Let’s Talk Turkey* – Olympiad 2012

(* If you think that’s a bad pun, just keep reading – you’re in for a real treat.)

It’s time for that great biennial chess event again: the 2012 World Chess Olympiad will be held in Istanbul, Turkey in August.  Preparations for the greatest teams chess festival on the planet have begun in nations around the world, with Australia recently finalising its Open and Women selections.

This year, the teams are:

OPEN:

1. David Smerdon*
2. Darryl Johansen
3. Moulthun Ly
4. Aleksandar Wohl
5. Stephen Solomon

WOMEN:

1. Arianne Caoili
2. Irina Berezina
3. Emma Guo
4. Sally Yu
5. Giang Nguyen

* GM Zong-Yuan Zhao was of course selected as board 1, but withdrew due to university commitments.

In Australia (as in every country), these selections are usually quite controversial.  There have been tears and fights, friendships broken, arguments, appeals, and even the odd court case in the wake of the decisions.  This year is no exception, particularly with regard to the omission of Olympiad veteran WIM Bilijana Dekic from the women’s team, and the highly rated IM Gary Lane being ranked last of the ten candidates for the open.  If you are interested in such things, have an hour to spare and aren’t conflict-avoidant, you might want to check out the exhaustive thread on this topic on the Australian chess bulletin board: http://www.chesschat.org/showthread.php?t=13949&page=6 .  For a more succinct opinion, check out Aleks Wohl’s about his selection: http://doubleroo.blogspot.com/2012/05/australian-olympiad-team.html .

After the relocation to Amsterdam, I’m a little isolated from the Aussie chess community these days, so I won’t weigh in on the debate.  But one thing that’s clear that being an Olympiad selector is an extremely difficult job.  There are five selectors for each team (with four of them common across both panels), and they have to weigh up ratings (both national and international), recent performances, past history, current performance trends and general activity – with no standard criteria – in making their decisions.  And they’re almost guaranteed, no matter what the final decision or even how they individually voted, to be publically abused and insulted in the aftermath.  A thankless job, if ever there was one.  I tip my hat to you.

Overall, here are a couple of trivial observations:

• Some of the criticism levelled at the selectors has been based around accusations of ageism, or deliberately favouring juniors.  I don’t know whether this is true or not, but six months ago, I thought there was a very good chance I’d be the oldest member of a team that looked something like: Zhao, me, Xie, Ly, and one of Junta Ikeda, Max Illingsworth or Bobby Cheng.  (Interestingly, it was also feasible that I’d be the only Caucasian in the team, and potentially also the one one born in Australia.)  As it turns out, I’m the second-youngest.
• There have also been calls for more and/or different selectors.  But we don’t have it as rough as some nations, where both teams can be entirely selected by just one person.  I know of one of the top ten countries in the world where the selector recently had the unenviable job of deciding whether or not to choose one of the nation’s top grandmasters, knowing full well there was a better than even chance he’d be intoxicated at the board.  We might be lucky after all.
• Losing Yuan from our team is a big blow.  He’s not only Australia’s best player, but also phenomenally good at taking on the ‘big guns’ at Olympiads.  No other Australian playing these days can match his ability to go toe to toe with super grandmasters and seasoned professionals, as his impressive scalps such as Kortchnoi and Bologan reflect.  Yuan is also great for team morale, always willing to shell out opening tips and general match advice during the tournament to us minnows.  On a personal note, his absence also means I have to find a new roommate for the first time in almost a decade.
• The perplexing (at least for me) lack of an application from GM-elect George Xie, combined with Yuan’s withdrawal, leaves Australia with one of its weakest teams (on paper) in recent years.  Last Olympiad we had an average rating of over 2480; this year, we’ll be below 2430.

These last couple of dots explain why, personally, I’m a little apprehensive about this Olympiad.  Board one is a big responsibility, not only in a match sense, but also because it means there’s noone to defer to for advice.  Yuan and I had a good system going at World Youth Championships and Olympiads of playing the odd game of tennis/ping pong/soccer together in the mornings, going through our pre-game rituals silently in our shared room (him in healthy meditation, me listening to Linkin Park on the iPod) and then him fixing up all of my opening preparation blindfold on the bus ride to the venue.  Think I’m joking?  Check out this little minature from the last Olympiad, the opening trap of which was devised by Yuan on the bus:

Last night’s dream

August:  The 2012 Chess Olympiad, Istanbul, main playing hall.  A large crowd has gathered around the last game to finish.  Australia is playing against an unspecified Eastern European team, the match locked at one and a half each, and so teammates hover nervously behind the two players for the final stages of the deciding game.

