Kent Quander Reports from 2010 National Open
Kent won against WGM Anna Zatonskih in a simultaneous exhibition at the 2010 National Open. Ms. Zatonskih is currently one of only 12 semi-finalists in the ongoing 2010 FIDE Women's World Championship! Here is Kent's report:
Actually I hadn’t pre-registered for this simul, but saw that there was an opening so I jumped in. I had about 2 hours before the start, so I pulled up ChessBase to look over some of her recent games. I saw she was pretty much exclusively an e4 player …. French time! So I looked over her recent results against the French and discovered that she almost always played the Tarrasch (Nd2) variation and had the hardest time (most losses) against c5 after Nd2. I looked those games over. At the board, she followed through, and you could tell that as soon as I played the c5 she wasn’t a happy camper. It wasn’t a great game on my part, relying only on a blunder she made to secure the win. But hey! I’ll take it.
http://www.vegaschessfestival.com/news/vegaschessfest_issue1.pdf#page=3
[Playable version and PGN here: http://www.westmichiganchess.com/Shared%20Documents/2010_2/2010nationalopen.htm]
Oddly enough, in the tournament itself I was paired the following day with a woman named Polly (she has a pretty sweet chess blog by the way: http://castlingqueenside.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html )
Here is what she blogged that day (I played a nice game and she lost):
“In my efforts to provide tournament news along with my own adventures, sometimes I go too far, or maybe not far enough. I very carefully researched where all the players who won in the simul were from and what their ratings were. In my report I made the somewhat tongue in cheek comment "I might have to study Quander's game since he's in my section." Maybe I should have taken the time to look at the game, because I ended out playing him in round two. Even better might have been not looking up the results of the simuls. Maybe knowing a little less about my opponent would have been better under the circumstances.
I tried not to let the fact that he beat Zatonskih psych me out, or effect my play against him. However I think I was already writing the story in my mind while we were playing. It also didn't help my mental state when he opened 1. d4. I spent a lot of time on my moves, but sometimes at the slow controls my mind gets too bogged down in the analysis. I start seeing things that aren't really there, and then get steered away from what is there. I spent 12 minutes on move 13 which wasn't a great move, but it also wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I spent another 7 minutes on move 14, which was clearly the losing move. If anyone was following the game live on Mon Roi they would have thought that I took no time on the crucial 14th move. That's because I stopped recording on my unit for a few moves, and then put them in afterward.”
Anyway, it was a good tournament for me … won my first 5 games straight up, played well. But then pooped out on the last day and lost both games 6 and 7 (I was black both games, bummer).