Compliments

A new chess club started up at a local (rather quiet) mall. Every Monday night, and it seems the focus is on a rated, G/25 tournament each week. $3/week, so that's not a bad deal. 

Though, I have to admit not a huge fan of G/30 or less.

I showed up last night, and was just setting up to go through a game from Formation Attacks when a former state champ and Fide Master asks me if I'm up for a game. (The guy doesn't know me from Adam.)

Well, yeah. Like I'm going to turn down a game from a FM.

We don't use a clock, just casual, and I'm actually hearing a grunt of surprise from him every now and then. Of course, he wins both games, but I make him work for it.

We're in the third game, and a friend of his shows up, and he starts pulling out the bag of tricks. He swindles a piece off me, and we call things as the TD is getting things started.

As we're cleaning up, he asks me what my rating is. "In the 1200s" I reply. He says "You play way better than that. 1700s or so." I thanked him for the kind words. 

If I can only get the results when the clocks are running... I know it's in me, but it's just not coming out when I need it. Naturally, I lost both tourney games after that, with a massive blunder in each game.

Still, it's compliments like that, from players like that, that keep me going. If I was basing my desire off results, I'd probably be back playing wargames by now. 

I can do this, but I've just got to fix the way I think during timed games. What I currently do doesn't work. I've been going through the Igor Smirnov course "The Grandmaster's Secrets." It's good. It teaches you how to find moves, how to approach the game, and how and what to calculate. You just have to get used to his voice.

Disaster

Well, that certainly didn't go the way I wanted it to.

I pretty well botched my way through the US Open. I blew both games in the Wednesday Quad with tricky endgames in time trouble against players I felt like I should beat. I've come to really dislike Game/30 as a time control. I just don't think that fast. Yet.

In the Open proper, I played really well the first two rounds, but lost to players 600+ and 400+ points higher than me. Both say I played much higher than my rating. Felt good. Then I blundered my way into a mate-in-two against a player I should beat, pulled off a draw and a win on the 2^nd day out of four games, then didn't win again until the last round. 2.5/9. NOT what I was looking for. Ended up losing nearly 100 ratings points over the week. Twice, I lost "won" positions. (points in a game where Houdini gave me a +2 advantage or better) I couldn't find the winning move.

So, obviously, what I've been doing for training wasn't working. Or, it was working 85% of a game, and the other 15% were losing it for me.

I seem to play really well in correspondence games, when I don't have the time pressure going. So, I'm thinking there are three things I need to work on in OTB play.

Calculation, a more consistent thought pattern, and my method of move selection. I'm pretty happy with my openings, for the most part.

Most of the time I've spent over the weeks since the Open ended have been in re-evaluating my study method. I could charitably describe it as “scatterbrained” or “oooh! Shiny!” I need to pare things way down.

So, my method will now be this:

• Work, slowly and steadily, through Yasser Seirawan's series. I skimmed through Play Winning Chess at the open, but that's mostly stuff I've grasped. We do have a copy of it checked out from the library, though, for my wife (who keeps saying she should learn how to play beyond the basic moves, but hasn't yet made the leap), so I'll try the tests in it to see how I do.
  
  Right now, I'm 1/3 through Winning Chess Tactics. Going pretty well. After I finish that book, I'm going to go back through Silman's Endgame course up to Class D (or maybe C), and learn that cold. Then on to Winning Chess Strategies.

• Igor Smirnov's course “The Grandmaster's Secrets” I've seen a couple of Smirnov's free videos on YouTube, and there's good information there. This is supposed to be sort of the starting point for his program, so we'll see how it goes. Don't let the affiliate-style, “this looks like an expensive load of crap” website design fool you.
  
  One of the primary skills taught in that course is how to analyze games (both yours, and other players'). I picked up a handful of books at the Open, and among those were a couple books by CJS Purdy. He's pretty well known for his annotation style (Fischer raved about one of his books when he was younger), so I'm going to combine that with the methods Smirnov teaches. The methods happen to be nearly identical, thankfully. (Walk through a game from the winner's perspective, and try to guess the moves while using a typical time control. Try to establish why the winner made the moves he made, using the principles Smirnov describes – which happen to be very similar to what Dan Heisman teaches. Synergy. It's useful.)

• Continue working through the Yusupov series. I've only completed five lessons of the 24 in the first book, but my scores are improving.