I sit opposite my opponent, a freaky amalgamation of highly-rated grandmasters Vladimir Akopian (Armenia), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan) and Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria).  I have the white pieces, and material is balanced: I have an extra knight, but him three connected passed pawns.  Both kings are exposed, and we have two minutes each left on our clocks for the final moves.  I look up, and Vladimir’s staring back at me – piercing, cold eyes, the eyes of a killer.  He leans back in his chair, and suddenly it’s Kiril: sullen, serious, confident.  I look back at the board; it’s my turn.

I see the position for the first time, and I draw a breath – he’s threatening checkmate next move, by capturing my knight with his queen.  I look up, and it’s Vugar, his hands a triangle against his temples, his eyes fixated on the board.  I become aware of the crowd, the remarkable silence of the mass, save for the odd tense cough, and the ticking of the old-school analogue chess clock.  I pick up my queen, and my hand hovers over the board, grasping the white piece by her crown, waiting, looking.  The crowd leans forward as one.

I place it on e5, giving check.  Suddenly it’s Kiril, and he whips off my queen with his own with a flourish, slamming his clock with a large BANG.  I recapture tentatively, and he pauses, checks, and thrusts forward his g-pawn.

I recoil; my clock’s flag is hanging, seconds remaining, but I can’t bring myself to move, to focus.  Australia’s team captain, Manuel Weeks, flashes me a worried look; teammates Darryl Johansen and Zhong-Yuan Zhao simultaneously slump their shoulders with a dejected, knowing glance at each other.  The diminutive Armenian grandmaster Gabriel Sargissian starts rubbing his hands together as he tries to peer over his teammates’ shoulders; for some reason, his nose is long and crooked.  With much hesitation, I capture the loose e6 pawn, and suddenly Vladimir is back, the cold, calculating professional, marching his pawns towards my back rank.  The g-pawn advances, his neighbour on the f-file quickly following, and my clock counts down the last few seconds to the flag falling…three…two…one…

Suddenly, the board begins to spin, and the table, the players and the room begin to swirl, a shimmery haze filling my eyes, before – SNAP! – I’m transported back back to the original scene, queen in hand, two minutes remaining on my clock.  I blink twice, but my opponent and the spectators are busy staring at the board, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.  I try to regain my composure.  I lower the queen, not to e5 this time, but to d4, again with check.  Surely it can’t be any worse than the history I’ve just avoided.

Kiril takes off my foolhardy white pawn with his king, and I eagerly reply by swinging my rook to h1 with check.  Suddenly I sit up off my chair – a retreat by his king allows my pieces to penetrate into his position on h8, and checkmate follows in just a few more moves!

But Vugar’s back, and he confidently marches his king forward to g6, and I realise my checks have quickly run dry.  Despondently, I retreat my queen to d3 to defend my knight and prevent his own checkmate, but his reply is swift and precise: his queen plants herself deep into my territory, offering a poisonous trade that I dare not refuse, but assures destruction if accepted.

I look up, and Vladimir is staring back at me, expressionless; behind him, Gabriel is smiling at me, and the broad grin seems somehow maniacal when sheltered under such a wicked proboscis.  The crowd starts to murmur.  Faced with an impossible choice, I sigh, and, with a heavy heart, reach to move my queen, a move I know will seal my fate.  The clock ticks down my final seconds…

The queen is in my hand, but the board looks different: I’m back again at the opening position, the crowd is silent, and Vugar sits opposite.  But this time I’m ready, composed, and I have the advantage of knowing how two of the potential variations play out for me.  I smile a secretive, half-smile to myself.  Suddenly I notice that my score-sheet has my last played queen move to d3, and not e3.  I frown, and gingerly lower the piece back to her original square, looking up somewhat guiltily at my opponent to see whether he corrects the alteration.  He doesn’t budge, and neither does the crowd.

