Aaarrgh!!!

In one of my games during the recent tournament, I missed the most beautiful mate I have ever had the chance to deliver. This is straight out of a puzzle book. Dammit! I can’t believe I didn’t see this during the game, it’s so obvious… sigh. Chess blindness I guess. So in the following position, I am white and I already have a crushing advantage. Black just played Rxe5, and after taking his rook I’m up the exchange plus a pawn, and a vicious attack with a discovered check. So it’s all good. Or not.



Instead of taking his rook, I should of course have played 1…Nf8+ Kh8 2.Qh7! Nxh7 3.Ng6#

I was thinking there must be a mate somewhere but somehow I couldn’t see it clearly in my mind, always thinking that his knight was covering the h7 square. Of course I missed the fact that I could sac my queen, because by taking on h7, he would allow the smothered mate. I guess the lesson here is, forget about material, always look at forcing moves when mate is in the air.

I won the game anyways so it’s not a huge deal, but I might not have another chance anytime soon to sac my Queen for a pretty smothered mate. Now I can’t even show off at my club. Crap.

Life could be worse...

I had a successful tournament and scored 4/5 points, much better that I expected. I was surprised how well I played, given that my work/life schedule doesn’t really allow for much time spent on studying chess. I went into the tournament thinking that I’d probably get my ass kicked quite a bit, but at least I was looking forward to learning a thing or two from my mistakes. But I did not lose a single game! I still took away a few key points that I will try to remember going forward:

● Play aggressively! Don't shy away from complications; don’t settle for dull “safe” positions. I started the tournament with a bishop sac in my very first game, making it a very exciting game. I went for the kill in every game except one, where my brain was just way too tired to calculate and I didn’t want to make mistakes brought on by complications. It ended in a draw.

● Initiative is key - keep it by all means, and don't allow counterplay. Sounds simple, but it certainly isn’t. I kept looking for moves that put me in charge, and I think it worked out ok . More often than not, it was my opponent reacting to my threats rather than the other way around.

● Calculate, calculate, calculate! Don't be lazy, don't move fast even when it's tempting. Don’t think a move that looks “simple” doesn’t require much calculation. I think for most of us patzers, there just is no such thing as a simple move. I often find myself getting lazy in later rounds, when fatigue starts setting in… But whenever I noticed it, I forced myself to be disciplined and calculate every single move, making sure I took advantage of the long time controls. I got up pretty much after every single move, got some fresh air, or just walked around to get my heart rate up a bit. Sometimes I would splash water in my face. Whatever it takes, just don’t settle for half-assed calculations.

Will try to post some games soon, stay tuned!

In other news....

It's been awfully quiet around here... I just haven't really had much to post about I guess, and I don't want to bore anyone with daily "I did 10 tactics puzzles" type updates. But hey, there's light at the end of the tunnel! I am currently preparing for a big tournament at the end of the month, you know, one of those tournaments with actual tournament time controls of 40/2, SD/1 (for non-nerds: 40 moves in two hours, and one hour for all remaining moves). I'm planning to make the most out of it and analyze all games in detail, which I will of course post about here. Stay tuned.

Mighty Magnus Did It Again

I think I have a man crush or something like that. This kid is just so cool, I really hope he becomes world champion one day. For now, he continues to prove his strength with wins like this in the first round of the M-Tel Masters in Bulgaria, against Topalov.

Weekend Tournament

I played in another small tournament this weekend. I felt like I played pretty shitty, I wasn't happy with the quality of most of my games. I still managed to get 2.5/4 though so the result wasn't too bad. My main problem this weekend was impatience. I just didn't feel like taking time on my moves... Time control was G/45, but in most games I was 10-15 moves into the game after 10 minutes. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to train against impatience? :)

Will try to post a game later.

Tournament Game

Ok so I finally had some time to go over one of my tournament games... I looked at my last round draw. Right after the game, I felt like I had given away the full point. However, looking at it now, I think I should be happy with the draw. This is definitely not my best game - I fell asleep in the middle game and made some bad moves, which should have allowed black to win the game. He allowed me to regain a small advantage, but in the resulting endgame my edge was not as big as I thought that day. A draw is not a bad result here.

Chessaholic tourney game.pgn

Weekend Tournament

So I played in a small tournament this weekend, my first tournament in quite a while. I was afraid I was going to be rusty, but I did OK. It was a four round Swiss (G/60), but I had a bye in the first round so I only got to play three games. In those three games I went +2 =1 which I am happy with, even though I should have won that drawn game as I had a slightly better position in the endgame. I will post that game shortly with some analysis.

Rybka Wins World Championship

Hardly surprising, Rykba won the 16th World Computer Chess Championship. I watched some of the games live on the Playchess server, and most of them were spectacular. You can download the games in PGN format here. Check out the game against Hiarcs (2nd place winner) - awesome.

Tournament of Lepers II, Round 4: Tom

I played round 4 against Tom a.k.a. Rhuiden tonight and had a good time except that well, I lost. Things were going well as we transitioned into the early middle game, when I managed to make one of those beautifully horrible moves that are too ridiculous to even really get upset about it. I could try to make excuses - I was tired, the sun was blinding me, my dog ate the keyboard. Truth is, I just didn't pay attention, and it's hard to win a chess game that way. Nicely done Tom.

Too tired for analysis...

