Sleeping Pills

Do you know the feeling when you win a game, but you just don’t feel satisfied? You won, but you know you could’ve played more forcefully. You won, but only because your opponent blundered a piece. You won, but only because your opponent ran out of time.

I just won my fourth round game in the T4545 league tournament, but I don’t feel satisfied. My opponent blundered a knight early on, and the game just proceeded from there, slowly, boringly. After being up a piece, I just tried to trade down into a won endgame, and obviously my opponent was trying to avoid that. The end was very anti-climactic, he just ran out of time (I am not sure how someone can manage to run out of time with a 45 second increment – heck, just turn it into a blitz game at the end if you have to).

The game didn’t feel exciting at all, and I just know there had to be more forcing lines. I will go over the game this weekend, and I am sure I will find ways how I could’ve attacked more aggressively and ended the game on a more exciting note.

Oh well, a win is a win I guess.

Ivanchuk On Fire

Vassily Ivanchuk is on fire at the MTel Masters in Bulgaria. He has won all five of his games, which is a pretty crazy feat at a category 20 tournament. With five out of five points, his performance rating is a whopping 3537. Three thousand and friggin five hundred thirty-seven! That's just absolutely insane.

Shit Happens

I just pulled a Bacrot, putting my queen en prise in my third round T4545 game. I really thought I'd left those kinds of blunders behind me, but I guess not.

Grandpatzer Blunders

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while even GM’s will make horrendous, patzer-style blunders. Case in point: As Chessbase reports, Etienne Bacrot (rated 2705) had the white pieces against Ernesto Inarkiev in round eleven of the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku and reached the following position.



He picks up his queen and plays 23.Qe7+??. Hmmmmm….. let’s see… how could black possibly defend against this deadly threat?

Maybe Bacrot should re-read those Heisman articles and do a blundercheck before he moves :-D