My clock ticks down, but I don’t notice.  I take my hand off the queen and rest my arms on the table as I continue to stare at my opponent.  I know I’ve touched my queen and I’m obliged to move her, but if I wait long enough, maybe, just maybe…

Sure enough, after a few moments the haze returns, and the people and objects mesh into a shimmery blur.  My hands are still resting on the table when they re-emerge, and the board shows my queen sitting on d3, stoically defending my knight, and offering the e-file to my rook.  I lift it, and the wood makes a satisfying CLUNK as I take the pawn on e6.

Vugar shifts uncomfortably in his chair, and the crowd again begins to murmur – but this time, they’re on my side.  If he pushes his g-pawn, I’ll take his pawn on f5 with my queen, and suddenly his proud defensive wall of pawns will have crumbled, fatally exposing his king.  With some trepidation, Kiril plonks his queen down on c3, offering a relieving trade.  But this time, instead of accepting, I’ve a startling riposte up my sleeve…

I move my rook to e8, giving check.  Taking with his own rook would leave his queen unguarded and en prise.  With no other option, Kiril moves his king forward one square, capturing my pawn.

I reach forward again, and snap off his f5 pawn with my queen, again with check.  With both kings now desperately exposed, I’ve got no choice but to keep the attack going at all costs, lest my own defences be breached.  Vladimir also has no choice, and continues to shuffle his king forward into the abyss, sending the monarch on a perilous path down the h-file, hoping my attack will run out of steam before I can deliver the coup de grace.

I give check again, this time with my rook, prodding the black king one step further along the plank.  Withdrawal would fall to a quick checkmate, and so Vugar pushes his king forward one last time to h5.

But now the king’s retreat has been cut off, and his own pawn blocks a sideways parry.  The only breathing squares left to the black royal lie in front of him… but wait!  I look up, and Vugar’s eyes meet mine – he’s seen it, too.  I look back at the board as the crowd lurches forward as one expectant beast, sensing the imminent end.  I can play check with my queen and cut off his king’s final escape squares at the same time, leaving no way out.  It’s checkmate on h3, and I lean forward to deliver the killer blow…

(…And this is when I woke up.  Sadly, I was not in Istanbul at the Olympiad, and I was not just about to defeat one of the world’s top grandmasters.  But, perhaps even more disappointingly, even if the game had existed, I was not even about to deliver checkmate.  As I got out of bed and set up my ‘brilliant’ subconscious combination on a chess board…

…I instantly realised that my final winning move was in fact a horrific blunder, as my queen could simply be captured by her opposing number on c3:

Ahem.  It seems my fight of fantasy lacked the precision of that other dreamy David, the extraordinarily talented grandmaster David Bronstein, whose subconscious composed his famous Dream Game in 1961.

Not to worry.  Perhaps I’ll get another chance in reality when the Olympiad kicks off in August.  Though if I arrive on the first day and notice Gabriel’s had a nose job, I might start to wonder…)

Small feet and less meat

As many of you know, I’ve been channeling my inner hippy for the last twelve months, with remarkable success.  Of course, that depends on your definition of success; an aversion to shaving, repetitive lounge music and ownership of a solitary pair of shoes are hardly new attributes that will endear myself to everyone.  But this bohemian transition has largely been driven by something of a little more substance: a fervent passion for tackling climate change.

I don’t really know from where this zeal sprouted; I’ve never been particularly environmentally minded, to be honest, and my main love in the academic sphere has of course been behavioural economics.  But I became so convinced that climate change is the single most dangerous modern challenge facing humanity that I up-and-left Australia for Amsterdam to put my studies (and, I hope, my career) to use in the great greenie fight.

So far, unfortunately, it’s a fight mankind is definitely losing.  Behavioural economics hasn’t come far enough to pave the way for applying effective policies to tackle the problem and global politics on climate change mitigation is a joke (and not a particularly funny one).  The situation is becoming so dire that the conversation has seriously moved towards some outrageous geoengineering solutions, ranging from placing mirrors in the sky to pumping artificial filters into the atmosphere to scattering iron in the oceans.  It sounds a bit like trying to season a soup with a random sample of household cleaning products to me, but desperate times, as they say, call for desperate mirrors.  Or something like that.

Enter the latest bright idea: Human Engineering.

