Attended the seminar by Garry Kasparov on Future of Artificial Intelligence

Last Thursday (8th June) I attended Garry Kasparov's seminar promoting his latest book Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. The event was organized by The Commonwealth Club at Marines' Memorial Theatre, San Francisco. This one hour event started at noon and was moderated by Holly Kernan, VP of news editing of San Francisco Chronicle, followed by a book signing session in stage by Kasparov. The event was sold out and I am fortunate that I purchased the ticket earlier. In this semiar he discussed about Putin's terrible regime in Russia and gave an optimistic view of artificial intelligence assisting human creativity in future.

I ordered the book from Amazon ahead of time and hence was able to get an autograph of Kasparov on this book along with getting the above picture taken by the photographer. It was a great moment for me as I regard him as the strongest chess player of all time. I have studied his games, his biography, his famous series of chess books - My Great Predecessors, his mammoth clashes over the board with another legend Anatoly Karpov. A lot of my love for chess may be sourced from the enthusiasm from this great chess player.

Book signing photos: The book signing Facebook album is here

Video: Watch the Facebook live stream of the event here

XCell Chess Club Runner Up in USAT National 2017 Playoffs

We, XCell Chess Club, became runner up in the United States Amateur Team (USAT) 2017 Championship. We won the semi-final against North by 3-1. I lost in third board with White against Michael Auger rated 2268 (almost 300 more than mine) but all our other boards won. In the other semi-final game, East defeated South by 2.5-1.5 margin. South's first board couldn't play due to a personal emergency and hence they had to play up with 3 boards.

In the final we faced the current champion East. I won my game with Black against Warren Wang rated 2198 (again more than 200 points above mine). Arul and Ashrita lost in fourth and second board respectively. In first board Hayk had better position against Ethan Li but drew in time pressure as the game prolonged. Well, we were very close but couldn't make it. We will have to be happy with the runnner up. But this was a great experience and good team work. Kudos to team manager Tigran and XCell Chess Club owner Eshwaran for arranging everything for us. There is always a next time!




This playoff along with the original west zone team championship is the most significant team competition I have ever played!

ChessGraphs.com - A New Chess Web Site In Town

I got notified by a web developer John McNeil from my blog about a new chess web site he developed. It's ChessGraphs.com . Being a developer and a chess player myself, I was very appreciative of it. What a clean idea! You can see any FIDE rated player's chess rating history in graph for all 3 formats - classical, rapid and blitz - since 1967 till date! You can select single or multiple players and would be able to visually compare their progress year over year. I quickly checked my graph and see that I am stuck just above 1900 for several years now.

I thank John for undertaking such a visually stunning and useful project for chess players.

Ashik vs Keyven Reise, Friday Night Marathon, Round 4

21 Days To Supercharge Your Chess by Yury Markushin

I recently bought the training program 21 Days To Supercharge Your Chess by Yury Markushin.

https://www.thechessworld.com/supercharge/

Both me and my son are spending approximately 1 hour each day to go through the book and their web site for theoretical and practical sessions. The recommended allocation of time is -

• Reading the theory = 10 minutes
• Studying masters’ games/ Working on the attacking chess = 20 minutes
• Solving tactics = 20 minutes
• Endgame clinic = 10 minutes

In Day 3, I learnt how to analyze a position. I knew each of those separately but its nice to get it in a bullet point together.

1. Material on the board
2. Presence of Threats
3. Position of the Kings
4. Presence of open files and diagonals
5. Pawn structure, weak and strong squares
6. Center and space
7. Development and Pieces Activity

In Day 9, I learnt how to analyze a chess game.

Opening: Develop Your Pieces

• Was it a home preparation line or you had to diverge from it?
• What other variations of that opening line you have previously played?
• Did the opening lead to the type of position you want to achieve?
• Did you obtain any positional/material advantage out of that opening?
• Overall, whose position was better after the opening?
• Write down the problems you might have faced in the opening (Development of pieces, Space, King safety, Pawn structure etc)

Middlegame: Realize A Plan

• Formulate a plan (Minority attack on the queenside, Taking control of the center, Preparing attack on opponent’s castled king etc)
• What are the tactical and positional possibilities in the position?

