French Advance (or) another win to keep me interested...

Here is my round one victory from the Far West Open. I started this tourney off pretty strong with 3.5/4 and then fell apart on day three when everything was on the line. This was a pretty straight-forward game against a French-Advance variation. My opponent made a few inaccuracies in the opening and I was able to exploit them and slowly improve my advantage.

Enjoy the game!

Bloody Sicilian

Here is another recent game in mind which has some resemblance to my last blog post. This was a second round victory for me at the recent Far West Open. I have white this time and I face a Sicilian defense. I get a pretty good lead in development, flounder for a little bit and then finally capitalize on my opponent's errors. Maybe posting a few of these wins of late can pep my ego back for playing over the board games, either way hope you enjoy the game and any questions or suggestions are welcome.

Maybe I'll show some games...

I was going to display a long grinding win I achieved against Soltani but it appears that I've botched the score sheet. So here is my game the next week against Harry Chrysanthou.

I won this game rather quickly, but it may hold some value nonetheless.

The end of the road...

Well chess, I've come to a dead-end with you. I get much more agony from my blunder-prone loses than I do joy from my wins. Although I learn new skills I am still continuing to make the same mistakes that better players just don't make. Setting my ego aside I'm now pretty sure that I don't have the concentration abilities that others have. No matter whether I know how to play a position, opening or ending, I continue to not pay attention, play to fast and blow my games. I started off this tournament well winning my first three...but then I blew a clear win and didn't see a free piece in round four settling for a draw. Round five I am on board one with a shot to take first place and I proceeded to lose in about ten minutes...I won a pawn, then gave up a piece in amateur fashion. Game six I got into a losing position, fought hard and found a draw, then allowed a simple fork.

I beat a guy in the third round who has won over 10 million dollars playing poker professionally. Which made me realize that I'm not where I want to be in life, others are playing this game as a leisure, it mostly feels like a chore for me now.

Thanks for everyone who helped me get better but I think I'm done...

How to lose a tourney in ten minutes...

Spend two days fighting hard and playing decent chess only to throw it away with a careless move on board one with the tournament on the line. Sometimes I don't know why I play this game...

Harrington v. Arteaga -learning Rybka

I'm posting this game without my comments or analysis because i've been working with the Rybka Aquarium software and learning how to do some different things with it. I took this game which was pretty even throughout and ended in a draw. I then let Rybka do the analysis. He provided his own branches and opening variations which could have been played and gives an approximate evaluation of the position. He also gives his own ?! and ? where he feels appropriate.

This was a Ruy Lopez-Steinitz defense. An opening that is solid for black but not so many winning chances when white plays safe, as I did. I thought it would be interesting to just post the Rybka analysis which will usually help me in my own search but in this case, since its new to me let's take alook at a purely mechanical view of the game. Once again, NONE of this analysis is by a human. Nor did I interfere or cut and paste in any way, this is a full Rybka study.

Suprised

I'm suprised to have received several phone calls about my last post. Concerned players that didn't wanna see me miss out on playing, even though they respected my reasoning. I guess it's to my overall benefit to play the games that are remaining on my schedule. I'm not that consistant and over the board play is most-likely to help that. I still think that this whole process is unjust but I guess I need to let the people in power do what they want. Little guys like us never have a say in things like this anyway...