Thanks rob

I don't like c4 though . First of all it gives up the d4 square for the knight and even after I kick it away with c5 I'll end up with a static king of structure ( pawns on c4 c5 b6 which white can attack with a4 maby? ) cause white can always play c3. In general this might be good but in this particular case I don't think it's much of a problem for white and I don't wanna end up in a blocked up queenside like I did in the endgame but that's just my poor play. I'll look into it once I start looking at this game in greater detail

I like the suggestion of f5 a lot more but not as much as my game continuation because his pieces ended up on awkward ( I got the spelling right this time I think! ) squares and I really liked my position after white's 21st move which fritz confirms as a clear advantage for black. However the more I look at f5 the more I like it if white doesn't take he'll end up with a weakness on e4 but I have to watch out of him trading off the bishop pair I think. And if white takes my bishop on f5 is looking good and I have more open lines, yeah it's definetaly worth considering
So Be5 wasn't the problem but about my bishops not having "fresh air" I agree after white's 21st I couldn't find a good way to continue and I think f5 as you pointed out was the indicated advance

cheers

Played a 15min today, a damn modern defence . I don't know what's wrong with me but I just don't like that response from black at all. Most of the time it leads to murky positions which with 15time control is not enough to figure out. I guess I'll switch to some kind of classical set up with Nf3 Be2 0-0. One thing I don't get it is why white plays 3.Nc3 which I always do against the modern and it turns out quite well but I don't really understand why Nc3 is so special. I guess it's the most flexible or something


So what's the big deal with 3.Nc3?



The opening I handled very well I think, however after Nf6 I blew it. After Nb4 he had like a minute left while I had 4min or something. I could have flagged him but that's not very fair considering the postion which I think is just better for black

Another thing I did today is started solving CT-ART 3.0 again which I used to enjoy so much back in the day. I seem to like it

Uhhhh, 5mins are killing me. It seems my opponent had an ugly position almost the entire game with that stupid light squared bishop and yet I blew it and the end and besides I lost on time, I see a pattern here! I think I am done with 5mins, I'll stick to longer time controls for now



I have started reading Jacob Aagaard's "Excelling at chess" it's pretty good. I like his " humans are not machines" atitude and explaining everything in terms of words rather than a bunch of variations, however I am skeptical about his attack on Watson as like 20 pages was a review of "Secrets of modern chess strategy"

Wow, that Knight on d4 was just a monster, while his pony on a4 looked like a mound of dog poo. (I call it a pony rather than a knight or horse because where it was at it was really only more like half a horse, hence... pony. )

Yeah, 5 0 games suck, that's all I have to say about that.

The whole bashing Watson is really the only problem I have with Aagard (aside from his huge ego which I could get past) There's a great mentioning about this topic here as well as a good review of said book.

Edit: Ahh, it took me a minute to find it, but if you're going to read Excelling at Positional Chess then I think it's only fair you read Mr. Watson's rebuttal. Or if you just like an interesting read by John Watson about what Aagard says about him.

Yeah, it reminded of a game by kramnik with e5 d6 c5 structure too.

Sure do I think I'll put them aside for a while.

Thanks for the links! I might read it sometime, however at the present the discussion of whether the knight on the rim is dim or not doesn't seem to be too interesting.

Actually the whole knight thing is hardly even discussed. Mostly it's to the effect that Silman wrote Aagard saying that the way he "called Watson out" in a previous book where he had no ability to defend himself was uncalled for, Aagard wrote back apologizing, then did it again in his next book, etc. I think it's interesting, though probably I'm one of the few.

I dunno what's he up to but as long as he explains me how to make better decisions I can live with that. I have read through the "watson thing" already and to me it doesn't make much of a difference about the things they seem to be arguing about, although the story might be of interest I am not into that somehow. Maby Watson flagged Aagaard in some game?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa It's one of those games were my beliefs about certain things are shattered. I just can't believe Nc6-Nd4 then back to c6 with the idea to capture a flank pawn and misplace the knight can work Maby it does and I played stupid. I think I am gonna analyse this to death

Hey armis.

The fact that you don't believe in black's plan is pretty interesting. And makes sense, since general principles tell us that losing so many tempi for an ugly pawn shouldnt be the best plan.

But i think that in this closed ruy positions, you have liberty to take some tempi repositioning your pieces. As we discussed, there are plans like undeveloping the night to b8 to go to d7 (Breyer Variation) or stuff like Re1 -> Bf8 -> g6 ->Bg7, in similar positions.

If you look at the position after 11. Nbd2, what might be a good plan for black? It is not easy to choose one, since there is nothing happening right now. But one, might be to try to puch c5, to protect b4 and win space on the queenside. You have to move the night to do it, and you can do it to d4 with tempo on the bishop. 11.Nd4 seems very logical. So does 12. Bc4 and 12.c5.