Endgame: Count Every Advantage

• Prepare an endgame plan (winning or drawing) to make every little advantage count

Day 13 teaches to always evaluate the most forcing continuations first in complex situations when a lot of calculations need to be done.The order should be checks, then captures and then threats and this will help reducing the number of variations to caculate.

Ashik vs Neil Regan, FNM, Round 4

Ashik vs Phillip Warton, TNM, Round 8

We - XcellCHESS Club - Became USA Amateur Team West Champion 2017

Somehow this happened. We became champion in US Amateur Team West Championship held at Santa Clara Convention Center during February 18th to 20th! Out of 6 rounds, we won first 5 rounds straight and drew the last round. Hayk, Ashrita, Arul and Akshithi - all played wonderfully and delivered at critical moments. I am surprised with my own performance as well. My personal score was 4 win and 1 loss. With this my rating jumped up from 2000 to 2097. So now we will play the winners of other 3 zones - East, North and South  in April 22nd for the title of National Amateur Team Champion!

Below is top 4 standings out of 65 teams. Click here for the full list and here for individual performances. Also here is the event summary from us chess site. I noticed a common pattern that the teams who were well balanced, did better than the top heavy teams (as by nature their 4th board has to be weak). 

GM Christian Chirila wrote a news coverage for US chess on this event titled - Grandmaster Amateurs: XcellChess Prevails in Competitive Team West.

	Code	Name	Score	TBrk[G]	TBrk[U]
1	XCELLC	XcellCHESS Club (2104.5) - Cnt: 5 W41 W17 W20 W10 W9 D3	5.5	17.5	61.25
		NM Hayk Manvelyan (2295) 4.5
		Aksithi Eswaran (1664) 1.0
		WIM Ashritha Eswaran (2252) 3.5
		Ashik Uzzaman (1974) 4.0
		Arul Viswanathan (1897) 4.5
2	BCC-BISH	The Berkeley Bishops (2172.0) - Cnt: 4 W36 W12 W8 D3 W49 W9	5.5	16	53.75
		IM David $m Pruess (2408) 4.0
		NM Bryon Doyle (2203) 4.0
		Michael Lei Wang (2177) 4.5
		Michael Anderson (1900) 3.5
3	BCWEEK	The Berkeley Chess Weekenders (2184.5) - Cnt: 4 W28 W13 W15 D2 W11 D1	5.0	17	70
		NM Jack Qiji Zhu (2399) 2.5
		FM Ladia Jirasek (2343) 5.5
		NM Gabriel Jame Bick (2280) 5.5
		Kevin Yanofsky (1716) 3.5
4	BAC-WAR	BAC Warriors (2164.3) - Cnt: 4 W32 W18 D6 D7 W13 W10	5.0	16	60.5
		FM Konstan Kavutskiy (2445) 4.0
		Vinesh Ravuri (2133) 4.5
		Theodor Biyiasas (2121) 3.5
		Manas Manu (1958) 4.0

Here are the games I played.

• Round 1 - I didn't play so that our fifth player Akshithi could play.
• Round 2 - I won against National Master Richard Koepcke (2200)
• Round 3 - I won against Jamieson Pryor (2015)
• Round 4 - I won against National Master Annie Wang (2276)
• Round 5 - I won against Derek O'Connor (2167)
• Round 6  - I lost to National Master Gabriel Jame Bick (2280)

Update: US Chess Life May 2017 issue covered our news here at page 30.

Ashik vs Gabriel Jame Bick, US Amateur Team West Chmp, Round 6

Ashik vs Derek O'Connor, US Amateur Team West Championship, Round 5

Ashik vs NM Annie Wang, US Amatuer Team West, Round 4

Ashik vs Jamieson Pryor, US Amateur Team West, Round 3