Hi all

Im a new poster on here, Ive been lurking for a while, but I wanted to get this down before I went to my one day Over The Board tournament in a few minutes. So some information - I am 19 and rated locally 1700 or so. My FIDE rating is a little higher. although this is after only one tournament. I have been playing/studying poker as well so this takes a little time away from chess.

1. Play at least 2 tournaments OTB in a month, and maintain this.
2. Improve and get back to a steady rating, USCF, of 1800
3. In one year I would like to be 2100 or better. I think this is attainable through working with a good coach and studying 2 hours a day or 10 hours a week, ect.
4. In 18 months be over 2200.

Welcome to the site

I played poker like 3 times I think. We played with not real money, got some from the game called "monopolis". I am not sure how to spell that in english anyway it was pretty fun. And everyone had a a4 format sheet with card combinations written there, sheeshh...loosers...
Well how would a chess tournament look like if everyone would carry a a4 sheet " HOW THE PIECES MOVE?". Anyway, just wanted to give a warm welcome Hopefully I'll get some poker pointers from you

Hello! thanks for the warm welcome. Id be happy to answer any questions about poker, although I'm not sure this is the best place to do it. Of course you can feel free to IM me on AIM with questions you think I could answer.

So I played pretty well today in the Over the board tournament. I achieved one of my goals I posted this morning to my great surprise, which was getting my USCF rating over 1800. Now I just have to keep it there... . Anyway I had a few good games, winning two games where I misplayed a couple positions but then played well, but all in all I don't think that I played very well. I got a book too, From London To Elista, which I thin I read some good reviews of, although I'm not sure its the best book to learn from. I'm going to post the games I played today eventually, one is quite interesting.

Congrats! I look forward to seeing the games.

Welcome to the site, and the offer of poker advice. I too look forward to seeing your games, and some analysis to go with them.

Alright so I tried this once before without much success but I figured it out this time.


SO... . I will post some general thoughts and then some analysis I did in ChessBase. I am black.

This was a 60 minute game and most of the time was used in the opening. We were down to 20 minutes at move 20 or so. And then at move 60 we were in serious time trouble, which will explain a a lot of the moves played in the endgame .


I Definitly should have lost this game (many times). I was very lucky too win. In the opening I misplay a pretty important move, developing the bishop to e6 instead of G4, which is the main move and also most natural. The a4 variation is quite tricky, but not many Grandmasters play it. He returns the favor though after Be6 with Bc4, which I was always told is not usually good in these types of positions I think. In the endgame he misses several ways to win.

Now some of the commentary from Chessbase. I have not gone over most of this with a computer so If i miss anything (Im sure theres a bunch) please post your improvements!

7. This is one of the oldest lines played against the Sveshnikov. It was recommended after Lasker started to play this way with Black I think.

8... Not the correct move the line should go Bg4 9. Be2 Bxe2 10. Qxe2 d5! 11. Bg5 d4 12. Nd5 and black equalizes with Nb4!

11. Bg5 is not very good. It makes sense to try to trade off the Knight on f6 for better control over the d5 square, but the Bishop can become very active on the g1-a7 diagonal, with a sort of idea like a5, na4, Knight (or Bishop) to b6, etcetera.

11..Bxc4 I definitely regret this move. I was trying to get some action by moving my B pawn after Nxc4, but the knights are too well coordinated in the center.

19... Qh4 is very bad. We both totally missed Nf5! threatening to fork the rook and king. My idea with this move of the queen was to try to get a rook over to the d file to defend the very weak and d6 pawn (with tempo) (or to c6), but then for some reason I changed my mind and played Qf6 the next move. 21. b4 is pretty much winning. The knight has no good flight squares and then white can load up on d6 easily after

21. Qd1 its nearly equal again in my opinion, but Qg5 is most likely much better then what I played (Qe6). Play might continue something like 22. Nf5 Rfd8 and white is having trouble making attacking moves against my weak pawn. If something like 23. Qe2 then I will have 23... d5. He might have 23. f4! which is a common idea in the Sveshnikov.

33... Ra8 was best here. Im not exactly sure why I didn't play it. I may have been worried about the rooks playing to double on the d file, but then the D pawn is still quite secure.

34... Rc5 is pretty much a waste of a tempo, of course if I take the rook the rook on b6 is trapped and white will be winning easily.

39. c5 is very bad for him. Attacking the d pawn was much easier than trading it.

58. Re5 wins! e7 loses, although he resigned prematurely.

certainly did not play my best in this game, my opponent missed many winning or almost winning moves. Another thing was time trouble! I played the opening quite quickly bu in the early middlegame I definitely thought about things for way too long for a sixty minute game. At the end we were both so low on time we missed many moves, for me to equalize and for him to push his advantage to the brink of winnin.

John,

Nice to have you on board! We have a lot of poker players here and I think there's a lot of cross-over between the two.

I don't know a lot of the theory in the opening of that game you posted, but I agree that Bxc4 looks problematic. In these kinds of structures, your light squared bishop is very important. But...once the white bishop gets to c4, it looks tough to develop your c8 bishop to it's dream square (e6).

I think in this line (after looking at a few games online), black will develop the bishop to e6 but then just leave it there after white plays Bc4. The idea is that if white captures on e6, black can recapture with the f-pawn and his center is not longer weak. In the meantime, black can play something like Rc8 and generate pressure down the c-file. So that seems like one possibility, although take it with a grain of salt since I'm by no means a sicilian expert.

After you're traded the light squared bishop, white just has a lot of pressure on your d6 pawn and has a nice outpost on d5, giving you a toguh game.

28...Rc6 looks like a pretty serious mistake since your rook pretty much gets trapped on b6. Better was probably Rfd8 and then trying to run your king to e6. Although in those lines, 29.Rcd1 might cause some problems, not sure.

As you mention, white really let you off the hook with c5.

Anyways, nice work surviving a very tough position and getting the win!

Alrighty... .

Thanks to Josh for the comments on the game. The light squared bishop was important and I tried to trade it for some cheap play or something.

I have played a bunch of games since I posted last, including another game from that tournament with the game I posted, and two others against some guys from my local club. I won one of them easily, and I had a huge advantage in the second, but I really messed up and gave away a bishop after moving immediately after my opponent did. So my rating as dipped a little bit below 1800, but as I see it there is not point in being 1800 if I cant stay there.

I'm going to try to post the games ASAP.

So I'm back... .

So I had a pretty bad month in both may and June for chess, Rating dipped back under 1800 ( (it's now 1795) and I've been totally neglecting chess. I'm going to post the games I played that month in May, I think one is quite instructive, as I beat a guy wh was weaker than me in rating but I think his playing style represents a problem for many peple, so I'll dig up that annotation sheet from wherever it is in my house. Also, this is the first time in a long long long long long time that I'm not at the World Open at this time in the summer. I've been playing in it since I was a little kiddie... . I kinda miss it, I really like the whole atmosphere in those gigantic tournaments. Hopefully I will get down to the U.S. Open (bad memories from the Denker last year might chase me away though) in August. I'm trying to get a couple friends to go down with me.

I've also had some problems installing CT-ART on my Laptop that runs Vista, if anyone has any ideas how I can fix this

hi guys I'm back

So I have been playing in local tournaments around twice a month and I've had some decent results, my rating is 1830 or so now I think. I just picked up The Easiest Sicilian because I've gotten tired of just looking through TWIC for the games in the Sveshnikov (plus annotations are pretty important I think). It seems to be a good book, and probably the most up to date book on the opening.

Now I'm off to watch some football-