Cool photo's. Nice place you played in.
Hope you had fun and a good result

Nice! Photos is a great idea, keep it up!

My club games from last night (all 20 0 time control). Both opps play in the mid-1600s rating range. Thought I played pretty good, missed some stuff, and hung a piece in one game. But felt like I was seeing the board better than I did on tues night at a different chess club. Takes me about half an hour to get used to '3 D' chess. The thing I felt worst about was the awful way I handled that Q+R+B ending with the pawn. Definitely should have played c5 at some point prob in place of the rook move. That was pretty awful play trying to drum up something. The other games were ok I think, even the sicilian where I hung my knight I think I would have had a very good position if I hadn't made the mistake.


(down to about 30 seconds I stopped notating I lost after some typical endgame stuff, his king penetrated my KS pawns)

Playing in a 4 Round SS G/60 tomorrow. This will be my 2nd real tournament. It is a local thing, and I am having nerves tonite for some reason. Why would I be worried about playing guys I play every month, but no problems with strangers? My somewhat ambitious goal for this tournament is 2.0/4.0 result. Anyway, watch this space for this message to be replaced by pictures or whatever from the tourney! Entries so far here (1 rated section): http://movcc.blogspot.com/

I don't like playing friends in a tourney, too.
I lose the competitive attitude when playing friends. I don't know...I just don't like to seriously play against them.

Looking forward to some pictures =)

Good Luck JW or should I say "break a leg" ... how about both!

RE: Playing chess against friends. GW, you never let me win, do you? LOL! Like in Star Wars: "I suggest a new stategy R2, let the Wookie win" ... LOL!

Haven't posted here in a while. My current chess related activities are playing fewer blitz games and even those are at 10 0 time control now, instead of the old 5 min. Book wise I am doing the 112 greatest games, and classical sicilian by Yermolinsky. I loaned out my Dvoretsky Endgame to a friend at the local chess club. Hopefully I'll see it again, I miss that book.

I think I've taken a jump forward sometime in the past month or so as far as visualization and calculation go. Still one of my weaker points but not as bad as it was. Spending a lot more time studying with a board, which I think is helpful to my otb game. I feel the need to get back to some more tactics training. I really hate doing tactics puzzles for some reason. But I am still missing tactics only a move or 2 into my calculations which irks me.

Playing in a 4 R SS g/75 this saturday. It will be an open section, so a high probability I will lose all my games. I kinda wish my USCF rating would go up this time, to recover the points I lost, and it is sort of like a mental barrier to me, I feel like I should be a Class B player, and my rating doesn't reflect that. But such is life. Still getting used to the idea of using USCF ratings as my measuring stick instead of FICS ratings like I used to, which reminds me, I haven't played a standard time control game on FICS in a long long time. I wonder when teamleague starts again?

Good luck dude!

Good luck!

How is the Yermolinsky book by the way? I was about to start reading it at some point I remember

I really like it. It is basically just 5 chapters broken into like Sozin, Oddball, RR with O-O, RR without O-O, and modern handling of RR. A lot of emphasis on the differences between the e6, be7 o-o stuff, the early Bd7 and the a6 b5 ideas, as far as when each is appropriate and what white responses they allow. Each chapter is 5 instructional games. There is a nice opening tree with page numbers for reference at the back of the book. The annotations are very good, strategic explanations as well as variations. The book goes 13 moves into theory overall, there are many variations. I really like it, I am starting to actually 'get' the sicilian defense a little, and the attacking patterns are useful for other systems as well, the dragon is touched on a little, as well as scheveningen a bit. I think it was a good choice as a first opening book for me, as recommended by Hitchhiker. As an aside, Yermolinsky just qualified for the 2010 US championship which will be in April next year, so a good chance we will get to see some of this stuff in action.

Hit up CTS, and not nearly as rusty as I expected. I solved 52/64 (81%) and went up 55 pts (1402-1457). I think a good session of tactics. Probably 4 or 5 of the ones I missed I transposed moves, the others I had the totally wrong tactical idea. They tried to trick me a number of times with simple recaptures, but I didn't fall for it this time

Had a goal of 1.0/4.0 in the tournament yesterday. Finished .5/4.0. I played very poor positional chess, but didn't miss too many crazy tactics. Overall, really disappointed in how it went. I've put a lot of work into chess lately, and such a poor result reflects badly on my study methods. Granted this was tougher competition than my other tournaments, but I think I am a tougher player than I was before as well. Don't think I'll be able to play in the big tournament I wanted to in Cleveland at the end of the month. It is getting too cold to sleep in the car and I don't have enough money for the entry fee.

Headed into another deep slump. I've completely forgotten how to play chess apparently. I am getting really furious during games which is unusual for me, hanging pieces again, but more importantly, playing too fast, and not making positional moves. This happens every time I start hitting the tactics puzzles pretty hard, my game goes to shit, and it really pisses me off. I know it helps in the long run, but it is really annoying losing to players I should not lose to, and having close games with people I should be wiping off the board. I'm going to take a few days and not play any games and just study, because I am getting too angry playing right now. It's like if I study tactics I forget my openings or obvious stuff like giving up knight outposts. And when I study endgames or positions, I miss simple tactics. WHEN IS THIS STUFF EVER GOING TO COME TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME?!? Argghhhh!!

Started my 3 day no-game rest period with some tactics today. Did about 2 hours on chesstempo. I really enjoy that site more than CTS I think. I just started on there the other day, several reasons why chesstempo is better than CTS. 1) Problems are more complex and 'realistic' ie not fake looking positions. 2) No time penalty, so it is more like an in-game event, but the timer is a nice touch. 3) Better explanations of solutions 4) User comments are reassuring and make you feel like you aren't the only idiot to miss problems.

Sliding ever deeper into the deep dark schism of slumpiness. Thanks tactics, thanks a lot