13.Nf1 seems to me a good move too, being consistent with your plan and provoking black to double up white's pawns on f3. But i thought taking on f3 is not such a nice option, since i can't take advantage of your weaknesses (my play is on the queenside). And maybe later you will break with f4, go kh1 and work on the g file... white has lots of play there. So what should black do?

Not easy to find a move once again, and night back to c6 does seem ilogical, but the point is that i have no much better continuation, and this will win a pawn next move. But the importance of winning this pawn is not only for the pawn on it self, but the fact that it gives a lot of play on the queenside, with plans like a5 a4 maybe a3!

To summarize, i understand your wish to find a refutation for black's plan, since it seems to be weird, but i guess that in these positions, plans like this one are completely valid. this is a slow strategic game, and these are weird moves to the eyes but logic and consistent.

I think it is very nice what you are doing, one only improves by looking at one's losses, and trying to work out what went wrong. I should do the same more often!

Wow this is my first time here, but in one post i wrote more words than most people in years of posting

Hey XFrame how nice of you

Well, the more I look at it the more sense it actually makes. The problem is not the pawn on a5 but the bishop on c4 which is the key to my strategy.
Now as for 12.c5 I have found an annotated game where c5 was given a ?!. Why? I guess this has to do with your lightsquare weaknesssess and I am going to look into this more. The "theory" move is c6
I still haven't come up with any conclusions as a friend of mine visited me and we played some chess on the REAL board, do you still have one of those? So I didn't have time to look this game up but I'll certainly do and let you know



The more the better!

Yet again it has been a million years I wrote anything in here, however next month ( in 40days ) I am going to participate in a tournament so I kind of have to get ready

Basically I have figured out I should solve a huge amount of tactical puzzles and work on my repertoire which really sucks to be precise cause I play this and that but never settle on particular defences, atlhough one thing I know for sure: the berlin defence suits me well and I love it.
I also figured I should go jogging or something cause long hours of chess might be exhausting so I need to bust my stamina
Moreover I am trying to play a bunch of short correspondence games 1day/move to get practice in my openings and I was thinking about making video analysis on every one of them but I am not quite sure on this one yet
By the way, I figured I will read Andrew Soltis " pawn structure chess " which I think will benefit me greatly

So if you have any ideas or tips how one should prepare for an upcoming tournament I would be glad to hear them. I know there is a bunch of stuff on that in the internet but I do like the dialogue option more, thanks

Hey, armis! Long time, no talk...

The best thing is to work lots tactics just to get the rust off your game. Work on common endgames too, if you want to do something besides tactics. It's probably a better choice than the pawn structure stuff with a 40 day event horizon.

As for openings, just pick either 1. e4 or 1. d4 as White and something against both 1. e4 and 1. d4 as Black and then go with it -- at least until the tournament is over. Be disciplined! Dithering back and forth is far worse than anything you'd pick. You're not going to learn a whole new repertoire in 40 days, so play stuff that's comfortable because you already know it a bit and just review what you know. Also, don't worry about plugging all the holes. If someone wants to play the Grob or some such thing against you (unlikely in a real serious tournament), just bust them over the board with your sharp tactics and excellent endgame technique!

L8erz...
=wild=

Soltis book is awesome! It does not cover every pawn structure and it's not always easy to know if you can get this structure from your opening, but his explanations are first class.

Thanks guys

Ah, yeah common endgames is something I forgot to mention but didn't forget I was supposed to look them up.



That's a good point I more or less figured out what I am going to play. The problem openings are 1.d4 and 1.c4, although I think I'll stick to the nimzo/bogo indian stuff which I am a little bit familiar with except for the bogo



Oh, ok

As for the soltis book MABY it won't help me much but as I go along I get these AHA! moments a lot of the time so it seems to improve my understanding in general. Also once I am done with my 1day/move correspondence game moves, tactics and the soltis stuff occassionaly I look something up additionaly and especially during my correspondence games read stuff like this or that opening explained

Man, the first correspondence 1day/mover came as a loss. I felt very confident during the initial stages of the opening but as the game went on I came to a point where I had just no clue what I had to do! And the succumbed to a tactic which is totally lame having in mind I am working on those for the upcoming tournament



The good thing though is I figured I would benefit way more from these playing without the help of the openings books ( which was kind of obvious but I just didn't do that ) AND I tried very hard analysing the game without a computer. I have to admit that's pretty damn hard once you are used to fritz analysis features but I am getting there!

The position where I had no clue what to do was this one ( black to play )

The silicon brain thinks I played the best move even though I still had no clue what I was going to do after that. Maby I am supposed to just sit and wat? I dunno
ANY SUGGESTIONS MORE THAN WELCOME