Reminds me of a game I played in 85' outside Prague against Arthur Steinmitz, yes "the" Arthur Steinmitz.  Anyway, the game got a bit salty and Steinmitz kept clicking his tongue as he envisioned the gathering clouds.  His annoying tactics worked and when I reached over to throttle him, the pieces scattered.  Steinmitz scurried into the coming dusk.  I still have his hat.

I know Sergey Kudrin, strong player

nothing, you are right! that wins for white as well. i had 3 seconds on my clock during that phase of the game, so... didn't really know what was going on.

hmmm.... I can't find the draw for black after 40.c6.  Obviously e4 is going to fall.  I tried two ideas for black, but both seem to fail.  The first was to maintain the opposition by making sure the black king lands on e6 when white plays Kxe4.  The problem here seems to be Kf4 and black cannot maintain the opposition as they must stay in the square of the pawn.  So it seems white makes progress.

 

The other idea I saw was that after the white king gets to d6, the black king to d8, then c7+ ...Kc8 and now Kc6?? is a stalemate.  However, Ke6! here sacrificing the pawn seems like a strong idea (...Kxc7 Ke7) and it seems that both black pawns fill fall for an easy white win.

 

What am I missing?  Thanks.

 

i agree, thanks, Mike :)

and as Rob said, the train ride is sublime.

Without trying to hijack this thread, I'd like to note that another of Chess.com's personalities, Kostan Kavutskiy, also scored 4.5/6, including a very nice win over GM Ivanov and a final round draw with GM Kudrin, to tie with David for 2nd place!

Thank goodness you're taking the train!  Although the weather is nice this year.

I rode the Reno-to-Bay-Area Amtrak train last Christmas -- that is a lovely ride!

Be sure to break out the chess board and see if anyone challenges you. :-)

Tied for second (with 3 others) is always a great result :) congrats

Nope! I'll take it!

4-1-1 aint bad! 

Just a quick note that I drew r5 and won r6. I will post games when I get home, but first a nice long train ride :-)

Nice games. U guys are great

some notes i took while playing thru the game, then i checked them with my ops book and engine and a few thoughts...

i enjoyed david's comments, the najdorf is very interesting and it was a nice game although unfortunately his ambitious play did not fully justify itself, or maybe it did mostly, but simply be7 around move 20 fails, i cannot say for sure.  however, i feel like Black could have put up a better resistence normally around the critical point after the queen sacrifice, which was very creative ( and i liked it a lot objectively and for its objective merits).

kudrin once crushed me when he employed the dragdorf, although two of my friends, a 1900 and a 2270, somehow managed to get the better end of a draw on him in blitz.  nevertheless he is obviously a fantastic player on the american circuit.  hope you are of good state of mind and focus on your subsequent games and best wishes the remainder of the tournament.

James_Bond, thanks. the next round starts in half an hour and i'm expecting to play well. i'm in good spirits from yesterday's games; they were interesting and i don't mind losing (much).

as to Kudrin and psychology... I just think he has played very well against me in our games. also he is much better with white, and has had white every game. i think with white i'd have a good chance to beat him.

Buddy, that's an awesome variation! i did not notice it bc i rejected Ne4 quickly (instincts had already told me it was wrong when he was thinking about accepting the weird q trade and i was looking ahead at a5). when i was thinking i was just thinking about the follow up to be4 bg2.

thanks for the games jhb. i actually took half an hour to look at a bunch of 6.a4 games yesterday before the round.

I was watching this game and spent 20 minutes of the 35 minutes David spent on 19. Bxe4 trying to understand why 19. Nxe4 wasn't good. Aside from the line David gives above (which wasn't all that clear to me) I finally found the very pretty 19. Nxe4? bxc6! 20 Nxg3 cxb7 21. Rb8 Bb5#.

interesting game, good luck in your next games! and may you have (had) white. (don't worry to much, I have spoken with the chess gods on Mt Chessboard, they plan on inspiring you on to victory...lol, well at least I will send you good thoughts of sweet victory and good luck! ...good luck David (dpruess)!

ps: If I may say here, with my limited brain capacity, it may be something else is going on with your games with GM Kudrin psychologically.

Wow! Gutsy play, man. You made it interesting. Then, I thought you might hold it.