Weekend activities

It was a gorgeous weekend here in the greater Portland area, so there wasn't much time over the board. The kids played another G/30 tournament Friday night, and still lost all their games (which wasn't a surprise.) However, Megan had managed to get herself into a winning endgame (Knight + 5 pawns vs. 5 pawns, no passed pawns for either side) but let her opponent queen, and ended up losing. She's tasting it, and really wants to win her first game, so she's pretty motivated to study more. I told her that endgame combined both of the fun games we've played, but I don't think she was able to translate those fun games to the board. Yet.

Meanwhile, Jack has stated he's tired of being checkmated. Now, he needs to learn a few basics to keep his pieces around. We'll get those sorted out straight away. He asked early Sunday morning to play a game (I now give them time odds of 30-minutes to 5) and then do the pawn game afterwards. I really need to work on the latter myself, as they keep beating me.

It's a few weeks until their next tournament - they won't start back up until they open up qualification for next year's scholastic championships, so we've got time to learn a few things before heading back into the fray.

Both kids have progressed on the Fritz & Chesster program as well. Megan's made it into the "Heavyweights" on disk 1, and Jack's one trophy away from getting into the "Middleweights." I like the frequent reward system in that app.

On my side, I'm still working through tactical problems (about 30-35/day in CT-ART 3.0) and playing the occasional game against the chess engine. I'll play a few more games this week, though, as I'm back over the board all day Saturday.

My goals for the weekend: not drop any pieces, and win at least one game. Afterwards, I'll certainly be going over those games for educational purposes. You'll see the results right here. I'm really curious where my skill actually lies right now: I feel like I know more about how to play the game than I did 20 years ago, but how that translates into a rating/performance result is anybody's guess.

Meanwhile, my DGT board is en route across the Atlantic (I think it's already here, but DHL tracking seems to stop after it reaches the states) and my wife keeps shaking her head at the sudden obsession with chess in the house. Who knows... maybe someday she'll try to play.