I Was Able to Play a Game in St. Louis

Friday I was hanging around the Chess Club & Scholastic Center of St. Louis with my friend Glenn Panner when the opportunity to schedule a game against one of the local kids came up.

One of the Junior SPICE members, Ben, was sitting at a rating of 1995.  His mother was trying to find a game for him in hopes that he could get over 2000 and get that pressure off of him.

I agreed to play him Saturday night at the club when nothing else was going on.  The conditions were perfect since the club has amazing lighting and we were playing with an elegant wood set on one of the beautiful chess tables the club has.  (Side note – I once looked up those tables and they cost almost $5000 each…though I’m sure if you buy them in bulk as the club does you probably get a discount!)

The agreed time control was G/90+30 and Ben and I wound up having the entire second floor of the club to ourselves.  The only spectators were a friend of Ben who came to look at the game and WGM Anna Sharevich who took a look at the position and then went back downstairs to give her evaluation to Ben’s mother who was curious.  Anna’s eval…totally even.

The only other interruption was equal parts amusing and annoying.  The closing ceremony for the Sinquefield Cup was taking place across the street at the same time and one of the guys from the tech crew came upstairs at one point to lower a needed cable to someone below.  He opened the window and then got into a relatively loud discussion with whomever he was lowering the cable to.  I don’t know what an “S loop” is, but it was something he clearly didn’t think was a good idea to have!

Luckily this only went on for a minute or two and didn’t seem to disturb Ben too much. It happened pretty much equally on my time vs. his.

As for the game itself, it was a hard fought battle until I blundered the exchange although the reason I did so is instructive in and of itself.

Here is the game in it’s entirety.  Thanks to Ben and his mother Stephanie for the opportunity to play this exciting game!  Also, congratulations to Ben who it looks like will be an expert once this is rated!

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

3 thoughts on “I Was Able to Play a Game in St. Louis”

  1. I’m not sure why 34.h3 brings resignation. I think you have to play these things out. In your win against Ken Wallach he didn’t just give up after dropping the exchange. There is way too much material on the board to just give up.

    As far as your blunder, I wonder how much time you had on the clock and how much time you used.

    1. It’s not that difficult to see that I am about to lose more material…and a lot of it. I played it out until there was nothing to play for. If I was down an exchange I’d fight on for a while. But I was down an exchange and his domination of the e-file meant that a lot of other stuff was about to fall.

      I had 35 minutes on the clock and I used three in playing …Rf3. Again, this was a perfect example of me playing so prophylactically that I was focused more on the big picture instead of the smaller details.

      Although it’s been a while since I did that the fact is that it’s clearly still an issue that I need to work on.

  2. You should look at that Nb4 again. Looks fun and exciting and your piece is fine. Be6 saves it and now, both f5 and c4 are fun moves to look at. White has a lot of misplaced pieces and the Na2 looks robust.

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