reader's Ted Cox did a nice job on the article, despite having run smack up against the pavilion's top two players in his first encounter with chess in many years.

Krush Wins Women’s Championship

Popular New Yorker grabs her second title

Congratulations to Irina Krush, who emerged today from a week of grueling competition in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to become the winner of the 2007 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship.

Irina’s victory was decisive and, thank heavens, averted the cumbersome series of tiebreaking blitz games (including one called “Armageddon”) that would have ensued had the regular nine-round tournament ended in a tie. It looked as if that might indeed happen going into the ninth and final round, which Irina and Katerina Rohonyan entered in a dead heat at 6.0/8.0. But Irina, with the black pieces and playing the Sicilian Defense, beat Tatev Abrahamyan in 40 moves. Some time later Katerina was forced to settle for a 56-move draw against Alisa Melekhina, making Ms. Krush the winner with the tournament’s top score of 7.0/9.0.

Irina is a familiar face on the American chess scene. She won the championship once before, in 1998; she’s represented the U.S. in some number of chess Olympiads; and she is a member of the New York Knights of the United States Chess League. (Yes, there really is a league of professional chess teams, and no, Chicago is not part of it. Just one of many ways in which we lag other big cities as a chess center, but don’t get me started on that. As Monty Python would say, “This is supposed to be an ‘appy occasion!”)

Congratulations to Irina Krush on an excellent victory.

More at the official Web site and from Steve, Susan, Paul, and Mig.

Showdown in Stillwater

America’s top female chess players battle for the championship

For the second time this year the epicenter of American chess is Stillwater, Oklahoma, where the top female chess players in the country are competing this week for the 2007 U.S. Women’s Championship.

After six rounds of the nine-round tournament, Katerina Rohonyan and top seed Irina Krush lead the field of ten players with 4.5/6 each. Right behind them is Tsagaan Battsetseg, with 4.0/6.0, followed by defending champ Anna Zatonskih and Camilla Baginskaite, each with 3.5/6.0.

Katerina Rohonyan, Irina Krush

The two-games-a-day round-robin match has been exciting and fast-paced and not without its surprises. Prognosticator Greg Shahade gave odds to Krush and Zatonskih, but Anna fell back following her fifth-round defeat to Katerina. If you’d like to follow the tournament while it’s in progress, now’s the time to do it because it will be over by Friday.

Since the executives at ESPN show little interest in women’s chess—or for that matter any event held at the Stillwater Quality Inn—it's a good thing the blogosphere has it covered. Former champion Jennifer Shahade is on the scene, writing for the U.S. Chess Federation, while Mig Greengard, The New York Times, and my old boss Paul Hoffman are reporting as well. One of the players in the tournament, Elizabeth Vicary, is blogging about the experience for the USCF. Steve Goldberg is watching things closely at Scholastic Chess Gateway. You can follow the games live through MonRoi technology.

And last but by no means least, don’t miss the excellent photos by Illinois’s very own Betsy Dynako, possibly the best chess photographer around. It’s hard to take good chess pictures—they can easily turn out all looking alike—but when they’re done well you get a strong sense of the game’s emotional intensity. Betsy’s photos achieve that, and along with Elizabeth’s blogging they convey the human drama of the event.

The match is sponsored by wealthy Oklahoma chess organizer Frank K. Berry. His brother Jim Berry is the tournament director. Thanks to them for supporting chess.

Rohonyan photo Copyright MonRoi