CHESS Magazine: Augsburg Adventures

Welcome to Augsburg

Augsburg has its own thing going for it, and the inhabitants are quite proud of the historic centre and quality of life. It just so happens that for the past 15 odd years it has been home to a chess memorial totally off the chess-setters’ radar, in honour of the late Senator Max Gutmann, a lover of the game and, as his official title suggests, an important man of the region. Having a particularly friendly relationship with the organiser, Johannes Pitl, I am fortunate to be material of choice for the IM section (there is also a GM one in which I played two years ago).

The playing hall is the conference room of the Ibis hotel we all stay in, and in the evening the players go to the restaurant together in the best of spirits (although some obviously happier than others). As I don’t have access to the tournament games (they don’t make it to TWIC or even to ChessBase), you will have to be content with my own, the silver lining being that at least I will know a bit about what I’m saying, rather than having to pretend I understand what is going on in another player’s mind. To add to this journey into the past, the time control was two hours for 40 moves, one hour for 20 minutes and an extra half hour for the rest of the game. No increments!

Other things worth noting include that I made the tournament part of a diet experiment. I fasted all day and ate over 2,000 calories in one meal after 8pm. Hunger pans were kept under control with frequent amounts of sparkling water. I do not know if my concentration was better or worse than normal, but what I could witness for sure was that insulin spikes being non-existent, I had no emotional instability. So if you are also prey to ‘Oh my god, I’m winning, I can’t feel my legs’ and then shortly after blunder in a totally improbable way, ‘I’m losing a pawn, so won’t go any further in my calculation’, or ‘I know this is my theoretical line, but will still use energy in outguessing myself that I have somehow gone wrong’, it could be the thing for you.

Augsburg, one of Germany’s oldest cities | Photo: Pixabay

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About CHESS Magazine

The above feature is reproduced from Chess Magazine March/2020, with kind permission.

CHESS Magazine was established in 1935 by B.H. Wood who ran it for over fifty years. It is published each month by the London Chess Centre and is edited by IM Richard Palliser and Matt Read.

The Executive Editor is Malcolm Pein, who organises the London Chess Classic.

CHESS is mailed to subscribers in over 50 countries. You can subscribe from Europe and Asia at a specially discounted rate for first timers, or subscribe from North America.

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Solutions to Find the Winning Moves