I have two "hobbies" I suppose. Throughout high school, I ran cross country and track, and I also played on my school's chess team. My freshman year, I started off on board 5. I improved to board 1/2 my sophomore year along with a senior, and I played board 1 my junior and senior year. We won our league (quite a few high schools in eastern Massachusetts) my sophomore year, and we took second the other three years.

At the same time, my cross country team was competitive in our state all four years, but that's another story altogether.

My senior year of high school I started playing actively in tournaments again. I had played in a few in 8th grade (enough for a solid 690 rating!), but I had never learned any opening or studied theory. By the end of my high school chess career, I had improved to a 1532 uscf rating after winning a few tournaments in Rhode Island and taking 3rd in the club championship (ahead of some 1900+ players, if I can brag a bit!).

Now I'm a junior in college in Cambridge, MA, and I haven't had much time for chess. I've played a bit on FICS and against my Fritz program. This is the first semester in college that I have a "lighter" load. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will have improved enough to head over to BCC for a weekly tournament or something of that sorts!

My goals for the near future include improving my tactical awareness (I've been playing quite a few blitz games just to get back into the swing of things and to see lots of positions again), remembering all the opening preparation that I did for the high school tournament games, and finally getting the courage to play at the BCC or at my college's chess club. Additionally, I broke my big toe about a month ago and just had surgery on it, so I'll be posting about my return to running after 4 weeks as soon as I can get out running again. In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to get back up to 70 miles a week before 2009.

Thanks for reading, and I'd love to play anyone in an FICS, correspondence, or dual commentary game. Feel free to email me, send me an AIM message, or PM me.

Andrew

Welcome to the forum!

I played in a chess tournament at my school about a week ago. I tied for 4th with 3/5 points (3 wins, 2 losses).

This was my first round loss.



I was black. I was happy with my position out of the opening, but at G/30, I was taking waayyyy too much time to get a decent position. I was very low on time in the ending so I got into trouble simplifying into the ending. His rooks became too active and he won a pawn and eventually won the resulting time scramble. I missed the tactical shot 20... Qe5 attacking h2 and threatening the rook on a1 after the knight moves.

But other than that, I was quite happy.

I've also been using the chess tactics server, and that's been a bit of fun and good for my pattern recognition too.

This was the round 2 game. I was white and he played a Slav against me with 5... Bf4.

Against this, I usually play Qb3 and trade the pawns on d5. I'm not sure that's the best thing to do, but I like it and I know how to play the positions so I suppose that's all that really matters at my level.

It was a pretty quiet game most of the way through and we got to this position:



Here, he probably should have swapped on d3 and tried to play c5 as a break. I liked the endgame for white because he'd have hanging pawns on c5 and d5, but I doubt that I could have won.

Instead he played Nd7?? in this position. After taking on e4, I was able to just win a piece by force. After that, the rest was just technique. He allowed me to trade off the rooks without any problem, so that eliminated any counterplay he could have had.

Overall, I was happy with this game. I think I could have improved in the opening. If I want to get better positions, I shouldn't trade so early.

A quick note
Bf5 seems like a blunder because of cxd5 cxd5 Qb3 when both d5 and b7 are attacked which seems to simply loose a pawn.

During the game, I thought Nc6 would hold everything for a few turns because of the threats on d4 and eventually the c2 fork. Usually Nf6 comes in before Bf5, so that was why I looked at it, but I didn't really think I could get anything great out of it, so I decided to go with my normal setup. Bf4, Nf3, then cxd5 and Qb3.

Looking at it now, I think I could have gotten one of the pawns, and with some careful play either held onto it or given it back for a very nice position. Nf3 after Nc6 seems to renew all the threats and then I can just take the b7 pawn after he defends d5. Wish I saw that after I found Nc6...

Hi, I wanted to comment on your first game.

Keep in mind I don't know anything so this is just my opinion. Sometimes I find people agree with my opinion, so take it how you like.

Before I comment, if someone could tell me how you do the reference diagrams it would be a great help. I know how to post the games, but I have seen people reference with diagrams even in my journal. I would like to know how.

I think your actual problem was trading, NOT missing Qe5. Let me explain. Qe5 is good to notice, AND it is a lot better in my opinion than Qe3 for a lot more than a double attack. See if gives your opponent a lot to think about. With Qe3 you just offer more trades where you "should" be thinking about your advantages.

Take for example the fact that you have an awesome knight VS a poorly placed bishop. This usually means that you have a positional advantage because everything else (respectively) is similar. This is the most glaring thing. Another thing is this. You had control over the "E" file before you traded the queen, not only that, he pulled the queen BACK to d2 to when you decided you wanted to trade. So in that position your trading an inferior piece because when you initiated the trade it lost some control over the file.

To compound it even further, if you look at the trade sequence, it was the reason your opponent penetrated on the 7th shortly afterward. The time it took to trade the queen on d2 allowed your opponent the time to better his rook. Which he did.

I could go on and on, but I think maybe I got my point across. I think you traded your advantages when you should have cultivated them. Qe5 may have been tactically correct but in that position it at least helped positionally which is just as important I think. The position before move 20 I could probably rip apart, but I think at move 20 is where you started really falling apart.