Tournament of Lepers II, Round 3: Polly

After the bye in round two, I had a fun game today against Polly. This tournament rocks, I really enjoy meeting everybody online. Polly - I loved our chat, you're awesome. So anyways, I was fully expecting an ass whooping since she's the number 3 seed and generally seems to really know what she's doing, but somehow I managed to win with black. Here's the game with some analysis:

Tournament of Lepers II, Round 1

I played Sciurus (of Squirrel Chess fame) in round one of the Tourney of Lepers. He's a really cool guy and seems to know his stuff, so we got into some funky Catalan that I had no clue how to play. I just pretended I knew what I was doing and made loud noises when I moved, I don't think he was able to hear me.

I just signed up for the chessflash player. Here's the game with limited analysis:

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.

Rampage

Played my first round game in T37 of the T4545 league yesterday and won. Woohaa :) Here's the game:

Weekend Tournament: Round 1

Here's my round 1 game from last weekend's tournament. I was black against what started out as a Grand Prix Attack. I didn't remember much so I deviated from the main line on move four. White didn't make it very hard on me though, it was a fairly straightforward win for me.

Weekend Tournament: Round 4

I played in a tournament over the weekend in which I lost two games and won two games. Overall, I am happy with my performance, I thought I played some decent chess. I will post two or three of the games over the next few days. I will start with my last round game, which I lost against a guy rated quite a bit higher than me. It was an interesting game where I was on the white side of a Slav Exchange Variation. I had some chances but took a wrong turn on move 19 that looked promising over the board, but I failed to see a strong continuation for black that won him the game. So here goes:

Patzerdom Redux

This Saturday, I will play the same dude that I played a few weeks ago. It’s kinda funny – he was my opponent in the very first game of this T4545 league season, and he will be my opponent in the very last game of this season. In both games, he’s got the white pieces. Well, I beat him in the first game (admittedly, with a lot of help from his side). Maybe I can do it again. Time to take another look at my new friend Canal-Sokolsky. Or might he be preparing some nice little opening surprise for me? Stay tuned…

Heavy Hitters

Morelia/Linares will start end of next week. A great lineup (including Corus winners Carlsen and Aronian) should make for a bunch of great games.

Hall of Shame

Ok, so a whole week has passed since last weekend's tournament, and I finally decided to look at my shameful first round loss again. Since there will definitely be more shameful losses in the future, the Hall of Shame might become a regular feature on this blog.

I am on the white side of a QGD, and I started out ok reaching a comfortable position after the following moves:


1. d4 e6 2. c4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Nf3 Be7 5. Bg5 c6 6. e3 Ne4 7. Bxe7 Qxe7 8. Rc1 O-O 9. Bd3 f5 10. O-O Nd7 11. cxd5 exd5 12. Be2 Ndf6 13. a3 Bd7 14. b4 a6 15. Ne5 Be8



Fritz shows white to have a 0.25 pawn advantage here, so the position is pretty much equal. Now something happens that seems to be a recurring problem for me. I try to formulate a plan, take a good amount of time going through a couple of candidate moves, and then at the last second I decide none of the candidate moves satisfy me and make a rash, unsound move that wasn't even one of the candidate moves I looked at! Why the fuck would I do that? No idea. I mean, I literally thought about h4 for about 2 seconds before making the move. Anyways, I seemed to think that I could cause some trouble by starting a little pawn storm. Well, stupid idea. After 16.h4, black duly punishes me:

16. h4 Nxc3 17. Rxc3 Ne4 18. Rc2 Qxh4



After this little idiocy, Fritz shows black to be a half a pawn up. Now, that's bad enough, but I think I could have put up a fight still. Which did not happen. I have no explanation for what happend next, but I simply collapsed, panicked, whatever. I proceeded to pretty much self-destruct, leaving pawns hanging left and right in a desparate attempt to coordinate my remaining pieces. I made pretty much the worst possible move every time:

19.g3 Nxg3 20. fxg3 Qxg3+ 21. Kh1 Qh3+ 22. Kg1 Qxe3+ 23. Rf2 f4 24. Kf1 Qh3+ 25.
Ke1 Bg6 26. Rc1 Be4 27. Kd2 Qxa3 28. Qg1 Qxb4+ 29. Kd1 Qxd4+ 30. Ke1 Qxe5 31.
Rh2 f3 32. Qg4 Qxh2 0-1

Well, this was probably the most embarassing breakdown I've ever had in a chess game. I would like to blame it on a gazillion different things, but truth is, I simply fucked up, was impatient, and lost all discipline after losing the h pawn. Note to self: patience is a virtue. Another note to self: having two red bull before a chess game might actually not be that great an idea.

Luckily, I got half my brain back before the next round and proceeded to win my remaining games.

So, here's the full game in all it's gory glory, so you can end the day with a good laugh. Chessaholic at his finest.

Bring it on, Baby!

As I mentioned in my very first post, I have only played in one tournament so far (this was back in April or so). I would love to play more tournaments, but unfortunately there aren't too many taking place in my neck of the woods.

Well, on December 1st (weekend after next) I will be playing my second tournament. Yeah baby! I am excited, and at the same time a little nervous. I want to be as well prepared as I can, but I'm not sure what the best tournament prep is. I will continue to do some intense tactics training in the next week and a half, and probably brush up on my openings. I'm taking this more seriously than the first tournament, so this time I won't be going out the night before :)

Anybody have any pearls of wisdom on preparing for tournaments?