onegoodmove

A few days ago I told you about the event at the Internet Chess Club . Banter Chess a two game match between GM Larry Christiansen (the current US Champ) and Alexi Dreev (from Russia). The Players commented on the games in real time, but couldn't see each others comments. The event exceeded my expectations, which were already very high. My son's Chris & Tim were all online watching the action with me Chris from England. and Tim and I at home. There were approximately 700 other chess fans watching with us. We all ran out of superlatives early on, you can only say this is so cool. This is fucking awesome so many times. The games were exciting the commentary by the players was both instructive and entertaining. In the first game Alexi opened with a Queen pawn and Larry surprised him with the Benoni, a favorite defense of Grandmaster Nick de Fermian, who by the way tied with Larry at U. S. Championship this year. Larry won the playoff. When Alexi played 3. Nf3 he was expecting either a Queens Indian Defense or the Bogo Indian Larry chose the Benoni. It reminded me of the National Open in Las Vegas in 1993. Nick de Fermian had started poorly and I was playing above my head in the Open Section. I got paired with Nick in the third round. A lamb to the slaughter. The game got published in the Tournament Bulletin under amusing crushes, I later discovered that the game had made it into a database on a chess-playing program called Extreme Chess. One reason I remembered the game was that I had told Igor Ivanov that I was paired with Nick and that I was looking forward to playing against his Benoni. At the time I didn't realize that if I played 3. Nc3 that Nick would play the Nimzo Indian and that I should have played 3. Nf3 if the Benoni was what I wanted. I'm sure it would have made no difference. So of course the discussion of Larry's brought back those memories. The Benoni is extremely sharp and when Larry played the defining c5 and said something like lets play something suicidal. The game went back and forth finally ending in a hard fought draw. The second game was even wilder if that is possible. Larry sacks his queen for a couple of pieces and a wild position. Larry is a very creative chess player. At one point. Alexi said I thought we had agreed not to play these kinds of positions. Larry made an error towards the end and as a result the game went from a win or draw to a loss giving the match to Alexi 1.5 to .5. You can see the games here with all the players' comments move by move. I also included my game with Nick if you're interested in seeing how beautifully a GM can crush a patzer.