Life

Well, I resigned in my correspondence games. It is unfortunate, but I just don't have the time to keep up at a pace that's fair for my competitor. Anyway, the summer of chess was fun for me and I am looking forward to graduating college this May and having time once again to enjoy the game.

If you want to stop by and say hi I'll be checking my Christianity blog more often than this one.

Todd

My Current Correspondence Games

During my hiatus I will be posting my very slow correspondence games in case any of you guys or gals would like to follow along and comment about the games (without giving hints as to what move I should play next). I currently have two games going: one as white and one as black. We have been going at a pace of about 1-2 moves per week. I will update the pictures and annotation as the games progress. Enjoy! :-)

As White:

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.e3 c5 4.d5 (I was also considering 4.dxc5 Bxc5 5.Nf3 but felt like it gave Black too much control in the center) 4...exd5 5.cxd5 g6 6.Nc3

As Black:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 (I was considering 3...Nf6 4.Nc3 but I would rather put the question to White's Bishop now instead of later.) 4.Ba4 b5 5.Bb3 d6

Have Been, Will Be

Hey people...just wanted to let everyone know that since school has started again I have had virtually no time to make any sort of interesting posts, besides my quick rant about professionals drawing in chess.

I haven't picked up any of my new chess books or played on FICS for the past couple weeks and probably won't be able to regularly until December since this semester is vital to learning what I need to know as a Respiratory Therapist.

So anyway, I just felt compelled to write SOMETHING. So that's that.

Draws for Money??

Draws to ensure yourself a cut of the prize money seems contrary to the spirit of the game.

Man vs. Machine Tourney

Since I am currently a little too sucky to be able to participate in other blogosphere tournaments, I have decided to do my own mini-tourney! The participants: myself, Fritz, and Chessmaster!

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Naturally, the computers will be dumbed down a little. I'll put Fritz in "Friend Mode" and I don't recall the exact method of adjusting Chessmaster's strength. I may just choose one of its pre-programmed computer opponent profiles with a rating of around 1200+.
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I'll have to think about the exact format of the tournament, but it will probably be something like everyone plays each opponent twice and whoever has the most total wins will be MvM Champion. So, yes, I will be making Fritz and Chessmaster battle it out with each other while severely handicapped.

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More to come on my next post!

Problem to Solve

White to move. How did White win?

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This is another problem from the book "Chess Tactics" by Paul Littlewood. Hopefully I won't get sued for copyright infringement! It is a position from Reilly-Alexander, Hastings 1931.

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Back to FICS, back to getting my butt kicked!

White to move and not screw up his position. What's the best continuation for White?

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Well, as you'll see below, I did in fact screw up my position. The position looked so tactically rich that I figured there must be a way to win a piece...there must! I felt rushed. I was in absolutely no time trouble, but I just didn't want to sit there and evaluate for a couple minutes to try and find an absolute tactic to win a piece. I have this feeling that I'm wasting a bunch of time if I have to sit and evaluate in the middle of a game for more than a few seconds. So, with a few seconds of evaluation and a really vague plan, I winged it. Played a sacrifice that I thought might win me a piece.

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Did I miss a response to my tactic? OF COURSE!! That's what happens when you evaluate an interesting position for only a few seconds! Well, needless to say it went downhill from there and was over pretty quickly.

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Oh well. Here's the game:

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ToddvsIronRanger20080812.pgn

It's embarassing, but, if I don't show my suckage to everyone then I'll never get any good advice about improving, or encouragement.

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Stupid Positions

Lets evaluate, shall we?

White to move. How would you evaluate the above position?

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To me, seems like Black has a good game! He's castled, while White's not. He has a pin going on (even though it seems useless), while White doesn't. He also has a Bishop for a Knight (Although his extra Bishop is pretty hemmed in at the moment) and a nice pawn structure.

White to move. What about this position? This position is what leads me to positions like the first one.

These are the positions that came up a lot today while playing my little Excalibur Chess Computer after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 Ne4 3.Nf3 Nxg5 4.Nxg5 e6. After which I am forced to retreat my Knight back to f3, then Black plays d5 and I am back to square 1, trying to eventually push my e-pawn.

After playing a few of these games today I have come to the conclusion that 2.Bg5 is not helpful. Why trade my Bishop for a Knight if I gain nothing in return?

My idea was simply trying to find a quicker way to play e4, since that becomes the main theme of a lot of my games using the Queen's Pawn Opening. You must remember that I have not memorized specific Openings so I am pretty much out of book from move 1. I think it's better this way, mainly because after seeing the same problems arise again and again I begin to understand why a particular opening move (like 2.Bg5) doesn't help my position.

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P.S. Check out the new Salary Calculator I added. It is pretty accurate as far as I can tell by punching in my current and future jobs in this area. How about yours?

Problem to Solve

Black to move and win the Rook on a2. Can you spot it?

So I am currently going through Paul Littlewood's Chess Tactics for my training. I go through one chapter a day, along with the problems at the end of the chapter. The next day I go back over the previous chapter's problems, read the next chapter and do the new set of problems. In this way I am trying to cement in the tactics learned from the previous chapter along with introducing a new set of tactics each day.

When I've gone through the book once I will go through it again with the only difference being that with each new chapter I will go through all of the previous problems in the book. Call it my own personal Circles. Solo Circles. ;-p

ANYWAY, the above problem is from the "Skewers" chapter from the aforementioned book. I was laying in bed going through the problems in that chapter, had just solved this particular one, when my wife came in and started loving on me. For some reason, when I looked at the problem afterward, I had completely forgotten the solution. I've studied it a few times since then and have not been able to remember the solution.

Drafting Chess Armies

A quick thought I wanted to get every one's input on:

My brother-in-law, as I think I've mentioned before, is into this board game right now that's called "Heroscape". This game involves setting up a big 3-d map however you want, then drafting army units (each worth a certain amount of points depending on their strengths/weaknesses), until you reach your point limit, say 500 or 1000.

Anyway, he tries to get me to play Heroscape, I try to get him to play Chess...we end up making a deal of 2 Chess games per Heroscape game, etc. etc. So the other day we're on the phone and he says "It would be cool if the chess pieces had some kind of point value so we could draft armies like in Heroscape."

SWEET! I jump right in and tell him that they do just so happen to have point values! So I went over a quick breakdown of the points. Well, if you've never added it up, you end up with 39 points worth of pieces (not including the King, because you need to have a King).

So here's the idea I'm kicking around:

We get a few chess sets together and draft our Chess Armies until we reach 39 points, then we set them all up however we want on our own back 2 ranks, and the game begins.

At first I dismissed the idea rather quickly, thinking "I want to practice real chess!"...but now I'm thinking this would be a really cool way for me to at least get in some pure tactics/mating practice! What do you think?