RIP Jon Burgess

National Master Jon Burgess took his own life last weekend in the garage of his home near Prospect High School. He is survived by his wife and young son. I have known Jon since he moved to the United States from England nearly a decade ago. I played him several times, but never managed better than a draw. I also played on a couple of teams with Jon. As both an opponent and a teammate he was generous and supportive.

I last saw Jon at the Chicago Open chess tournament in May. He and Michael Auger were going over a game they had just played in the U2300 section. It was a wild tactical battle and they were having great fun exploring the possibilities. After they were done, Jon asked me if I wanted to go over any of my games with him. I wish I had taken him up on his offer.

I never would have guessed that Jon suffered from depression, but sometimes its hard to tell. It saddens me that he didn't know how much fun it could be to hang around with him.

Chess players are prone to see life as a chess game, but it's important not to forget the differences:

• In life, all resignations are premature.
• In life, it's never a bad idea to play a couple more moves just to see what happens.
• In life, no matter how overwhelming the attack may seem, there is always a chance to turn things around.
• In life, even if you feel like all your pieces have been captured, there is probably a pawn somewhere that you haven't noticed.

I wish that Jon had played out the position a little longer.

Mike Monsen Picking Up Some Rating Points

It's great to see Prospect's 2nd Board playing some chess this summer.  Mike has played in three tournaments this summer raising his rating from 1147 to 1282.  His best result came at the Evanston Tri Level on July 14th where he won two, lost one, and drew one against opponents who out rated him by an average of more than 400 points.

Here is his last round draw from the Chicago Class Championship.

Hart v Moskwa, the Rematch, 1/2-1/2.

Robert and I played in Yuri Shulman's G45 tournament at the Barbara Rose Elementary School in South Barrington on Saturday.  Despite offering free entries to anyone rated over 1600, Robert and I were the only takers.  However, the MSL was well represented with Michael Feldman from Fremd as well as Harrison Choi, Jiby Varghese, and Jake Albertson from Hoffman Estates.  Going into the fourth last round, Robert, Harrison, and I all had three points and I thought Robert might get the chance to avenge his loss to Harrison at the MSL Tournament last January, but instead he got another crack at me, albeit again with the Black pieces.

I opened with my usual 1.c4 and Robert replied with the much less usual 1...b6.  We were quickly out of book and forced to rely on our wits.  I felt that I had the better position for much of the game, but I was unable to figure out any way to capitalize on my space advantage and I offered a draw as my clock went under five minutes.

Chicago Open

I won two games, lost one, and drew four to finish 4-3 in the U2100 section at the Chicago Open over the Memorial Day weekend.  My rating slipped four points to 2007.  Not quite as good as last years 5.5-1.5 finish that pushed my rating up to 2068, but it was nonetheless a pleasant weekend.  Two MSL alumni had strong results in U2300.  Barrington's Zach Kasiurak cracked the master level at 2201 by going 5-2 and Buffalo Grove's Matt Wilber upped his rating to 2183 by going 4.5-2.5.

I was mildly pleased with my performance in the three rook endings that I played, drawing the two when I was a pawn behind and winning the one where I was a pawn ahead.  In fact, I went the entire tournament without badly screwing up an ending which encourages me greatly.  I even managed to generate winning chances in one of the rook ending where I was down a pawn.


After frittering away a strong middle game with some ill conceived tactics, I found myself down a pawn as White in the following position. 

Question:  Should White restore material equality with 38.Rxe5?

Hint: The key to rook endings is keeping the rook active.

Answer:  No.  Superior rook activity is often worth a pawn in these endings.  After 38.Rxe5?!, Black can activate her rook with 38...Rb6 putting it in optimal position to support the advance of her pawn.  White would then be forced to use deactivate his rook by maneuvering it to b2 to blockade the pawn.  On the other hand, after 38.Rb7 Rc5 39.Kg4, White's rook prevents the advance of the b-pawn, keeps an eye on the Black king, and forces the Black rook into the passive task of defending its pawns from the side.

White was eventually able to recover the pawn under more favorable circumstances and could even have gone up by a pawn however Black was able to activate her king and rook to hold the draw.

A Rook Ending from the Denker

Here's a position from Moskwa v. Kogen that illustrates the differences between rook endings and queen endings discussed in the last post.

