It is almost certain to be a draw unless they are both mad.

I got a draw today against Goodhue's Hippo. Hard going...nearly lost it!

The Nimzowich-Larsen is a very good method if you want to avoid masses of theory..it is a sound and very flexible system.

Both had chances at the end. That is, it was dynamically =

I played perhaps my best (most sensible) game (that is in perhaps subjective terms) in the last round. That is I played basic solid and fairly good chess and accepted that equality was all I could get in this case (no "blow ups"

...too late!

Yesterday I had real trouble versus the Hippo.. Nathan had some winning chances.

Computers have trouble giving you anything (straight forward) to do against the pure Hippo (Nimzo-Larsen attack as there are so many approx = ideas moves at anyone time...given that no-one has blundered...I blundered first but he missed it. Then I was due to lose pawns and probably the game but he overlooked that. I've beaten him before (but last time he beat me with the Hippo) so he is wary. Nathan is a very good rapid (and standard) player. Partly as the Hippo is hard for people to make a good plan against and they lose time (on the clock) doing so!

I did very well in one Rapid Tourney when I used the English as the "automatic plan" is not so easy to find...for many. The Hippo is even harder in that way.

Dive and Ker played on for ages - they are both from Wellington and in the same Club I think and best mates so I suppose they had decided that it was the game that counted and perhaps they were both looking to get rating points.

There was even a ridiculous comment made that they were enjoying their game of chess!! That they actually loved chess!!!

(Everyone knows chess is a terrible game)...

Bruce Watson came 2nd = with Antonio Krstev and Bob Smith

I'm not playing in the Rapid...I am bushwacked - rooted in fact. Lol.

Well, one of the worst performances at chess I have ever turned in...

The "Woopps woops!! Pull up!! Pull up!!" ["Apply go round power...crackle crackle....silence..."] Came to late and I ploughed into the Mt Erebus of Last Place & Teh Wooden Spoon and down 30 rating points! All on board were lost...But it is rumoured the other Richard Taylor will re-arise form the ashes of his any small failure to register or play anything more than the pathetic chess of a Moron Par Excellence (like Lawrence's Phoenix) to relight the world...he says to me he is even thinking of playing in the lightening tourney. (Where trash chess is the norm, so it will be o.k. for him... he even said that in rare cases he enjoyed chess!!! Thank of it! Enjoy(ed) chess!!! Benefit the mind with chess!!!! We all had a huge laugh at that extravagant and clearly delusional and hilarious claim...)

I have a Game Collection somewhere here called <Uncategorizable Stamina> -- motto being Beckett's "I can't go on, I'll go on" -- and I'll add a couple of your efforts.

I had a worse score once, if that's any consolation. I was thrown in at the deep end in a 1980s team tournament and scored 1.5/10.

Then somebody told me that my predicted score was just 14%, so I actually gained a couple of rating points.

And congrats on 26th place in NZ. Most people here have no conception how draining it is to play 11 rounds against strong players.

Given your description of the heat and humidity, a little Coleridge is in order:

...I see you quote from the 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner' (Coleridge is a great poet especially of that and say 'This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison', 'Frost at Midnight', 'Christabel' and 'The Rhyme' and 'Kublai Kan'); and Beckett - I have just about all his plays and books... Some (if not all) are hilarious...of course they are perhaps "supposed" to be dark!

The weather here is strange after few days it was cool in the morning then very hot today it was quite hot but just now it has cooled. Schzoid weather. Went for a walk today and played over a game Alekhine v Euwe (by the Tamaki estuary at the yacht Club)...from his book I have. The Turkish man down the road borrowed some money. I photographed some sunflowers and so on..life goes on.

I was capable of beating any of these players.

Ist IM Ker - I forgot (mixed up) my opening lines and made an error of judgment also I had trouble with a "phantom piece" - on the first round I was really overawed.

(Which is strange as I played Sarapu and Richard Sutton and others when I was young (60s) and in fact I had 2 well fought draws with Ortvin in the 80s. I had mini match with Sutton. But I suppose I had built up my expectations and the whole thing got away from me...

I beat Bruce Watson a few years ago (he was second= in this Tourney) then in the next game we played I played a bad move thinking he had planned brilliant sac and an attack...but I was over cautious. But recently I beat him in a 5 minute game. He is a better player than I but not outside my firing range!

Nor is Smith although he is pretty hard to dislodge once he gets on top and I am not meaning anything outside of chess!! But once I had him on the ropes in a Rapid game and he managed a draw...

Steadman I demolished in one of my "Immortal Games" but overall he is clearly a better player...but as I say none of these guys are unbeatable.

Dive and Ker are pretty much up but hmmm... I have a some terrific adn quite closely fought games with Leonard McLaren who really was in the running to even win this time. I have beaten Antnio who was also 2nd = again he is a very good player and perhaps better overall than I...

Game 2 Judy Gao - (I blundered near the end of the game -being too concerned about getting to the end of the time control) overall I was really in a much better position. She has just about always lost to me before this. I only lost one rapid game. She is still young is quite talented however but I am a better player). Lost.

Game 3 Bill Forster - once before I beat him - it was from a slightly inferior position - but I haven't lost to him yet and I didn't. We are about = strength. Draw.

