Off On A Tangent

It’s amazing how often Jaime wakes up in the morning apparently knowing something he didn’t seem to know when he went to bed the night before. This morning was a great example. Recently, he has started getting some consistency in his babbling - he was repeatedly referring to me as “da”. When asked “Where’s daddy?”, he would place his hand on my chest and say “da!” How cool is that? If asked “Where’s mommy?”, he longer but eventually (and with some unconscious prompting, I’m sure) put his hand on mommy, but no clear vocalization went with it.

This morning, however, Jaime woke up and his mommy retrieved him and brought him to me, where, almost immediately began saying “dada”. And now, when asked “where’s daddy?”, he says “dada!” His first word! Daddy is so proud :-)

Yesterday Vivi won her first rated game of chess! She was very excited to beat a soon-to-be high school student rated around 900. She is still enjoying the game and I’ve signed her up to play in the fall monday team league with me, so it should be a lot of fun. She has to get better at recording her games though - as it is, when we try to go over a game afterward, we have a very hard time figuring out how the game went.

I’ve been lax in my blogging, but some exciting things have gone down lately. I didn’t blog my last Monday chess game, which was over two weeks ago because it was a dull game where my opponent hung a piece on her 13th move. So, analyzing the game didn’t offer much. The week after that, I didn’t get to play as my opponent couldn’t make it. And this past monday, my opponent failed to show, and I played a game against a very senior chess player, previously an expert level player now recovering from a stroke who beat me pretty handily, mostly because I was an idiot in the opening and then went on to try a very unsound piece sac. Oh well, live and learn. I’ve learned that the Giucco Piano is far more complicated than I had once thought!

Over a week ago Sunday, Vivi went down to the Chess Center and played her first two rated games of chess - losing both, naturally. But she had a good time and met some very nice people. This past Sunday, we trekked out to Utica, NY together to play in an all day, 5-round chess tournament (the Mohawk Valley Open) that was very small, but a lot of fun for both of us. I scored .500 (2.5 pts out of 5) in the open section, a result I was extremely happy with, and Vivi lost all her games, but most definitely improved. She learned (and I learned) that she does very well in the early phase of the game, but gets confused later on about how to execute a plan of attack or an ending. No surprise - these are typically difficult issues for new players (Vivi’s been playing for about 2 months only now). And it was a full day (from 7am till 10pm) without Jaime, which was also good for mommy and daddy. Vivi’s parents apparently had a blast with Jaime for the day, and spoiled him rotten, which has made Monday and Tuesday tough on Vivi, as Jaime now expects to be held all day long apparently.

Meanwhile, Jaime is on the verge of walking. He now enjoys standing up using anything as a crutch and then letting go and seeing how long he can balance there. I figure a week or two and he’ll be taking his first steps - just in time for my parents’ visit, in fact.

When I analyze one of my chess games, I fire up Shredder and put it in “analysis” mode, which means shredder just starts thinking about the current position and displays its opinion about who’s winning and what moves it believes are best to make next.  Whenever I move a piece, it quickly brings itself up to speed on the new position.  It’s very handy, because I can go forward and backwards through one of my games and check out what shredder thinks about it at any time.  Furthermore, I also can check out chessgames.com’s opening explorer to check out similar games from their database and see what masters did in the same or similar positions. or 6 year
So what if our computers were running software that constantly watched what we were doing - ie, typing in a blog, and while we did that, continuously “analyzed” it? We’re all familiar with spellcheckers that annoyingly interrupt you to tell you you just mispelled a word.  But what if a background agent started loading up pages found through google using key phrases and words from the blog you were writing?  What if you were writing software code, and a background agent found similar code in a sourceforge CVS repository?  At any time, you could check in on those background processes and see if there was anything of interest.  A code snippet that made your job easier, a web page with relevant information to what you were typing - a blog that revealed you were being completely unoriginal in your own blog.