• Play more games. I'm simply not playing enough timed chess. I've got 20 or so games going on Red Hot Pawn, but that's like twitter compared to a novel. While I need to revisit how I'm using RHP, I need to play more. My goal will be two 45-45 games per week. Either on ICC, FICS, or Playchess. Haven't decided. Most of the games I'll be playing OTB will be Game/60, so that's a level I need to focus on. Then, analyse the heck out of the game.

I think that's it for now. Plenty to keep me busy. I'm sure I'll wander off into another book or three at some point, but I've at least got a plan in place. I'm happy with my openings - it's the thought process and move selection I need to improve.

Stagnance

I haven't written much on here lately, that's for sure.

Things are progressing, slowly, in our little chess world. My kids haven't been interested in playing tournaments, but they have been playing Fritz & Chesster. My daughter's graduated on to disk 2, while my son seems to be stuck at the pawn game. He still hasn't grasped the concept of getting his pieces to work together, and he sends out one or, at most, two pieces at a time, they get captured, then he tries again. He does this in Memoir '44 as well, so I'm not surprised. I need to figure out how to get the point across to him, but hey – he's not even 6. There's time.

I've now played in three OTB tournaments since returning to chess, with 12 total games. I'm at +4 -6 = 2, and I've picked up thirty points on my rating.

The average rating of the six players I've lost to is (post-event) is 1749, the average of those I've beaten is 1043, and my average draw is 1255. This fits, given my current rating is 1275.

Starting on Saturday is the US Open. It's only 25 miles away, so I pretty much have to go. I'm playing in two tourneys: the Wednesday Quads, and the 4-day Open (U1400). That means I'll have three games Wednesday, three on Thursday, four on Friday, and one each Saturday and Sunday. That will double the number of rated games I've played since returning.

I've been kind of spread out in my preparation/study lately, and I definitely need to become more focused.

For tactics, I've switched to ChessTempo over CT-ART. I'm also taking advice I saw elsewhere that doing tactics study for more than 15 minutes at a time is counter-productive. Not that that's stopped me from spending over an hour on there at times. I seem to hit a wall at getting my ChessTempo rating over 1300. I'll get to 129x, then miss one or two. The misses seem to have a bigger rating penalty than the hits, so it's five hits to gain the points back.

I'm through the fifth lesson in the 1^st Yusupov book, and I've barely been scoring above the “pass” level in each lesson. The 1st-level books in the series are supposed to take you to ~1500. So, that fits as well.

I'm pretty set on my repertoire: Grunfeld, Scandinavian, Veresov. Of course, the Veresov frequently morphs into a French, so I've been studying the relevant lines of that as well.

The books I'm currently reading are: A Ferocious Opening Repertoire, Starting Out: The Scandinavian, Play the Grunfeld, and Winning Chess Tactics. I'm also occasionally going through games from the Alekhine autobiographical collection and Chernev's Logical Chess, and occasionally reading Chess Words of Wisdom by Henebry (this latter one needs to be taken in small doses – there's a TON of good information in there, but it's dense.)

I'll try to post reports after each day of games in the Open, but we'll see. It's a pretty brutal schedule.

Opening Categories

Just picked up the new Mastering Opening Strategy by Johan Hellsten. Judging by the first half of the first chapter, it's quite good.

One thing it has, in the back, is a section on building an opening repertoire. In that section are two tables which I will take the liberty of reproducing here. If you like this - go buy the book. It covers what you need to know about the openings - HOW to conduct them, not just memorizing a crapload of variations.

So, first table: Openings with structural similarities.

Openings and defences	Factors in common
Slav, Caro-Kann, Scandinavian, Torre, London	Pawn Structure, queen's bishop outside the chain
Dutch Stonewall, French, Open Spanish	Pawn structure, opposing pawns in the center
Benoni, Pirc, Closed Spanish	Pawn structure, dark square play
Nimzo-Indian, Queen's Indian, Bogo-Indian, Sicilian Scheveningen, Taimanov, and Kan	Pawn structure, queenside fianchetto
King's Indian, Pirc, Modern, Sicilian Dragon	Pawn structure, kingside fianchetto
Queen's Gambit Accepted, Petroff	Pawn structure, open game
Grunfeld, Catalan (some lines)	Pawn structure, kingside fianchetto
Sicilian Dragon Accelerated, English w/ g3, Symmetrical English (as Black)	Pawn structure, kingside fianchetto
Sicilian Rossolimo, English w/ 1...e5 and ...Bb4	Pawn structure
Colle, Semi-Slav	Pawn structure
King's Indian Attack, King's Indian, Pirc, Old Indian	Pawn structure
Tarrasch, Petroff, Sicilian Alapin, Queen's Gambit Accepted, Caro-Kann Panov Attack	Pawn structure

Okay, that groups the openings together by their typical pawn structures. Now, openings with similar "styles."