Robert's pawn is nearer to queening but that's not nearly as big an advantage in a rook ending because the Black rook will sacrifice itself for the new queen after which the White rook won't be able to handle the Black king and connected pawns alone and may be forced to sacrifice itself in return.  A queen could handle the Black king and pawns with ease.

The game went 39.Rc8 Rd3 40.Ke6 b3 41.d7 a4 42.d8=Q+ Rxd8 43.Rxd8 Kc5 and in order to draw White will have to hustle his king over to help with the defense and sacrifice his rook at the right moment.  On the other hand, 39.e5! would have won after 39....Rd3 40.e6 Rd5+ 41.Ke4 Rxd6 42.e7 42.Rxe7 42.Rxe7  because the White king is close enough to assist the rook before the Black pawns advance too far.

A Queen Ending from the Denker

One of the places that I thought Robert Moskwa might run into trouble at the Denker Qualifier due to the relatively short time he has been playing serious chess was in the endgame.  Although his calculation skills are excellent, you often don't have enough time left to calculate as thoroughly as needed when you reach the endgame.  As a result, the kind of general understanding of endgame principles that you can only get by experience, especially painful experience, can be very important.

Nowhere is the lack of time felt more than in queen endings.  On nearly every move, the players must try to visualize the consequences of an avalanche of checks.

In most endings, a player must carefully weigh the value advancing a pawn closer to the queening square against the possibility that it becomes weak due to lack of support.  Hence, the general endgame principle of pieces before pawns, i.e., unless the ending is a pure pawn race, players should try to improve the position of their pieces before they advance their pawns.

In queen endings, however, advanced pawns are much less likely to become a liability.  This is because a queen has the ability to protect a pawn and control the squares in front of the pawn at the same time without hindering the pawn's advance.  A king can blockade a pawn that is only supported by a knight, a rook, or a bishop, but it is helpless to stop the advance of a pawn supported by a queen.  In fact, it often has to worry about being mated. Even another queen acting alone cannot hold back a pawn supported by a queen.

The flip side of the queen's ability to advance a pawn without assistance is its ability to oppose a king and a pawn without assistance.  Acting alone, a knight, a rook, or a bishop has difficulty holding back a pawn supported by a king and can often be forced to sacrifice itself to prevent a pawn from queening.  A queen on the other hand has very little trouble holding back a pawn by itself.  In fact, it can often hold back several pawns.

The upshot of all this is that having the farthest advanced pawn is of paramount importance in queen endings.  It is not unusual to see a deficit of several pawns can be offset by a single pawn that has reached the sixth rank because the extra pawns can be easily rounded up if the defender can be forced to sacrifice his queen.

All of this brings us to the following position from Moskwa v. Meduri.

Fearing Black's g-pawn, Robert played 59.d7+? Qxd7 60.Qxg3 and the game ended in a draw.  However, despite the fact that Black's g-pawn is as near to its queening square as the White's d-pawn, the Black pawn is not supported by its queen and Black queen is needed to defend against mating threats.  After 59.c5!, Black can't play 59...g2 because of 60.Qb8+ Kf7 61.Qb7+ Kf8 62. Qxg2.  If Black tries 59...Qd7, 60.c6! is devastating.

Teacher Schools Student: Hart v. Moskwa 1-0

Question:  White just played 25.bxc6, overlooking the response 25...a5.  Is he going to lose the pawn on c6?



Robert Moskwa and I have played dozens of casual games, but we have never played a serious game at a long time control.  We finally got our chance Saturday when we were paired against each other in the last round of a G90 tournament at the North Shore Chess Center in Skokie.   The tournament director asked if I minded being paired against my student, but I figured that with the way Robert is improving, this might be the best shot I would ever get against him.

Knowing how well he calculates in complex positions, I hadn't planned on being particularly aggressive even though I had the white pieces.   Robert wasn't in an aggressive mood either after winning a very long game in the previous round. Since I had won prettily easily in the previous round, I had plenty of energy, but if he had played his usual defense to 1.c4, I think it might have been a fairly short draw. However, for some reason Robert chose to play the Symmetrical Variation with ...c5.  Although this tends to be the most drawish response to the English, I knew that Robert wouldn't be as familiar with the positions as I was particularly since I had been looking over it recently after a strong player played the line against me in a CICL match last month.

Even with the loss, Robert kept his rating in expert range at 2002.  I tacked on eighteen points to 2022.  Robert's next chance to get his rating ahead of mine will come at the Denker qualifier at the end of the month.