Round 5 of the western States Open-French fight!

This was the only game I won in the B-Section of the Western States Open. It went back and forth and I got to work a bit on my French defense.

Richard Martin 1658 vs. Chris Harrington 1600

Fertile battle grounds in the French Tarrasch or my sixth round game of the Western States Open

I know I said that I would post my third round game next but I actually was pretty interested to go over this game. That's one of the most important part of looking over your game is to actually be motivated and this one intrigued me by what i might find. The distinguished gentleman in the above picture is Tarrasch himself. Old school chess master whom this line of the French gets its name.

One of the things that was interesting in the opening of this game is that we both knew the ideas pretty well. I think both of us were in book theory for 12 moves, I was sublimely aware of the book moves for 15 moves. Which brings me to a point I wanted to make. There is an interesting dogma in chess that I hear alot, "they" say you shouldn't study opening play/lines. As i've looked over more and more chess games i've found that this is simply bad advice. The only thing you shouldn't do in regard to openings is rote memorization, other than that openings have really enhanced my game in several ways.

First, I can choose openings based on style of play, pawn structure, piece strength, etc. The games might not always follow and allow for this but in general you can have some say in dictating what type of game you get into.

Secondly, by going over the opening you get a feel for different ideas in similar positions from the game you have studied, which is the same thing you are trying to do when going over middlegame and tactics, endgame, etc.

Thridly, you will get into the same or near to the same position in many of your games. This helps you develop a sense for taking an advantage when an opponent makes a subpar move.

Fourthly, you don't have to waste so much thinking time/clock time on the first few moves of the game.Therefore extending the time you can spend on the moves from the point of unknown position to the next time control.

Here is the game = )

Chris Harrington 1600 vs. John Locke 1729

Western States Open Round 1

My first game of the western States Open. This was also my first time playing in a class B tournament. Even though my score was so poor (+1 -4), I enjoyed several of the games this weekend.

Greg Sarafian 1723 vs. Chris Harrington 1600
Nimzo-Indian 4.f3 variation

After the game I wasn't upset by the loss. I had taken my time and played hard. I just couldn't quite come up with many good moves in the middle game.

My second game was a disaster based on moving fast like I was playing blitz or something.I threw away a good advantage with white and got mated quickly. I wont be analyzing it because my in-game effort was so lazy. Round three will be coming next!

Western States Open

Strongly considering playing in the Western States Open this weekend...

Chess on the road...

I was recently out of town and on a lazy day of sipping on lemonade and enjoying the end of summer I was able to travel to the Orange County chess club and picked up a sidegame outside on their outside patio. It was a nice afternoon game with a player named Javier Bolognia. He was an older gentleman whom also was in town visiting from somewhere in Europe, I think Portugal.

Anyway I was very eager to get a game against someone new, he said he didn't have a chess rating but played people of FIDE 2000 and could hold his own. This immediately got my attention and I was eager to play! I told him I wasn't very good and that I would try to give him a good game.

I had the white pieces and I had a fantastic performance...well I'll let you see for yourself!

One of my better games. I was excited for a new opponent, I believe he played a bit passive in the opening and underestimated my attack. Still I was able to find lots of good moves without a big blunder.

GM Games

Recently I've been looking over some GM level games, in fact quite a few of them and trying absorb a bit from the moves. I've been going over Fischer's games as well as Botvinnik from Kasparov's "My Great Predessors" series.

In that vein I have been trying to create a disipline and with any luck, a love of deeper analysis. For now I only have the patientce to look at several games in a short period of time. I'm hoping that I begin to enjoy looking at the sub-lines and other ideas presented in the annontation. For now I don't look at many of them. Reason being that as I look at the long tangent line I don't really understand what is going on enough to get a whole lot out of it.

I am especially interested in looking at games that are played in similar openings to my own repertoire since they tend to have ideas that may come up in my own contests, as well as leading to similar middle and endgames.

One thing that has stood out in Bobby Fischer's games seems to be his sublime understanding of the position in comparison to all of his competition. It seems that even when his opponent gets a good initiative or advantage on him he is able to flip the game around and take control.

Well just a few quick thoughts, and I am really considering playing in the Far West Open!

Book Review: Remotely Global-Village Modernity In West Africa

In keeping with the Anthropology vein of this blog I wanted to briefly review the ethnography "Remotely Global" by Dr.Charles Piot. For those of you who aren't Anthro nerds an ethnography is basically a written account of a researcher's field work along with research from other sources and conclusions derived from deductive logic.

Charles Piot is pretty well known in cultural anthro circles, he's a big shot prof. at Duke actually. He is most-well known for his African research, although he dabbles with African-American studies and is a pretty well known leftist.

Anyway the subject matter is the Kabre people of northern Togo. Piot wraps his thesis around the idea that the U.S. State Dept. as well as previous anthropologists have stereotyped African villages and that colonial as well as postcolonial influences have had as much effect on the Kabre people as anything indigenous.

When I began reading this book I had the distinct feeling that Dr. Piot was trying to hard to grind out a place for himself in this discussion. Basically straw-maning many previous researchers while at the same time setting up his own research to seem as real and relevant as possible. I will complain that he "beat a dead-horse" with his attack against early Functional/Structural theory, since the ideas during the 1930s-1960s were in their developmental phase and much thought has been put in to adjust these ideas. He also seemed to give a bit too much attribute in this book to Marxism, which in fact his a part of his own political baggage and not directly all that relevant to the study of the Kabre people.

Ok now to the parts I found intellectually interesting. Piot writes about the Kabre "Gift Economy" which in essence he says gift-giving in the Kabre community is "always a type of moral inquiry,an interrogation of the other". Gift-giving in this community is a form of control and creates indebtedness in the reciever. Therefore making him subserviant in some regard.Its important to give gifts when meeting strangers since one doesn't know how they will respond this is a good way to gauge their character and intentions by waiting for the response or reciprocation.

Their ideas of "Person" is interesting as well. For example the idea that when a child is born into a family it is considered a stranger until the family can figure out which ancestor or dead relative has been reincarnated. Children in fact are considered androgynous, it is only through initiation rituals that children become"incomplete" or gendered. They become a boy or a girl officially after they have been initiated into that phase of life.

Of course this survey is very brief the book itself is highly theoretical and dry at times but at the same time very interesting and thought-provoking.

I recommend this ethnography to anyone interested in cultural anthropology.