Openings and defences	Factors in common
Queen's Gambit Accepted, Petroff, Spanish Berlin, Sicilian Alapin, Spanish Exchange, French Tarrasch	Solidity, piece exchanges, endgame perspective
King's Indian, Sicilian Dragon, Dutch Leningrad, French 3 Nc3, Open Sicilian	Aggressiveness, closed or semi-open positions
Semi-slav, Spanish Marshall, Archangel, and Schliemann, Car-Kann w/ 3f3, Open Sicilian	Aggressiveness, open or semi-open positions
French, King's Indian, Czech Benoni	Closed positions, pawn chain battle
Queen's Gambit Declined, French	Solidity, closed positions
Dutch Stonewall, Sicilian Sveshnikov	Weak points, activity
Sicilian Najdorf, Grunfeld, Sicilian Dragon, Semi-Slav Botvinnik	Theoretical battle, sharp play
Nimzo-Indian, French Winawer, Sicilian Rossolimo, English w/ 1...e5 and ...Bb4	Surrender of the king's bishop, doubled enemy pawns
Catalan, Benko Gambit, other gambits	Pawn sacrifices, activity
Sicilian Scheveningen, Kan and Taimanov, Alekhine, Pirc, English Hedgehog	Space disadvantage, flexibility, few piece exchanges
Trompowsky, Chigorin	Surrender of the queen's bishop, imbalanced play
King's Indian Samisch, Classical Nimzo-Indian	Space advantage, slow

So, if you're looking for a new opening, choosing something within the same group might prove easier to learn and play effectively.

Lessons

Okay, they say you learn the most from your losses. I present to you two games I lost yesterday. Both to players rated 500 points higher than me.

Landes, Eric (1245) - unnamed (1749)

Result: 0-1

Site: ?

Date: 2012.06.09

[...] 1.d4 ¤f6 2.¤f3 e6 3.¥f4 c5 4.c3 ¤c6 5.e3 d5 6.¤bd2 ¥d6 7.¥g3 O-O 8.¥e2 Out of book here. Should have been 8. Bd3.
(8.¥d3 c4 9.¥c2 b5 10.a3) 8...a6 9.O-O b5 He might have been better off here exchanging bishops and messing up my pawns.
10.a3 I really needed to get rid of that c5 pawn. Had plenty of chances, but this is when it should have happened.
10...c4 11.¥xd6 £xd6 12.b4 b3 was probably better. This forces things open, and not necessarily to my advantage.
12...cxb3 13.¤xb3 Taking with the queen might have been better, but I was fixated on getting my knight to c5.
13...¥d7 I really didn't see the point of this. a4-e8 diagonal?
14.¤c5 ¤e7 I expected Ne4 here. 15.¥d3 ¦fb8 Not convinced this was the right file, but it certainly made me think.
16.£c2 g6 17.¤e5 At this point, I liked my position but wasn't entirely sure how to progress.
17...¤c8 I found out later, he was eyeing a4 for this knight.
18.e4 Looking at this now, I think the queen's on the wrong diagonal. She needs to be on d1 or e2. This pawn break is suspect.
18...dxe4 19.¤xe4 a blunder. Should have either taken with the bishop, or taken the d7 bishop instead.
19...¤xe4 20.¥xe4 ¦a7 21.¦fe1 ¤b6 22.¦e3 I had considered throwing the h-pawn into the fray. Now would have been a good time. This rook excursion may have cost me the game.
22...¦c8 23.¦f3 again, kingside pawn rush. All his pieces are on the queen side. All mine are on the king side. This walks right into tactics.
23...¥e8 I had feared f5 here. It was probably the better move on his part.
24.£d2 ¦ac7 25.¤g4 This was me trying for complications. The c-pawn looked lost to me, and with that comes a heavy-piece breakthrough. So, I tried something.
25...f5 26.¤f6+ ¢h8 27.¤xe8 ¦xe8 28.¥c2 e5 29.¦e3 And, the losing move. I was looking at the rook hanging on e8, and simply did not see the knight fork. Hope Chess.
29...¤c4 30.£c1 ¤xe3 31.£xe3 £c6 32.a4 £xc3 33.£xc3 ¦xc3 34.¦a2 Bd1 loses more slowly. 34...exd4 35.f3 d3

