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?