Another long break

I truly believe that so many adult players don't make their goals because life gets in the way.

Over the past few months I have moved across the country, found a new job and discovered that my second daughter will be born in March.  I'm back near family and even my nephews are starting to play the royal game.  So, all of these have built upon themselves and have taken away from my chess playing. 

I had started the year with a few goals.  I wanted to establish myself with an opening and I wanted to play 100 games.  Well, I didn't accomplish either.  I did learn that I don't like play 1. d4 and that my ability to play against 1.d4 is also tough.  I have, however, found that I do well with the French Defense. 

So, in the upcoming year, I have decided that I will once again try for 100 games.  I don't think that is an unreasonable goal so I will stick with it.  As for openings, I am going to only play the following:

As White.  1. f4.  I'm going to play Bird's Opening.  It isn't as weak as 1. b4, my favorite, but it still keeps me way from to two center pawns.

As Black, I will respond to 1. d4 with the Dutch.  Similar positions, with colors reversed are found with the Dutch and Bird's opening so I should be able to pull from both of these Openings to make help increase my knowledge of the positions faster.

To 1. e4, I shall continue with the French.  I have decided that I like the way this is played out so I will see what I can do. 

I am also going to make it a goal to post online at least once every two weeks with a hope of posting one of my games every week. 

My final and third goal is to join a postal correspondence game.  I played an e-mail tournament but I didn't do very well.

Well, there are my goals for next year.  I guess those are my resolutions.  I wonder how long I can hold on this year.

Have fun all.

Another Learning Point

Hey all,

Last Saturday I played in the 5 NCGP Points Today #1 tournament.  It was a four round G/65 tournament that only cost me a dollar to play in.  You can beat four rated games for a dollar.  The only prize fund were the rating points that you could earn and North Carolina Grand Prix Points.  I had a pretty good day drawing against a 2000 rated player, winning against a 1700 and 1500 player and only taking one loss against a 1900 rated player (who also tied for first in the event). 

Overall I gained 75 rating points to put me solidly in the Class B catagory with a rating of 1650.

I had two really interesting games.  My draw agains Dan Lie (2000) and my loss against Mike Williams (1950ish).  In my game against Dan (see below) I was able to get to a good position and had to settle for a draw becuase of some bad positional play but the key thing that I saw when reviewing this game was that we both failed to look at some major weaknesses in my king position. 

So, my learning point is that when a weakness is seen, even thought I cannot attack that weakness in one move I need to look deeper to see if there is a way to leverage it.  I have my notes in the game so please let me know if anyone sees anything better. 

I'm still looking at my other game that I lost due to a massive blunder.  At the time of the blunder I was able to get to a position where I had two bishops and a knight against my opponents queen.  Once I have that picked apart I might post it here as well.

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A Second Look At A Fun Game

Two posts ago I showed a fun game that I played.  It was a KID game that I lost but had a few great opportunities to pull out a win.  If you look back you can see how I commented on the game and you can see what I was thinking.

Well, since then I have purchased, installed and imported a few games into Fritz 12.  Just for fun, I plugged this game in to see how I did and it turns out that I missed a lot of stuff.  Well, make that my opponent missed a lot of stuff and I missed a few chances to better my position.  So, I guess I got lucky to have as interesting a game as I did.

That said, the important thing that I learned from going over this game is that even when a king is completely exposed you may not have a great attack against it.  But as long as your king is safe, the best move might be to attack the other side of the board.  In this game, I got lucky because Mike kept trying to attack my king.  If he would have attacked my queen side, he would have picked apart any chance I could have had to win. 

Just to show everyone the difference between my comments and what Fritz 12 has shown, here is the same game with the output from the program.

Have fun everyone...

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Fritz 12

Today, I finally broke down and purchased Fritz 12. 

I have been playing a game on Gameknot.com and worked my way into a pretty even endgame but one that I thought I could win and in the end I had a draw.  At one point I could have pressed the issue and both I and my opponent could have promoted a pawn each but I held on to the possiblity that my opponent would have placed his king on the 8th rank and allowed me to queen with check and some advantage.

He didn't put his king on the eight rank until it was too late and I had to settle for a draw.  The moral of the story, I would like to know if I had better moves to make in the endgame to see if I could do better.  I couldn't find any but it just feels like there should be something.  So, I purchased Fritz so I can get a better look into the game.

I guess it is only fair to show the game as well.  So, it is below.  Nothing really interesting happened in it so I don't have any annotations but who knows maybe there was something there after the exchange of the last rooks from the board. 

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A Fun Game

We all play an exciting game from time to time that sticks with us.  You know those games that you are extreamly proud of maybe becuase you defeated someone stronger than you or found that great move that stunned the crowd.  Well, at the last tournament that I played in I had a great King's Indian Defense game against a stronger player. 

I can't say that I didn't make any mistakes, becuase I did.  However I was able to keep fighting, keep attacking and work myself into a very fun and interesting position.  When I went down a pawn, due to a blunder, I kept playing.  When I dropped a piece, again to a blunder, I kept looking and found a way to stick in it.  Finally, I had a chance to draw the the game but overlooked an easy tactic and lost.  Yes, my favorite game of the year was one that I lost.

Well, here it is.  I'm trying a new way to display my games in this thread to see how well it works. 

I hope any readers out there enjoy this game as much as I did.

Have fun..

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Class B, Well Almost

Well it has been a few months since I have posted.  I guess life has just gotten busy.  My wife is finishing her Master's degree and my daughter learned to crawl so I have been chasing after one while supporting the other as best I can.  With all of that my chess playing has taken a hit.  I have only played in a few tournaments this year but at the Land of the Sky, one of the largest tournaments in North Carolina, I was able to pull out just enough wins to break 1600, the low end of the Class B.  Of course, I had a few losses which dropped me back to the Class C mark, but I have tasted the next level and I think I can move back up soon.

In January I made some very drastic changes to my chess playing to see if I can advance my level of play.  The first, and most drastic change, is that I no longer play 1.e4 as white.  That is right, I'm now a d4 player.  I don't know all of the theory behind that move so I'm just fumbling my way through but developing normally seems to work.  With e4 there is so much theory that I just don't have the time or books to research 20 lines deep in every one that is out there. It is strange for me to change over but I'm doing much better now that I'm starting to see how other people play against d4.

As Black, I have settled on two defenses.  I'm playing the French against 1. e4 and the King's Indian Defense against 1.d4.  The French is pretty solid and the one that I have been spending the most amount of time on while the KID is one of those exciting but difficult positions to play as Black.  I'm doing well so far in both.  In fact, one of my favorite games I have ever played was done at a recent tournament and was a KID game.  I'm going to post that here in the next week after I finish adding the rest of my annotations to it.  I didn't play it perfectly, but I had such great attacking options that it is worth looking at.

I'm not sure if anyone out there is even reading this, but if so, have fun and good luck in your own games!!!