On the Road Again

"Kennedy Kid" Jon is on the road again, home from Haiti briefly, now off to Guatemala for a month to improve his Spanish language skills.

As I did with his stay in Uganda, as well as Haiti, I have begun to learn about chess in Guatemala.

For example, I learned that Silvia Carolina Mazariegos was Guatemalan Women's Chess Champion for the years 1981 - 1994. She returned as champion 2001, 2002 and 2004. During the same span of time the Men's title was dominated by Carlos Armando Juárez Flores, who was champion in 1980, 1983-88, 1991, 1993-1995, and 1998-2007. 

The Guatemalan Defense, 1.e4 b6 2.d4 Ba6, was covered in The Myers Openings Bulletin (New MOB No. 1, 3, and 4) in 1992 and 1993. Myers presented three games from the 1930s played by Hans Cohn, from his 1947 book Ajedrez en Guatemala, which had a chapter on "Defensa Guatemalteca". The MOB also gave the first part of a 1939 game by Georges Koltanowski (vs Cohn) and the first part of 1943 game by Reuben Fine, from a blindfold simultaneous exhibition.

Wrote Myers

It [the chapter on Defensa Guatemalteca] starts with a long quote from a 1913 magazine article by emanuel Lasker, expressing Cohn's opening philosophy. Summing up, it says that the ideas lefense will stop any attack, lead to counterattack, and enable Black to play for a win "si el blanco desconoce sus posibilidades o las sobreestima" [if White doesn't know about its possibilities or overestimates them]; I haven't seen Lasker's original German, but I found two of those Spanish words to be interesting: "desconoce" means doesn't know about, but it can have a sense of deliberately ignoring. As for "sobreestima", one might expect White to have problems when he underestimates an unfamiliar defense, but the Spanish word, which also means having too much respect for something, makes sense. Fear of the unknown affects judgement. When faced by a surprising opening a player may imagine dangers which are not really there. There or not, he'll spend time looking for them and trying to defend against them.

Hmmm, sounds like an opening I know...

If Jon gets around to playing any more Jerome Gambits (see "Artificial Ignorance" parts 1 and 2), I'll let you know.