I'm up to Alekhine's match against Capablanca in his game collection. I've noticed that I have been going over the games faster lately. I went through two this morning on the train. I think this is not good. I should make a conscious effort to slow down a bit. I think one per train ride is a good pace for my purposes. It's enough time to reflect a bit on the game and work it out but fast enough that I can do it.
I played two quick games at lunch today against the ~1650 player. He's been wanting to play me ever since my success last month. I won one - he made a mistake in the Najdorf and I stole his queen. I lost the next. I need to figure out how to go against his "slow kingside buildup and attack" plan in the Two Knights with d3. I think maybe I need to be more aggressive and open things up before he can get it rolling, as he keeps his king in the center for a long time.
Anyway, I've been having some fun playing games besides chess lately. I played softball last night and I'm going to a "game night" at a friend's tonight. He's a chess player, but we're going to be doing other board games.
I'm not going to go to the Chicago Class tournament, but I will go to a tournament on Sunday afternoon. I just can't spend an entire weekend at a tournament right now (or spend $100 on entry fees). I can justify spending a Sunday afternoon and $20, though. It would be unrealistic to expect as good a showing at this tournament as last month's, but I think there's a good chance I'll do okay. I'll be happy if I win one game and play some good games against stronger players. Okay, scratch that: I really want a performance rating over 1500 for this. That's modest. So, if I can win one game and have a 1500 performance, I'll call that a good showing. There are plenty of reasonably rated people showing up to this event usually, so that might not be a problem.
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