2500 rated German International Masters - Their part in my downfall

A summary of Round 1 

Greetings all,

The first entry in my blog, the anticipation, the tension, the drama, the inability to think of an appropriate opening line. Yesterday was the first day in the 2011 Commonwealth Chess Championship, and this blog will look at the tournament through the eyes of MER, the 1600 chess phenomenon from the rustic East Rand.

My chess club el capitan, GJ, whose club consists primarily of a bunch of people getting their chess kicks through bi-weekly consumption of various alcoholic beverages whilst playing blitz and doubles, decided that he had a heavy pennance to pay for large amounts of sins committed in a previous life, and decided to organise the Commonwealth Chess Championship (CCC), a task akin to trying to wipe out corruption in FIFA, get the Lions rugby team to win the Super 14 and other mundane tasks.

There is a plethora of foreign accents flying around the venue, I feel like I am in some international refugee camp caught between the aid workers and the UN people handing out food. Germans, Brits, Argentines, Angolans, Belgians and several others are all of the people who will be lining up to cut me up into tiny pieces of chopped liver and distribute over the general landscape.

Yesterday was the first round. Given my lowly 1600 rating (This is like a 18 handicap golfer in this event), I had the joy in the first round to draw a 19 year-old, Niclas Hushchenbeth, an international master rated 2502 (Clearly the Martin Kaymer of World Chess - young, dangerous etc), who won (!) the German open recently.  Given that Germany has produced in excess of 70 Grandmasters, the boy can clearly play. But MER is resourceful, canny, and optimistic. In so doing, he undertook the following key pre-match work:-

1.) Listed to Bruce Springsteens "None but the brave" 20 minutes before sending his e-pawn forward with the express order - No retreat - (A confident suggestion since pawns can't move backward)
2.) Tried to dress well, given that professional photographers and Indian television were all around.
3.) Tried the famous East Gauteng psychological trick pioneered by Jaco "No nickname" Nienaber of arriving later at the board to induce panic in the opponent, which surprisingly did not work.
4.)In the words of Nigel Short when faced by Gary Kasparov - engaged in non-constructive bouts of blind terror. 

Playing on board 8 of this tournament is the closest MER may ever come to celebrity stardom, short of starting a reality show on "how quickly can you turn a neat house into a scene reminiscent of Rome after it was sacked by the Goths", and its super-cool. Playing with weighted wooden pieces, the svelt DGT boards which beam your game live throughout the world. Sitting in the GM enclosure which is kinda like the playboy mansion in that all the stuff is happening there, but you usually only get to go in on express invitation, and are always curious as to what is happening. When you conclude the game, you don't even have to hand in your notation sheet, its formally collected by the tournament arbiter. Just too cool. Just too amazing, every couple of minutes I had Nigel Short (former World Number 3) glancing at my game (no doubt in absolute shock and awe at the clearly poor moves), but still great.

I would love to start the blog with a sensational upset against Niclas, but that would be unrealistic. Sometimes the only Disney aspects of tournament chess are the hairstyles and the music choice of the participants. I battled on manfully, trying to draw on the experience gained in losing to top players for all of my 30 years, and eventually after 30 moves my position resembled that of an Afgan hill top, desolate, barren and overrun with enemy troops. Its just so soul destroying playing these guys at times. You are never in control, and never get a chance to exert any pressure. I felt like a computer game character jabbing at the enemy with a blunt knife just before he emerged from the shadows with sheet armour, 2 bazookas, a rocket launcher and a chain-saw. Not that easy.

Thats it for post number 1. In the next, I will endeavour to answer critical questions about the tournament, such as where it is, how to blitz a 2100 Australian, and a profile of one of the leading seeds for the tournament, Aussie GM David Smerdon.

MER signing off.