It’s been a while since I haven’t written about chess on this blog, and I think it’s time to cover a chess tournament.

In Romania, if you are not a chess grandmaster, international or FIDE master you have to play in a semifinal tournament to qualify for the final phase of the National Chess Championship. The Federation chose five cities in Romania ( Timisoara, Cluj, Iasi, Bucharest and Braila) to stage semifinal tournaments in February. The players finishing on the first ten places in the semifinals have the right to participate at the National Championship Final in April.

Because I live in Bucharest, I played here in the semifinal tournament. The venue was the new building of the Polytechnic Library on the University campus. The library was an excellent location because it’s quiet and has lot of natural light on the last floor.

There were nine rounds played during two weekends full of two rounds per day and one day with three rounds. It would have been nice if instead of having three rounds in the second Saturday we could play one round in the Friday evening and two rounds on Saturday.

At the start of the game each player has one hour and a half on the clock and gets an additional 30 seconds for every move he or she makes. This way one round could last for four hours or even more in some cases. The thirty seconds increment is to make sure that if a player reached a won position he or she has enough time to convert that position and not to lose the game because the time has run out.

The only unpleasant thing to mention was during the first Saturday when in parallel with the chess tournament there was a robotics competition in the same Library on the second floor. This was very nice and the young people participating there were very enthusiastic. The problem was that the Library had open space between floors and we heard all day screams and loud announcements from the second floor making our concentration difficult.

To qualify for the finals a chess player needed 6 points out of 9 games. There were no prizes and the only thing at stake was the qualification for the next phase of the National Championship. It was natural that all the players who were at 5.5 or 6 points made quick draws in the last round.

As for myself since I only had 4.5 points before last round and a win would not be enough to qualify I decided to play a nice game.

In the last game, I had the white pieces and we played a Sicilian Najdorf variation in which I went for a classical English attack on the king’s side. Twenty moves have passed and we reached the position below with white to move.

I spent a lot of time thinking about whether the sacrifice works or not. If it doesn’t work, and I would move something else, the white offensive on the kingside will end and it will be black to counter-attack on the queenside.

Looking into the defensive resources of the black player I noticed that in the mainline he can protect his king with the bishop from e6 moving to g8, but I thought I can manage that if I bring my rook to h7.

The complexity of the above position is above my power of calculation. However, my intuition told me that the sacrifice is correct hence I did sacrifice a rook on h7.

To answer the question I asked my readers above I will tell you that the sacrifice is indeed correct. The sacrifice works only if white at the next move diverts the black queen from defending the e6 bishop. The move order is rook takes h7 pawn, the king takes the rook on h7, knight to a5, attacking the black queen and black queen goes to c7 then white plays queen to h2 check, the king takes the pawn on g7 and white rook from d1 to h1. This way the white queen penetrates the black defensive lines winning the game.

Unfortunately, in the game, both I and my opponent made serious mistakes. Once the rook was taken I played Queen to h2 and then Rook to h1 without diverting the black Queen. My opponent played Rook takes f3 pawn which gives the advantage back to the white player. I played Queen h7 check and after king to f8, I moved the white Queen to h8 allowing the defensive Bishop g8 and the game is lost for white. Instead, if I moved the knight to d2 I would have had a won position.

It’s not common in chess to have so many ups and downs in a few moves. This is an example where the intuition is far better than the calculation power of a player.

It’s good and very helpful in life in general to have a good intuition. The calculation power can be improved by solving many chess problems and this where I can do better.