Yep, you heard right.  Three distinguished academics from Oxford and New York University have come up with a completely bizarre but compellingly intriguing idea.  Seeing as climate change is anthropogenic (fancy scientist speak for “Man-made”), why not strike at the root of the problem, and just change humans?

The main argument is that one of the biggest ways we’ve altered the global ecosystem is through our insatiable desire to eat meat – and lots of it.  The authors cite facts to support that over 51% of greenhouse emissions come from livestock production; I find this hard to believe, but if the figure is even a third of this figure, it’s food for thought (ha!).  In any case, I know it’s now widely known that most of our climate worries would be over if the whole world went vegetarian, but this is one behavioural trait that’s incredibly difficult to influence.

(I should mention that our meat-fetish is largely centred in rich first-world countries: the average American or Australian eats  over 120 kilos of meat a year, compared to around 15 kilos in Africa and 3(!) kilos in India.  China’s risen to around 50 kilos in the last couple of years, but they’re still a far cry from us carnivorous fatties.)

I don’t want to sound like I’m casting judgement on meat-eaters.  Despite being borderline manic about climate change, living with two vegetarians and having recently dated one, I’ve made no such sacrifices myself (and in fact I’m writing this after just enjoying a delicious chicken curry.  Can you spell “hypocrite”?).  Just like giving up smoking, it’s incredibly difficult it is for humans to alter their taste behaviour – which makes the authors’ suggestions all the more relevant.

So, how do you engineer people to stop eating meat?  There are a bunch of ideas put forward by the authors, my favourite being something of a “meat-patch” you stick on your arm that makes you mildly intolerant to meat (and, presumably, reduces your cravings for it).  Unlikely to take off, but a neat concept, and it’s at least a little saner than the idea of poisoning our meat so that we vomit after eating it.  Really, guys?  Who would buy it?

What would Lisa do?

The other human engineering suggestion in the paper is even more controversial:  If humans are leaving too big a carbon footprint…why not just shrink their feet?

Yep.  Shrinking humans.

The concept may sound ridiculous, but it’s surprisingly defensible (at least a little).  Again back to the livestock argument, smaller humans eat less, use up less petrol in car trips, and use less resources (such as clothing).  It seems to somehow retard human evolution, but perhaps we’ve evolved to the point where being physically bigger is no longer really an edge.  We live in the age of the geeks, after all.  (Despite this, I don’t suggest telling the next big gym-junkie you encounter how evoluntionary superior us chess players are.)

Check out how small those carbon footprints are.

One way the authors suggest for achieving this is through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, whereby parents can choose smaller children before birth; another is through post-birth hormonal treatment.  Think parents won’t go for it?  Never fear; the authors suggest governments offer incentives to encourage voluntary participation in genetic programs to reduce the height and weight of our offsprings, in one of the most unusual baby-bonus schemes I’ve heard.

I… Well.  I don’t even want to begin pointing holes in the economic analysys, because the authors mean well, and I think their main point, that we need to start looking at drastic solutions to an increasingly critical global problem, is entirely valid.

However, I think probably the way to go is to keep investigating more subtle approaches to persuading people to change their behaviour.  I’ve got my own novel idea.  If human engineering really is the best we’ve got, perhaps, instead of genetic modification, we should instead alter evolution by changing perceptions of beauty and thus encouraging men to find short vegetarians attractive. Hey, as opposed to sacrificing chicken curries, at least in this regard I can claim to lead by example.

I wonder if they’ll publish me?

The Drywall returns

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone…

(From Robert Frost’s Mending Wall.)

Readers may remember my unsuccessful foray into the Stonewall world at a recent UK league match (see here for the report).  Well, it was hard to blame the opening (nor Dutch expert Moskalenko’s advice), and I did get to play a rather dashing rook-for-two-bishops sacrifice.  But in the end, regardless of the build up or asthetics, the result would read “Pert – Smerdon, 1 – 0″; chess, like boxing, love or watching a Leonardo di Caprio movie, is really just hit or miss.

