Speelman's Agony #78

by Jonathan Speelman
6/17/2018 – John Chernoff sets chess and financial data to music, and sent Jon a collection of annotated games for review, replete with tactics, sacrifices and one very big 'oops' moment! Just a reminder — Jon can always use more material from readers. If your games are selected for the Agony column, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account!

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It's Schliemann time!

This week's pair of games are by John Chernoff, an American who lives in Arcata, California, which is roughly 300 miles north of San Francisco. He got in touch with me at the beginning of this month with five games nicely annotated and with very amusing introductions. (My lead time is very short at the moment so please do send your games in!)

He writes:

ChernoffI was born in 1973 and work as a pianist for a Humboldt State University.

Outside of chess, my hobbies include reading, writing, programming, and cheese. Well, the cheese is basically just something I eat, but still.  Perhaps of some interest might be a chess to music application I'm currently working on. I am also developing an financial chart to music program that I will likely call "Stockhausen", but I digress.

Being in such an isolated area has limited my OTB chess, but I am fairly active online as "ZugAddict" and "GargleBlaster".  For the latter I've a chess blog which I haven't written for in years but sometimes think of resuming. I'm also considering starting a web page as I hear that's now definitely a thing people do.

Oh, one other thing — during my brief visit to Europe (and England, which I have on good authority to, in spite of recent developments, still be technically part of Europe) in 2011 I did post something to the English Chess Forum about my initial impressions of the Old World which turned out to generate a very small flash of notoriety and, more importantly, a free banana on my board for the first round of the 2011 Guernsey Open.

Of the five games, I've chosen one disastrous Agony and a nice victory and I may well use some of the others anon. We start with the Agony and as usual, I've added my comments as JS.

 

Click or tap the second game in the game list below the board to switch

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Jonathan Speelman, born in 1956, studied mathematics but became a professional chess player in 1977. He was a member of the English Olympic team from 1980–2006 and three times British Champion. He played twice in Candidates Tournaments, reaching the semi-final in 1989. He twice seconded a World Championship challenger: Nigel Short and then Viswanathan Anand against Garry Kasparov in London 1993 and New York 1995.