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Here’s a position you don’t typically think of as move 24 in a Berlin:
So how did we get here, and how did I manage to blunder away all of my advantage? Let’s look at the game. Please note that I haven’t really analyzed this much so that’s why the notes are so sparse. This game was just played 12 hours ago.
So my rating continues to climb, but my openings continue to verge on nonsensical.
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I just got home from the Chicago Class, and overall I can say I am happy I attended the tournament. I don’t typically play in CCA events for reasons that aren’t that important to discuss here.
This was only my second one ever, and I have to say that I am glad that I went. The real idea here was to see my friends Ryan Murphy and Elshan Moradiabaddi. So on that front the event was a rousing success.
As for the tournament itself, there is definite room for improvement in my games, but I am satisfied with the overall results. All three games were draws, but with me giving up a significant rating differential.
I took a bye in round two to run one of my online events which I do for the company that Ryan and I own, the IAC. I also didn’t play the final round as I am exhausted and also have to work tomorrow until 9pm, so I decided to make the drive home and chill a bit.
So here are my games from rounds one, three, and four.
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Many chess players are familiar with the quote by the second world champion, Emmanuel Lasker, that “When you see a good move, look for a better one.”
Knowing the quote and taking the advice are clearly different things.
Thursday I was foundering in the opening, and so afterwards a friend of mine was showing me this line he plays as White against the Sveshnikov. After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5 6.Nb5 d6 7.Nd5 we reach this position:
Of course Black can’t take the “hanging” pawn on e4 since there’s a knight check on c7 picking up a rook
Wait a minute…it’s not just a rook. The only move is 8…Kd7 and now after 9.Qg4+ f5 10.Qxf5 is mate!
I start wondering if anyone has ever taken the e4 pawn, so I check. There are two games in my database. There’s this one:
And then there’s this one:
Notice that the first game is a blitz game, whereas the second game appears to be a classical tournament game. In that second game a player of almost 2100 FIDE strength misses a mate in two. My guess…he forgot to look for a better move.
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Part of my goal this year is to get every game I played annotated and published here. I have been semi-lazy about that goal, but here is the earliest game I have annotated for the year so far. It took place in the third round of my first tournament.
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Recently a former member of the Southwest Chess Club, Daniel Perelman, passed away at the untimely age of 18 in a plane crash as he was training to get his pilot’s license.
We changed the name of our most recent tournament to the Daniel Perelman Memorial. Here are my games with analysis. This was an up and down event for me. I won two nice games. I lost horribly in one, and I drew one after missing a free rook.
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In my Thursday game this past week I sat down to play Minghang Chen, who’s a solid 1800 player. I had a good feeling all day and was in a great frame of mind at the board.
I had the White pieces and in short order I achieved an almost winning position:
A few moves later we reach this position and now I’m thinking it’s time to get my material back and win some of my own.
After taking the d pawn, we arrive at
And now I can just bail out into a better position with Re6, but my idea is to capture on f6 with the d6 rook. So I do, and Black captures back.
Here I can just take again on f6 and then after …Bc3 Qb6 I have an edge
Instead I decide (correctly) that Qxe5 is much better.
Now I start thinking that Black might have something with …Bc3, and this is where chess blindness kicks in. Black plays the move.
The blindness takes two forms here. It starts with the fact that for some reason I’m not realizing that my rook on f1 is protected by the bishop. So I play what I feel is the forced 34.Qxc3 Qxc3 35.Nxc3 and offer a draw, which was accepted (I’m going to lose the c pawn, so I’m probably on the worse end of this draw, but my opponent had little time left on the clock.)
However, do you spot what I missed?
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Yep, I can just play 34.Qxb8 and I’m completely winning. The rook on b8 hangs, but since in my mind I think that my rook on f1 is hanging with check I don’t see this at all.
Chess blindness is a disease which must be eradicated.
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I am playing in the US Amateur Team Tournament and in round one my team faced the top seed.
I am on board four and was playing a kid rated 2066. I absolutely should have won this game. Here it is with no real notes. I’ll annotate and re-publish later.
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Last night I played my weekly club game against NM Ethan Allen. Fortunately for me he is returning to chess after a long layoff, and so is a bit on the rusty side. He used an awful lot of time, and when we agreed a draw I was ahead by about 40 minutes on the clock.
Now on to the US Amateur Team tournament starting tonight in Chicago.
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A little over a week ago I entered what will be my final tournament of the year. A three round, G/100 Swiss. My rating had plummeted nearly 100 points in two events, and my first-round opponent was seven-time state champion Bill Williams.
While Bill is finally started to show some signs of his age, he’s still a very dangerous opponent who can’t be taken lightly.
In this game I was fortunate, as after one blunder, he quickly committed others.
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My last game was a nice miniature. For the first time in a while I could feel a lot of things coming together. From the first move, when I took a minute to think instead of playing an automatic reply, to realizing my opponent blundered with d3, to the final move in the game.
I will continue working to try to keep this feeling growing.