Still, I was undeterred after my first Stonewall crumble, and so I decided to give it a while a few weeks later in the next league match.  My opponent was the experienced and solid Chris Beaumont, and he seemed not at all surprised at my choice of the stonewall.  In fact, to my confuddlement and suspicion, he blitzed out the exact same moves as in my game against Pert.  My first thought was the terrified, “Oh no, he’s read my blog!”  My second was the embarrassingly narcissistic “Wow – he’s actually read my blog!”  (It turns out neither was true.)  Fearing that I was walking into some blog-improving preparation, I deviated on move 9.  This sent my opponent into a deep think, confirming my suspicious.  On move 12 my captain, Roger Emerson, caught me as I was wandering around and whispered, “What happened to your Stonewall again? Looks more like a dry stonewall, if you ask me!” (A dry stonewall  is usually mortar-free and therefore, presumably, more prone to collapsing – although the Incans might have something to say about that.)

Not quite the inspiration for my new dry stone wall opening, but it'd make a nice Cusco story.

Despite Roger’s astute observation (he was also responsible for alerting me to the Frost poem at the outset) and my cunning deviation, the game followed an eerily similar vibe to the first outing against Pert.  My ‘drywall’ quickly solidified once my e-pawn got to e4, ‘cementing’ (see what I did there?) the centre.  Plus, I again managed to concoct a mischievious rook-for-two-pieces sacrifice (but a much better version this time around).  The coup de grace came just on the time control at move forty, with an elegant but straightforward combination to queen my a-pawn.

The position was winning (though not trivially so), and I secretly hoped Chris would resign – not, as you might expect, out of relief, but embarrasingly, because I was running late for a date.  On move 44, with a small crowd gathered around our board, Chris leaned over and proffered, “I hope you don’t mind that I play on a bit longer.  I can’t quite see the win for you, though I’m sure it is winning, and I wouldn’t mind seeing your technique.”  As gracious as you like, and of course I replied, “Not at all!  Do continue.”  After all, as the saying goes, dates come and dates go, but a Stonewall stands forever.

…Or something like that.

Lights, Camera, Chess

There was a time when chess only made an appearance in the movies if the director felt the need to add some intellect and cunning to his evil villain’s persona.  The recent Bond baddie in Casino Royals is a typical example, and the John Travolta/Jonathan Rhys-Meyers action flick From Paris With Love doesn’t do much to alter this trend.  (Of course, if you go back even further to the original Thomas Crown Affair, a thieving Robert Redford goes a little way to soften his criminal character by using chess as foreplay for the steamy love scene with detective ???.  But that’s, unsurprisingly, something of an exception.  Or is it?  Read on.)

 On my recent flight from Amsterdam to Brisbane, I watched three in-flight movies, all of which contained a chess scene.  What are the odds?!  Even more remarkably, the chief protagonist in every story was the wielder of the wood.

Robert Downey Junior uses his chess brilliance as a weapon in the fight against the evil Professor Moriarty (who is also, more routinely, portrayed as a chess master) in the new Sherlock Holmes adventure.  In the Cold War spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Gary Oldman marks the candidates for the mole in the British service on difference chess pieces, which also serve as their code names.

And then, perhaps most surprisingly, chess appears a few times in the latest Twilight instalment – yes, actual chess in the teenage vampire flick Breaking Dawn.  And for what purpose, I hear you ask?  As a necessary distraction (replacement?) while Edward (the vampire) refuses to consummate his marriage to Bella (the human).  Eventually, Bella finally wins a game against her new husband and, sweeping the board of its pieces as they lie on the beach at their honeymoon retreat, it seems her cunning chess strategy is remarkably similar to the old Redford technique.

Possibly the most romantic vampire-movie-chess-honeymoon-scene of all time (at least by elimination)

A new dawn for chess in film, perhaps.  And not only film.  I finally bit the bullet and read the first Harry Potter book (under extreme peer pressure, I should add), expecting to be bitterly disappointed.  While the writing level would have gotten a ‘B’ from my fifth grade English teacher, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only did chess feature in the story, but played a pivotal role in Harry and co. surviving the perils of the Dark Lord.  While J.K. Rowling could have earned my eternal respect by actually including genuine chess moves in the human chess game that decides the climax, I could at least appreciate an effort to promote chess in a bestselling childhood story.  Inspiring stuff, from the ground up! 

I wondered… Has chess really become that popular in Hollywood, and in popular fiction?  Has it become cool?  Has it become…sexy?

