Off On A Tangent

My game last night - I was white:

1 e4 e5
2 Bc4 Nc6

Again, no Urusov gambit for me (see last week’s game).

3 Nf3 d6

This is very passive and let’s white get aggressive in the center.

4 d4

Black hems in his king bishop and fails to attack either e4 or d4, therefore white has a free hand to take control of the center.

4 … Bg4
5 c3

Solidify my center position. Shredder slightly preferred 5 d5 Nd4 6 Be3 Nxf3+ 7 gxf3 …But then, computers play chess like sociopaths.
5 … Nf6
6 Qb3 Bh5

Black needed to play Na5 for a tougher defense here.

7 Qxb7

This is trouble for black, though, fortunately for him he’s only playing me, and I miss a strong move coming up.

7 … Na5
8 Bb5+ Nd7

Can you see the right continuation for white here? I missed it during the game.

9 Qd5 c6
10 Bxc6 Nxc6
11 Qxc6 Bxf3
12 gxf3 exd4

Black is about to come roaring back thanks to a few bad moves on my part. I don’t fall for the obvious trap of retaking the pawn on d4 though.

13 Bf4?

Right where it’s most vulnerable.

13 … Rc8
14 Qa4? Qf6!

Now Black has basically equalized the game. I should have moved the queen to a6, but more importantly, I should have castled on my 13th move.

15 Bg3 Qxf6
16 O-O h5!

Trouble is brewing against my king.

If the pawn pushes to h4, I’m almost done. My bishop falls, and there’s no way to stop mate if the pawn gets to h3. I thought about Nd2, attacking the queen, and shredder likes it best, but I didn’t like the response of Qd3.

17 h4 Qg4?

g5 would have been better. After 18 Qxd4 Rg8, white’s defense is not easy.

18 Kh2 Be7

Shredder thought 18 … Qe2 19 Na3 dxc3 20 bxc3 much better.

19 f3 Qe6

Now I’m breathing easy as the attack on my king has been repulsed.

20 Qxd4

Time to get greedy. Shredder preferred taking cxd4, but I don’t think I seriously considered it as the open file for his rook looked bad.

20 … f6

Protecting g7, but a little too passive.

21 Qxa7

I mean really greedy! I learned my lesson from last game. Free pawns are not to be sniffed at. I don’t think black has an effective attack anyway.

21 … g5
22 Nd2

The black pawn rush seems to me to have no teeth, so time to finally finish developing, bringing the knight in where it can protect f3 and e4.

22 … gxh4
23 Bxh4 f5

Black has no attack here and is down two pawns. f5 is a little desperate and helps unravel the situation more quickly.

24 exf5 Qxf5

We both missed 24 … Qh6! attacking the white knight on d2 with check, and the white bishop still hangs. Which leaves white with 25 Be1 Qf4+ 26 Kh1 Qxf5

25 Qe3!

This is the move I’m most proud of in the game. Shredder preferred Qd4 slightly, but liked both.

25 … Ne5?

Loses the game in short order

26 Bxe7 Kxe7
27 f4

The knight is pinned and lost.

27 … Qd3

Some last bit of trickery. Taking the queen lets the knight live.

28 Rae1 Rhf8??
29 Qxd3

1-0

Jaime started crawling about two weeks ago. Almost 3 minutes later, he learned to pull himself to his feet given something to hold onto with his hands. By now, he’s a pro at both and races across rooms and straight toward whatever is most dangerous and/or most precious to mom and dad. He’s also become a little terror with whining and crying for attention and to play. Lately at 5am every morning he wakes up and is ready to go. This morning he cried for 30 minutes before mommy and daddy gave and couldn’t take it anymore. He was only getting louder - and this was after being changed, having a full bottle, and ensuring he wasn’t cold or stuffed up. Crying like the world was ending until the moment he gets picked up. He seems to know when we’re determined though - Vivi went to take a shower and put him in his crib while she did. He cried for about 2 minutes and then promptly went back to sleep. He such a little devil.