The more powerful your computer and network, the more powerful these continuous analyzers.  People often ask what we’ll do with the 8-16 procesing cores we’ll have on our desktops in 5 or 6 years.  I think this might something we could use.  Granted, the GUI will have to be clever - right now, if I opened 50 web pages in a browser, either my task bar or my tab bar is going to get extremely crowded.  Such a gui would have to gracefully handle many background tasks and background viewers, letting us easily check in on the agents without cluttering our foreground task.

I played the white pieces:

1 e4 c5
2 Nf3 g6
3 Bc4 Bg7
4 c3

I really like this move, especially against the sicilian. It gives the queen more options for development, plus, if I can push d4 and trade pawns, the c file will be completely open, rather than half open for Black, leaving me to defend either my c-pawn or my knight at c3.

4 … Nc6
5 d4 exd4
6 cxd4 d6

Shredder thinks I’m doing well at +0.68. I’m happy with this position, though I have to defend my pawns carefully (not that I actually do).

7 O-O Nf6
8 Re1 O-O
9 h3

I thought this was a bad move as it allows black to get some play with d5 in the center. But, it turns out Bg4 lets black equalize too, as the center pawns are too vulnerable, and the pin is very effective. Ie 9 Nc3 Bg4 10 Be3 Nxe4 11 Nxe4 d5 12 Be3 dxe4 13 Bxe4

9 … d5
10 exd5 Nxd5
11 Ne5

I was concentrating on keeping my pawn, and this move accomplishes that, but it is inferior to 11 Nc3 ie 11 … Nb6 12 Bb3 Nxd4 13 Nxd4 Bxd4 14 Bh6 Re8 15 Nd5! or
11 ,,, Nb6 12 Bb3 Nxd4 13 Nxd4 Qxd4 14 Qxd4 Bxd4 15 Rxe7

11 … Bf5
12 Bxd5 Qxd5
13 Nc3 Qxd4
14 Nxc6 Qxd1?

This is what I was hoping for when I played 12 Bxd5 and it turned out well. However, 14 … bxc6 is fine for black: 15 Qxd4 Bxd4 16 Rxe7 Rfe8

15 Nxe7+ Kh1
16 Rxd1

Now I’m up a piece and start coasting… which is, of course, a mistake.

16 … Bxc3
17 bxc3 Be6
18 Ba3 Rfd8
19 Bd6

Getting cute. I couldn’t resist threatening mate with 20 Be5#

19 … kg7
20 Rd2 kf6
21 Rad1?

This allows black to take two pieces for a rook, leaving him down an exchange instead of down a whole piece. Apparently I was sleeping.

21 … Rxd6
22 Rxd6 Kxe7
23 a3

Time to get my pawns on the dark squares.

23 … Rc8
24 R6d3 a5
25 Re1 Rc5
26 f4

My rook is going to e5 one way or another.

26 … b5
27 Re5 Rxe5
28 fxe5 Bc4
29 Rd6

Forever trapping the black king to a small quadrant of the board.

29 … a5
30 Rb6 Kf8

Trying to escape.

31 g4

Well, this is kind of an oops. Better is g3 or h4 - keep those pawns on the dark squares! Black should respond 31 … g5 but doesn’t.

31 … Kg7?
32 g5 h5
33 h4

Now my king gets on the racetrack to c5

33 … Kf8
34 Kf2 Ke7
35 Ke3 Kd7
36 Kd4 Kc7
37 Kc5 Kd7

There’s not much for black to do now, white has him all tied up.

38 Rb7+?

What an idiot I am. The black king had been trapped for so long, I apparently forgot it was only because of my rook.

38 … Ke6
39 Rxb5

Ok, so finally I decide to finish the game off.

39 … Bxb5
40 Kxb5 Kxe5
41 c4 Kd6
42 c5+ Kc7
43 c6 Kb8
44 Kb6 Kc8
45 c7 Kd7
46 Kb7
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