Unlikely.  Perhaps chess has become a little less nerdy than its former image, and that’s something of which to be proud.  But, despite Vampire Edward’s steamy honeymoon strategy (not to mention the 2012 Chess Pin-up Calendar that adorns my kitchen – thanks, Shiloh), ‘chess’ and ‘sexy’ are rarely uttered in the same breath.  In fact, the advice of almost every top chess player I’ve spoken to is to keep chess and romance as far apart as is humanly possible.  As Freddy Trumper sings in Chess: The Musical, “I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.”

Unless, of course, you’re trying to resist the amorous advances of a sparkly vampire playing for mate.

Like a red rag to a Bull(winkle)

I got a rare chance during my Australian return to visit my old chess club, Club Bullwinkle.  Perhaps better described as a creatively Bohemian community than a chess club, Bullwinkle is known for its energy, spontaneity and perhaps above all else, its often completely chess-free club meetings.  Started by a bunch of students from the Unviersity of Queensland in the late nineties, Bullwinkle was kind enough to allow me into its ranks at the tender age of 12, I suspect more to add a bit of strength to its interclub chances than anything else.  Nevertheless, this resulted in exposing me early on to the eye-opening world of university students at an age when I was still convinced girls carried cooties, and also ensured I was never swayed by the “chess is uncool” stigma commonly touted in Australian highschools.  From the way Bullwinkle flourished, it was clear to me that chess was esteemed and respected from the tertiary years and up (and, it seemed, got a lot more fun, too).

It’s been a while since I’ve been back to my old stomping ground, but, after trying to catch up with Jacob Edwards (friend, Bullwinkle founder and still club president), I discovered Bullwinkle was scheduled to play an interclub match while I was in town.  This conveniently saw a dozen or so of the club faithful assemble in the one locale to battle Redlands, and I thought I’d drop by.  Jacob, notoriously persuasive, convinced me to do more than just pass through, and I ended up playing a long-overdue rated game for my very first chess club.

The match should have been more about the catching up and reminiscing than the chess, and a quick victory ‘for the crowd’ was what I expected, but my opponent, South African-born Bruce Williams (also Bullwinkle, but chivalrously playing for Redlands due to a desire to take me down) completely ripped me to shreds.  My arrogance and nonchalance was brutally punished by Bruce, a guy known for his attacking flair and merciless dedication to tactical assaults.

The victorious Bullwinkle team, complete with (small) trophy. Bruce is second from the left.

I was ridiculously lucky to swindle a win in a drawn rook-and-two-pawns-each endgame with us both down to less than a minute on the clock, but half a dozen moves earlier, Bruce could have capped off a fine performance by burying my defenses once and for all.  I apologised to him for the lucky win after the game; he replied “It wasn’t luck.  That’s why you’re a grandmaster.”  Cute, but I think luck still wins out, and perhaps the nickname the Cafe Laurierboom locals in Amsterdam have (affectionately) given me isn’t totally inaccurate.  From one hemisphere to another, proudly Bullwinkle, and proudly the “worst grandmaster in the world.”

I wear it proudly.

“Dear Karma”, the sequel

Dear Karma,

Thank you for your recent visit – it was a pleasure, as always.  It had been a while between meetings; if I recall correctly, the last time we spent some quality time together was in Buenos Aires, where you kindly brought round a pickpocketing, attempted mugging and flight-cancelling volcanic ash cloud all in one.  Quite the achievement.

But that was a good nine months ago, of course, and good friends like us can’t go that long without an unannounced hello.  And I’m glad you chose the week of my exams and flight home to Australia to drop by; I’d hate for our little meetings to be uneventful.

I have a feeling you may have taken personally my decision to leave an hour early for the two-hour trip to Rotterdam for my econometrics exam.  Perhaps missing my company was the reason you chose to cancel my trains, and leave me scrambling to catch a late train, find my tram and make the exam on time.  Perhaps our long absence apart was the cause of your encouraging the tram company to silently change its tram lines the week before, resulting in my travelling for half an hour in the opposite direction.  Perhaps, Karma, a deep affection for our friendship persuaded you to gridlock the city roads after I caught a taxi from the other side of the city.  And I can only assume a cheery desire for us to be reunited prompted you to ask the exam supervisor to confiscate my ‘unsuitable’ calculator after I arrived 45 minutes late for the exam.