I played my fourth chess game in the Monday Night League that I joined a little while back. Although my old rating is 1705, I was put on 3rd board because that’s just how it worked out, as I was basically rated lower than any of the 2nd board players and just happened to end up as the highest rated 3rd board - by about 200 points. But it’s a good thing, though, as I’ve been playing lousy and having a tough time, despite being 4-0. These 1300 rated players are tough to beat for me. I’ve set a goal for myself to become a 2200 rated player. I’m not sure if that’s going to be feasible unless something drastic happens to my play.

Anyway, here’s last nights game with some helpful analysis from Shredder (and me in hindsight). I got to play Evans Gambit!

1 e4 e5
2 Bc4

I wanted to play the Urusov Gambit (2 .. Nf6 3 d4 exd4 4 Nf3 Nxe4 5 Qxd4 ..)

2 …. Bc5
3 Nf3 Nc6
4 b4 ….

Evan’s Gambit! Woohoo, I’ve never actually played this before in a serious game, and the last time I played it in an unserious game may have been in 6th grade.

4 …. Bxb4
5 c3 Be7

At this point, the book move is Ba5 (maintains a pin on the pawn at c3 in the event of d4, which means, white can’t play d4 until at least after he castles. However, Shredder’s engine thinks black is winning ever so slightly after either Ba5 or Be7, so…

6 Qb3 d5

Book would be Nh6, to protect f7. This move probably looked too ugly to my opponent (new players generally learn some simple principles like “knights on the rim are grim” which are true in general, but you have to know when the situation merits going against that). In this case, it’s a perfectly adequate defensive move and leaves white to figure out how to meet 7 … na5.

7 Bxd5 Be6

Shredder still thinks Nh6 is better.

8 Bxe6 fxe6
9 Qxe6

Whoops, a little bit of tunnel vision on my part - completely missed the far superior 9 Qxb7! Na5 10 Qb5 c6 11 Qxe5
Sometimes when your pieces are so nicely lined up, you forget they can still go in other directions. I didn’t even imagine my queen moving anywhere but on the a2-g8 diagonal.

9 …. Qd3
10 Qd5 Qa6

My opponent doesn’t want to trade queens. I thought Rd8 better and Shredder thinks 10 … Qxd5 best, but keeping the queens on the board does make my job a littler harder in other ways.

11 Nxe5 Nxe5
12 Qxe5 0-0-0
13 d4

Shredder’s estimation of my position has gone from +1.00 to about +1.60 with this move. Not sure what Shredder didn’t see a moment ago (it thought O-O-O best too).

13 …. Bf6
14 Qf5+ Kb8
15 e5 g6
16 Qf3 Bg7

Pretty normal moves that Shredder more or less agrees with. At this point, I just want to knock the black queen off the f1-a6 diagonal so I can castle and finish development.

17 Qe2 Qc6

Still doesn’t want to trade the queens, which is sensible.

18 O-O Re8

Shredder liked Ne7, Nh6, h6, and a6 all more than Re8, though I’m not sure why. At this point Shredder thinks I’m winning by +3.44.

19 Be3 Ne7
20 c4

I prefer his knight go to f5 than d5. I’d made my peace with trading my bishop for Black’s knight when I moved my bishop to e3. Basically, what I want to do his hold onto my pawns and make a steamroller down the middle of the board. As we’ll see, it doesn’t take much to make me change strategies.

20 … Nf5
21 Nd2 h5

Black wants to start a king side pawn rush. This gets irritating a few moves from now.

22 Rab1 Rd8
23 Nf3

Not ideal. Should have gone over to b3 where the knight can be more active against Black’s King and Queen. Shredder still has me up 3.00+ points

23 … Qe4?

This is a mistake, but it flummoxes me. The queen seems to be hitting everything - pins my bishop to my queen, attacks my pawns at d4-e5. The right response is 24 Ng5! but for whatever reason, I don’t see it.

24 Qb2?

And thus I start throwing my pawns away. My mistake is basically a repeat of my mistake the previous week - failure to see the obvious simple defensive move of … b6. For whatever reason, I thought his options consisted of defending the pawn, or running the king away.