Game 4 Peter Stuart ... The problem better was I became obsessed with wanting to "take him on" I drew with him in the George Trundle Qualifiers in 2009 and won another gem against him against his English. (The Quiet variation of the King's English as knew what he would play..lol) he is great end game player and a good workman but I am capable of keeping up with him. IN the game I suddenly went beserk in an pretty near = position and was soon lost...this was possibly the beginning of the "rot" it was not until Goodhue and Hans Gao in the last 2 games that I settled down and played chess in a sensible and realistic mind frame. My last game was almost faultless. I had beaten Hans in the previous game with that line (Alekhine-Larsen variation) and heahd improved on it as I expected. But THIS time I prepared [contra my not preparing against Winston Yao] - (I have already found a new idea I think in that line, lol!).

Against Dordevic (he is from Serbia ) I was lost by move 16 [!!] in an opening I have been playing for years...on both sides of the board! I knew some of the Spassky-Karpov games for example. I had used Karpov's ideas in playing that line in Correspondence Chess. I simply "exploded" and I was basically down and out for the count.

(For the rest of the tournament he kept looking at me as if I was mad man and he wasn't far wrong if that's what he thought!!)

Against the little boy I didn't even look up that I was playing him (I was still in a state of depression or demoralization) - otherwise I would have researched his opening - the Accelerated Dragon - with which I have won before as White. I played too quickly...

So for most of my games I was in a really bad state of mind.

Fuatai was lost and I knew what to play to finish the game but suddenly decided to make another sacrifice and it was soon all over...incredible. (I have had a mix of results v Fuatai with some wins some losses and so on. To be fair he didn't do himself justice in his opening line.

Goodhue was probably better but at least I kept my head as I was in better state of mind (although he missed two ways to win)..I have had reasonable results vs. Goodhue (I checkmated him once!!) although I DO find the Hippo hard to find a plan against...

I lost by a stupid move vs Ross Jackson. he was very kind and praised my position (and he had seen a lot of my other games on a data base (Per Stuart's) - but not all are on that- but he had seen me stuff up a number of winning or = or promising positions...lol)

Thanks again.

The other thing is one can learn from this. Perhaps to give up chess!

But otherwise it is also quite humbling. They were pretty strong players all and if I came last or had upsets it was my fault not theirs and there were many others who had "tragedies" and missed opportunities and this is like life...

Now, for example, I felt for one player in the Major Open who was trying to win in his last round game and get first place, when he overlooked a mate in one. (It was a deceptive one all right). So I gave him a "consolatory" pat on his shoulder, and I knew how he and many others felt (in chess or in life) who suffer some loss of some kind or have some misfortune or don't "do well" - as most of us do (or don't) - most of us "fail" but we hopefully learn from that "failure"). There were many players who had a hard time of it and this is the same in life.

Most of us find chess and such things very difficult. Perhaps we need to step back and ask whether "winning" is even desirable. We are maybe too fascinated by winners or "achievers" but I think we all like to work or live with those who are not necessarily such. Or their "winning" is how they handle the reality of difficulties and set backs.

The Australian Open concluded today in a three-way tie between George Xie Wendi, Zhao Zong Yuan and Moulthun Ly, the latter two drawing their last round game and George catching up by beating Junta Ikeda.

Unfortunately, despite jointly winning the tournament, George is no closer to the magic 2500 mark...as a matter of fact, he'll probably lose some rating points, so the GM title is still a way off. He'll probably have to go OS to up his rating sufficiently (the opposition isn't quite strong enough in Australia), and as far as I know he has no plans to do so at the moment.

Great performance by Andrew Brown coming equal fourth, including two wins over IMs (and a last round win over the fast-improving Max Illingworth).

Results can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/2011o...

And games here:

<drakkenboy> Well done. There were a number of players on 5 points in the Major Open but given your user handle I'm picking that you're not Cathy Fan.

Anyway good to see you on the site and I hope you enjoy your time here. There are also other New Zealand kibitzers here so you're in good company. See you around.

I played in the NZ Lightening Champs tourney tonight...my best game was against Anthony Carpinter who used to be a very strong player (he still is probably about 2200 or so) in the late 70s to 80s He played the Guimard line against my white Tarrasch (versus the French) and I had read the intro to the book on that (the strategy associated with what to do against the French taking into account the pawn structures) and studied lines on here and in the book ... but mainly I used the idea of keeping blacks pawns on e6 and d5 blocked also got my B to b5 and was prepared possibly to exchange it control e5 as much as I could and the strategical ideas worked for me plus some tactics and I won! But Steadnan got me with his f3 var against the Nimzo ... but previously I beat Luke Li with that line...(Work to do!)

Of course in the French Tarrasch there is my master piece against Bruce Wheeler which had Rybka baffled, it wasn't good enough to analyse it! So Ewen Green brought in a special computer!! (Mind you, he is a genius himself, but perhaps not a computer....lol) ... I must upload it...

In the Lightening Champs Noel Pinic (q.v.) won and young Allen Ansell won second place ...I lost to some guys who only play on the internet! Lurkers!

I also got my revenge against Judy Gao! But IM Dive put me away with his English...

The Australian Open concluded today in a three-way tie between George Xie Wendi, Zhao Zong Yuan and Moulthun Ly, the latter two drawing their last round game and George catching up by beating Junta Ikeda.>

But we who play in N.Z. actually enjoy chess, or some do, I suppose. The Russians and others just suffer...

Just had a quick flick through my personal games against these guys and am surprised to see that I have a slight plus-score. Maybe I should come home and play some chess. Or maybe I'm just benefiting from never having played Dive or Ker (except at blitz), and the fact that some players I have bad records against (Guthrie, Garbett) didn't play:

McLaren 1 draw
Krstev 1 win
Bennett 2 wins 3 draws 2 losses
Gibbons 1 draw, 1 loss
Barlow 1 loss
Jackson 2 wins