Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Fascination

This morning, I watched a good chunk of the 3rd game in the Kramnik/Aronian match.

Absolutely fascinating. I believe the net effect was Aronian sacrificed a queen and two pawns for a rook and two minor pieces. (I'd have to go back and look up the game to be sure.) In any case, the tactics were so deep and involved, both players came close to running out of time. Aronian had the worse of it, and blundered during severe time pressure (6 moves left in 15 seconds or something close to that) giving the game to Kramnik (who, admittedly, was winning from about the 15th move on or so) and tying up their “friendly” at 1.5 each. One can only hope tomorrow's game is anything close to that. Many have called it the best game of 2012 to date, and it's probably close.

I had the live commentary running on my computer this morning before the kids went off to school, and my daughter watched for quite a bit. I have no idea how much of it stuck in her head, but just the fact that she was interested in watching it go on was fine by me. Kids just seem to absorb information by osmosis.

Right now, I'm feeling a bit frazzled before my first OTB tourney in forever. I feel like there's just so much I need to study, but I'm trying to stay calm, and focus on two things: tactics practice (260 CT-ART problems solved in 8 days) and general familiarity with my openings. That, and working on my thinking process. Dan Heisman's material is fantastic for this. If it was feasible for me to hire him as a coach, I would.

Anyway, that's today's thought. More later as my tourney draws closer.

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