I also think if you have not read it already maybe take a small peak at one of the Silman books. I am no expert in them, but I think they helped me out a lot. It gives you not only positional rules but "TACTICAL" or more to the point "COMBINATION" rules. (The book that gives a good detail into the rules of combination is 'How to reassess your chess'). With ideas like this you might even find more tactics in the position that you already have found. (I noticed in the second game someone pointed out white winning a pawn. I have not looked at that position yet, but I am sure he has a point. )

I hope this helps, if it does not I hope I learn something from it.

Jesse

So I'm playing in a tournament this month. It's the first real tournament that I've played in in over two and a half years!

This was tonight's game. I was happy with my position for the first 10 or so moves, but then after that I really was a bit unhappy with how things were turning out. Then he made three bad moves in a row that basically threw away the game. It still took a bit of finesse, but he was basically lost, and I was able to bring home the point after a three hour game.

I tried to play as simply as possible at the beginning. It was my first game back so I was only shooting for a draw, so it was nice that I was able to pull out a win. The next rounds will be interesting - I'm the lowest rated person in the tournament so I got put in the U1800 section so we'll see how it all turns out.



I'll post some comments about the game tomorrow at some point.

Congratulations on your win! Even if it's a little ugly around the edges, a win is a win...


After 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 d5 I think 3. cxd5 is really the move:

If 3... Nxd5 4. e4 and White looks good after either 4... Nf6 or 4... Nb3.

If 3... Qxd5 4. Nc3 Qa5 5. Nf3 and White looks pretty good here too.


Also, after 3... e5 I think 4. dxe5 wins material:

If 4... d4 5. exf6 dxc3 6. Qxd8+ Kxd8 7. bxc3 gxf6 and White is a pawn up.

If 4... Ng4 5. Qxd5 Qxd5 (if 5... Be6 6. Qb5+) 6. Nxd5 Na6 and White can protect the e5 pawn with 7. f4 or 7. Nf3 and again is a pawn up. If Black wants to play the Budapest gambit, he's got to play 1. d4 Nf6 2. c2 e5. Swapping 2... d5 for 3. Nc3 gets him in big trouble...


L8erz...
=wild=

Haha thanks. I know about the cxd5 Nxd5 e4 lines (I play them in blitz on occasion), but my opening stuff is pretty weak right now and I didn't want to play into something where he knew what was going on and I was using time to find opening moves. In the games I've played in that line I've never been able to get a huge edge so I just decided to go with the solid stuff that I'm used to. It often transposes to a Scandinavian-like setup after Qa5.

I think e5 just gambits a pawn. We talked about it after the game. He likes to play off-beat openings. I picked it up right away and then decided to give the pawn on a2 back for some active play and to get the rest of my pieces out. Probably didn't have to give the pawn back and I could have just held onto it and tried to grind out a win that way. In retrospect taking on e5 might have been better, but either way gets me a pawn. I just decided to take the one on d5 cuz it fits my style a bit more. I think I started to go wrong when I played Bg5+ trading the bishops. I think just f4 and then Nf3 consolidates pretty nicely.

Thanks for the comments!

There's a fine line between playing a gambit and dropping a pawn on move three... I'm not sure your opponent understood which side of it he was on.

I'm reminded of Sean's Gambit.

Sometimes I'm so quoteable I can't help but quote myself! And I'm humble too...

Ok, 3rd round game tonight. I drew last week, but I came back with a win tonight so I'm tied for first with 2.5/3. So in cliche terms, I control my own destiny, hehe.

Without further ado, the game.



12... Bg4 I'm not sure how I feel about this move, it just lets me support the e4 pawn and wastes time with his bishop. After the game, we looked at a bunch of lines. Bg4 HAS been played before with some success, but it is followed up by 13...Na5 and then 14...Be6 instead of just Bd7 as played in the game.

13. Qd2 Ok, well if I have the time, I guess I'll trade off his nice Bg7.

15...Bxh6 Now this is almost always a bad idea. My queen's going to get a great spot, and I can think about attacking him.

17. h4 I guess I just figured that since his pieces were a bit out of play on the queenside, I could try to open some lines against his king and see what happened. I'm not normally an attacking player, but I calculated all the lines I needed to and decided to just go for it.

17...Nc4 I thought during the game that 17...e5 was his best chance. This supports e5, but it seems a bit too slow for me. Even if my attack doesn't work, I'm still going to have a very comfortable position.

22...Qe6 After this move, I just think he's worse. He should have tried Qb2 and taken his pawn back. Had he played Qb2, I figured that I preferred having my nice knight get to d5 and support it with a rook than have his bishop which doesn't have many squares because of my pawn chain. I'll also have a passed pawn, so that's something.

24...b5 In the postmortem he admitted that he just missed 25. Rd6! basically winning. I'm not sure what else he should have done, but I thought that he should have tried Rc6 or something to at least trade off a pair of rooks.

After that it was more just a matter of technique depending on what line he picked. He ended up going into a line where I could win immediately...

28...Bc8 Better was Bc6, but it's pretty hopeless in either case. He's going to lose decisive material. The ending was very pretty though!

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Nice trick at the end!