It’s flattering; it really is.

After such a lengthy catch-up, though, I’m not sure why you felt the need to drop in on me for the final exam.  After all, I’d arrived on time and made sure that leaving immediately after the scheduled finish would just about get me to the airport to catch my flight back to Australia.  Having spent so much time together just two days earlier, Karma, I’m not sure why you felt the need to tell the professor to spontaneously give us all an extra half-hour due to the extreme difficulty of the exam – a half-hour, naturally, I had no choice but to decline and leave the exam, unfinished, to depart for the airport.  Such is occasionally the way, of course, but to then delay my flight by an hour after my arrival at the airport, one might feel, was just a little cheeky.

You always did have a devilish sense of humour, Karma, and you continually surprise me, even when I think you couldn’t go any further.  For instance, I thought your wittiness had reached its bounds after this proverbial salt-rubbing, but you had another gag in store to round out quite the performance.  The off meat in the airport sandwich was a nice touch, perhaps topped only by the violent air turbulence to match the stomach.  It was almost like you were right there with me, Karma, through the four flights and 30 hours it took me to get home.  Such time together is, naturally, priceless.

But if I could be so bold, Karma, might I suggest we take care not to let these reunions become devalued by their frequency.  After all, what with the intensity of our friendship, I’m not sure my stomach could handle the butterflies – or the ham sandwiches – of a more regular relationship.  Perhaps a missed-bus postcard after my exams next time, or even just a friendly coffee-spilling hello. And perhaps not for another nine months, if you can hold out that long.  Or perhaps, even, not at all.

I have to wrap this up now, Karma – they’re boarding my flight back to Amsterdam.  Say – you’re not on board, are you?

Your dearest friend,

David

Dutch Montage

I’ve been offline for a while, thanks largely to: (a) The deaths of both of my computers (well, one remains in Computer Hospital); and (b) Concerted efforts to survive the coldest Dutch winter in twenty years.

To be honest, the time away from my number one vice (Facebook) and indeed internet distractions in general has done my studies quite the service.  The programme is getting more and more intense by the day, and frankly I and a number of my colleagues are taking a ”Kevin 24/7′ approach just to keep our heads above water.

(I write this at midnight on the office computers, awaiting the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s press conference in response to a coming leadership challenge by Kevin Rudd.  All political puns, therefore, intended…

Rather than write a couple of thesis-length chapters on surviving the Dutch freeze, finding outlets from academic frustration and the most amazing cake I’ve ever seen, I’ve opted for a Tumblr-style pictorial montage.  Enjoy.

The first signs of the chill to come - a bird walks along his former swimming canal.

The snow outside the Tinbergen Institute (TI).

It turns out ducking beats blocking in snowball fights.

Our female classmates were far better at pooling forces than the men.

Australia, I'm sad to say, was not successful in the 2012 TI Snowball Fight.

Riding a bike in the snow and ice is, to say the least, problematic.

Not quite enough snow for a magnum opus, but my neighbour's snowcat was something to smile at.

Inside from the cold, Rudger and Swapnil remain hard at work.

(It's hard to know whether the feel is colder inside or outside the office.)

Travers, our resident Canadian, bemused (by the math, or by my aversion to the cold, or both).

The workload at TI is such that certain modifications on traditional Zen-like postures are necessary.

Methods to escape the stresses of study have become more abstract as the semester wears on...

...while celebrations are always well deserved. (Champagne, caviar and chocolate chess cake, courtesy of Camille)

Revolutionise your tragedies

I’m not really in the habit of plugging chess books, nor authors.  But I’m going to make an exception for Victor Moskalenko, well-known author of The Flexible French and most recently Revolutionise Your Chess.

With no time to study chess (and even less time to remember my old theory), it was time for me to start thinking practically about how to survive at the board.  I needed a system that wasn’t too susceptible to the latest novelties, that was easy to understand, and that was fresh enough to keep me interested.  No mean feat.

Fortunately, in Revolutionise Your Chess, Moskalenko (or “Mister Stonewall”, as I’ve come to view him) sets out his system for playing the Stonewall Dutch as black against virtually any white setup besides 1.e4.  After getting inspired, I turned to the new Win With the Stonewall Dutch book by Sverre Johnsen and Ivar Bern (and featuring Simen Agdestein) for a brush-up on theory, and it appeared I’d found my antidote.

