Round Three had me paired as White vs Bob Bennett. A friendly guy and interesting player whom I've played several times in the past. Our last encounter had me on the winning side of a French Tarrasch and I was interested in playing the same line to get some more work in against the isolated d-pawn.
Leading up to this tournament my goal was to use more of my clock and to spend more time looking for good moves. Unfortunately I again raced through the game and missed many oppourtunities. I'm a knucklehead sometimes! My opponent made a few dubious moves in the opening and I had a comfortable winning advantage by move fourteen. Then I proceeded to try and get tactical...while spending zero time working out the calculations. Its funny how easy it seems after the fact but I just need to take my time.
Needless to say my threat backfired and I was getting crushed. Fortunately my opponent returned the favor and let me fork some big pieces and get a wicked attack on his bare king.
Chris Harrington 1596 vs. Bob Bennett 1500
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When I was your strength I had exactly the same problem, I never used very much time and I would go for moves without checking the lines. First of all, if you are playing blitz it might be time to put that on pause because it is blitz that gives you the 'move on intuition' mindset.
ReplyDeleteWhat used to happen to me is that as soon as I knew I was ahead I would start to look for tactical solutions, always forcing myself to find something tactical even when it was uncalled for. I would sacrifice pieces and enter into sharp lines when I could just improve my pieces and wait for a better and more clearly winning position. The key is to realize that making quiet, good moves does NOT change the evaluation of the position. A good player to look at games from is Botvinnik, you will be looking at the board thinking he's going to break through and he will just increase the pressure a little bit (also Karpov is probably the best at this but much harder to understand than Botvinnik). As long as your opponent is unable to free himself or activate his pieces (which is the source of any advantage) then you can continue just making normal moves and setting up an even more dangerous tactic. Patience with the advantage will yield serious benefits to your game.
I don't see the board at all when people use the copy and paste version of chess flash. I still use the upload version. Though if I'm viewing IE I can't see the board, but if I'm using Safara I can.
ReplyDeleteI don't know Polly,maybe you need additional plugins if you are using firefox.
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