And now the second one:

unnamed (1755) - Landes, Eric (1245)

Result: 1-0

Site: ?

Date: 2012.06.09

[...] 1.f4 ¤f6 2.¤f3 g6 3.g3 d5 4.¥g2 ¥g7 5.d3 O-O 6.O-O c5 7.£e1 ¤c6 8.c3 ¥e6 9.e4 dxe4 10.dxe4 ¥c4 11.¦f2 ¤g4 and here's where I started going off the rails. Either Bd3 (aggressive) or e5 (less aggressive) were better moves. I really liked my game up to this point.
12.¦d2 £c7 13.¤a3 ¤a5 14.¤xc4 ¤xc4 15.¦e2 e5 This was not the time for e5. It's way over-protected. I needed to take the open file.
16.h3 And here's where I decided to try something. I thought it might work (as did my opponent) until his 18th move. I didn't see that.
16...exf4 17.hxg4 fxg3 18.e5 The move I didn't see. This pried everything open, as now my two sides of the board can't coordinate.
18...¦fe8 19.¥f4 f6 I needed to either take the open file or get the queen off this skewer.
20.¥xg3 fxe5 21.b3 As Anand just said recently, there are no good moves in bad positions.
21...¤a3 22.¤xe5 ¥xe5 Liquidating at this point is not in my best interests.
23.¥xe5 £b6 I needed to send the queen the other direction. This just accelerates the loss. I was looking at the discovered check, but never had time to pull it off.
24.¥d5+ ¢f8 25.£f2+ ¢e7 26.¥c7+ ¢d7 27.£f7+ ¦e7 28.¦xe7+ ¢c8 29.£e8#

I felt good about how I played both games, but both had (obviously) fatal errors. Slow, steady progress!

Patience

In this quick fix, Internet-paced world, the hardest thing to remember is patience.

Chess is good for teaching patience, though _learning_ chess maybe not so much. I know the hardest thing I'm dealing with right now is resisting the impulse to move on to the next shiny thing. For a game that essentially hasn't changed in a couple hundred years, it's amazing how much you can spend on new things for and about it.

I do feel like I'm playing better, but the consistency still hasn't come. Considering I've only started this journey back into the game two months ago, I really shouldn't expect anything else.

Tonight, get three more standard-rated games on ICC, tomorrow, start the STTourney for June. Or, that's today's plan. It hasn't yet met the family, and we all know what happens to personal plans when families get involved...

Checked out a couple more books at the library: Pandolfini's Winning Way, and Alekhine's Best Games 1908 - 1937. I'll futz with them for a while.

Shiny!

I'm feeling spread way too thin right now. I keep falling into that "oh, great new shiny stuff to study" trap. And I'm not playing enough.

I certainly need to balance that out. That said, I feel like I'm retaining more, so the brain is getting rewired back onto the chessboard the way it needs to be. I just need to translate it to the board.

Current activities:

Openings: Reviewing my repertoire lines with Chess Position Trainer. Understanding my openings through four books: The Modern Scandinavian, The Kaufman Repertoire, The Safest Gruenfeld, and Play the London. I also refer to FCO when needed.

Middlegame: continuing the tactics training with Chess King and CT-ART. Working through Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move. Also reading occasional annotated games from various sources, mostly Chessbase Magazine.

Endgame: Working through the first few sections of Silman's Endgame Course, and Karsten Mueller's first endgame Fritz Trainer.

Thinking: reading Novice Nook articles periodically, and I occasionally refer back to Dan Heisman's Novice Nook compilation and two Soltis books (The Wisest Things Ever Said about Chess, and Studying Chess Made Easy).

That just feels like a lot. Maybe it is. Maybe I should hire a coach.