It’s one thing to try and learn a new opening from books, of course, but quite another to put it into practice.  I did the usual thing of trying out the lines in internet blitz games and then cross-referencing the more painful losses to the books, which gave me something of a feel for the positions.  Both books are really exceptional when it comes to explaining the ideas and themes in simple, easy to understand dictation, and after a while, I felt ready to whirl out my new baby in a real contest.

Cue 4NCL, the UK chess league, which held its third and fourth rounds last weekend.  I’d been recruited to play for Guildford, the second-best team in the league, for the crucial weekend that featured the derby with number one and hot favourite, Wood Green.  My duty as the ring-in foreigner was to beat the weaker guy with white in the first game, and then at least hold the draw with black against my higher rated Wood Green opponent in the second.

Now, the neat thing about the Stonewall Dutch is that, technically, you can play it with white, too.  And this way, you even gain a move!  It’s a little cowardly, but I decided to whirl out my Stonewall for the very first time against a 2200 with the white pieces in the first match, with some success…

(As you click through the moves, for those that are italicised, my comments should appear in the box under the board.)

Spurred on by this win and brimming with Stonewall confidence, I decided to use my new favourite opening in the critical Sunday match.  I was paired with black against English Grandmaster Nick Pert, who almost always opens with 1.d4, so the scene seemed perfect.  And, to be fair, I can’t complain about the opening:  the game followed almost exactly Moskalenko’s own analysis in his book and, even after I was left on my own, I felt very comfortable and even enthused about my position.  So much so, in fact, that instead of just trying to hold the draw, I decided to try and be the team hero and go all-out for the win.  Little did I know that my chess, though perhaps ‘revolutionised’, was still susceptible to tragedy…

Resolution Pollution

Ah, the New Year. That magical time of the year when, amazingly, every man and his dog, filled with hope and promise, resolves to change, revamp and improve every aspect of life over the next twelve months.

And then promptly gives up by the first weekend.

In recent years, however, I’ve started taking this whole resolution thing seriously. Perhaps it’s the disciplined, strategic chess player in me, or perhaps I just like the philosophy of new beginnings. Whatever the reason, last year, I carefully and meticulously concocted nine resolutions complete with plans, timelines and measurable outputs.

And the result? Seven from nine. Not a bad strike rate (in chess tournament speak, one might speculate that 7/9 is not quite grandmaster-norm level, but enough to place in a large open…). Some of the more trivial of the success stories that have been followed on this blog in the last 12 months include: “Start grad school”; “Volunteer in a third-world country” and “Learn a second language”.  The two fugitives – “Learn to sing in pitch” and “Learn to play Jack Johnson’s ‘Taylor’ on guitar” – were meant to acknowledge my complete lack of musical ability, but give me enough inspiration and achievability to make a move in a vaguely artistic direction.

They’ve followed on to the 2012 list, which currently stands at eight items – but, given that the world is supposed to end in December 2012, I feel it’s only fair to cut back the list by one.  The biggie on the list this year is curing my insomnia (which regular readers must by now be familiar with from such tales as here, here and here), and work is already in progress (he says, writing this at 4.30am…).  It ties in nicely with “Try at least a full term of yoga”, which apparently helps with this sort of thing (and breathing, and stress, and flexibility, and flat tyres, and tax returns and whatever else hippies claim this aerobic penicillin supposedly solves).

Grad school has not made this little predicament any easier, as it turns out that trying to sleep while algebraic equations float through your head is comparable to chess puzzle dreams (which any chess guy and more importantly chess guys’ girlfriends will tell you makes for a sleepless night).  But the course is not going anywhere, nor getting easier, so, in the light of alternatives, just call me ‘Yogi’.  (Suggestions, remedies and old wives’ tales for insomnia potions welcome, naturally.  Tristan’s recommendation that I add “Grow a goatee” as a resolution has been politely but firmly vetoed.)

Still, a fail on the insomnia front can only mean more time to tackle the other guys on the list.  I’m sure my neighbours won’t mind 4am singing practice, or the dulcet strains of an out-of-tune guitar played by a musicophile.  At least, if the Mayans are right, they only have another 350 days to put up with it.

Happy new year, everyone!