24 … Nxe3
25 fxe3 Qxe3

One pawn gone.

26 Kh1 b6
27 c5 g5

His pawns seem faster than mine.

28 Rbe1 Qd3
29 e6

I thought about Nxg5, and it’s what I should have done. For whatever reason, though, I didn’t like the idea of trading his g5 pawn for my d4 pawn, leaving me with two isolated pawns in the middle of the board. So, I pushed e6 thinking I could trade my knight for his bishops and get my rook down to the 8th rank. Shredder drops me a full point for this move. Also notice how, from my 24th move, I’ve cleverly gotten my d5 pawn pinned to my queen.

29 …. Rhe8
30 cxb6 cxb6
31 Qf2 g4
32 Ne5

Clever, but not really correct. Ng5 was a better move. My only intention is to trade the knight and bishop and get on with getting my rook/queen to the 8th rank.

32 …. Bxe5
33 Rxe5 Rxd4

Probably should have taken with the Queen and gone for the draw.

34 Qf7 Re7

Excellent move. White can’t take because Qxf1#

35 Kg1?

Tricky. if he takes, my pawn is hard to stop. Of course, neither I nor my opponent saw 35 … Rxf7 36 exf7 Qxf1+ 38 kxf1 Rf4+ 39 Ke2 Rxf7. Oops. Like I said, I’m apparently very bad at this game.

35 … Qa3
36 Qf8+ …

Apparently I don’t like to just take free pawns (Qxh5)

36 … kc7
37 Re2

Again, I don’t like those free pawns (Rxh5)

37 … Qd6??
38 Rc2+
1-0

Lots of mistakes, but then, this isn’t master chess here. Maybe someday…

Been a while since I blogged. I typically come home touting my laptop only to put it away and not even consider getting it out, plugged in, turned on, booted up, connected to the wireless (which hasn’t been working well lately for whatever reason), etc. Sitting there with a hot laptop on my lap, reading text with bright white backgrounds just isn’t appealing enough to go through all that.

Anyway, I joined a chess league at the Rochester Chess Center a few weeks back and have played twice so far. Won both my games, but that is because I got stuck on 3rd board for my team. Each team has 4 players, ordered from best to worst according to USCF rating, and just the way things worked out, I was third on my team. My old USCF chess rating was 1705. At the time - 12 years ago, I was playing at a level probably roughly around 2050, but keeping my rating low so as to compete in the New York Open, which has large prizes, even if you play in the under 1800 section (ie $6,000 for first place down to $400 for 20th place). The first time I played I got into the top 20, but I was surprised at how many other people like me there were - ie, experts and masters with super low ratings.

After 12 years of not playing, my playing strength is probably fairly accurately described by my 1705 rating. The next highest rated person on 3rd board is 200 points below that, and the next highest after that is another 200 points below that. I was never one to lose to opponents rated below me, so the fact that I’ve won my first two rated games in 12 years isn’t that surprising. It’s a very gentle re-acquaintance with tournament chess.
I’m having a blast and really getting back into chess. In my own view, I feel like I’m playing very badly. I’m hopeful I’ll get better quickly, but I’m not sure I will. When I was younger, I played with a lot of reckless abandon - always wanted to be attacking, never learning much of opening theory and generally being helpless in endgame play. But very dangerous in the middle game. On the one hand, I like to think of myself as an aggressive, attacking player, but on the other hand, I want to learn chess more deeply. In paying attention to how I play, I find that what I am good at is visualizing. It isn’t any great difficulty for me to visualize positions 3, 4, 5, 6, x number of moves deep. It doesn’t really matter how far - I can keep the positions straight in my head without difficulty. But, I miss a lot of moves - meaning I don’t even consider a lot of moves that are actually good or important moves. And so my problem actually seems to be one of imagination. I need to broaden my search - I have no trouble with depth. But that feels more difficult to improve upon than improving visualization skills.

I also have a lot of fun imagining teaching Jaime to play chess, and getting him excited about the game. Taking him to the chess center and letting him loose there with all the other kids. Teaching chess holds great interest for me. I think it could be a lot of fun to be a chess coach.