Jon Speelman's Agony Column #46

This week's pair of games are by Maik Naundorf, who is 36 and lives in Hagen, about 15 kilometres south of Dortmund. Maik, who has played chess for over 20 years, prefers longer time limits rather than rapid play and (following Yasser Seirawan but certainly not me) even expressed a hankering for adjournments, though he's never experienced this particular form of torture (obviously my worlds not his) himself.

Maik writes: "I still like the artistic touch and reading about the history of the game and biographies of chess players. The Gormally book was also quite interesting and I hope to read more about the surroundings in chess – not just the moves and the top ten players! I mostly look to endgames and studies when not reading (chess) magazines..."

Both games which he sent me start slowly but then well up to a fierce climax. Indeed Maik says that "in recent times my ECO-codes are mostly and nearly only in the A- or B-region, which I like a lot. The fianchetto is the most fascinating chess pattern for me – since childhood!"

I've written all the notes for both games, but Maik supplied me with interesting introductions. We start with the Agony.

"This game is quite agonising still. I thought I played a decent game and got tricked quite heavily for my taste! In the "Verbandseinzelmeisterschaft Suedwestfalen" [this translates to something like federation individual championship] playing in the last round for the first two places. In the end I came in third with no qualification for the next stage, while my opponent got the qualification to the "NRW-Einzelmeisterschaft" [Nordrhein-Westfalen regional championships] and finally he came through to the "Deutsche Einzelmeisterschaft" [German Individual Championship]. With my loss he came quite far."

Maik's "Ecstasy" game was played in the last round of the Open A in Dortmund 2014. He writes:

"This game and the tournament were played in honour of a very good friend of mine, Juergen Wiehagen, who died only shortly before this tournament at the age of just 43 after a long illness. I wanted to show my best for him and increased my national rating from 2121 to 2151. It took me more than ten years and a lot of effort to breach the 2100 barrier, which I had finally achieved in my previous tournament in Solingen, where my games included a fighting draw against IM Mladenov."

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