Finally posting some stuff here.

Here I am playing White. Black has nothing here.

I made a slight misstep because I was afraid of the consequences of b3 that I couldn't quite calculate. I worried about things like Bxb3, Nb4-a2, Qg5+, etc, but I end up far ahead in those lines, it turns out.

Yusupov Chapter 5

I know I was going to take it slow, but chapter five was an easy tactical chapter on double checks, so I did it quickly and got a perfect score on the test. The next section, though, is hard, so I'll spend plenty of time on it. I enjoy this a lot.

Still playing around with ideas in the bishops of opposite color endgame. Perhaps Black can hold the draw. The direct attempt to push the a-pawn after Be1 or Bd2 doesn't seem to work. If you get the white king behind his pawns and push, ...bxa3 followed by Bb4 draws immediately because the white king is now stuck in the corner and the white bishop is stuck guarding the f-pawn. If the king goes north and tries to push the a-pawn, the bishop is the only thing that can stop the a-pawn after bxa3. But, really, I don't have the analytical apparatus to think about this rigorously just yet.

EDIT: King goes north, see below. Kb5 Ka4 a3 and there's the game.

Is this drawn?

Black to move. I'm black.

I'm skeptical that it can be held, but might be possible. The obvious first move is ...Be1 or Bd2. After that, I think it's hard for White to make progress. I lost, however, but I only had like 0:20 left.

EDIT: This is trivially won. 1. ... Bd2 (or whatever) 2.Kb5 3.Ka4 4.a3 and no matter what Black does, you have two passed pawns and it's not a tricky technical endgame.

Yusupov Lesson Four

I was going to work through this slowly, but I'm pretty good with endgames, so I just went ahead and blitzed through lesson four, which was on elementary pawn endgames. I scored 19/22 on the test (excellent). I missed one problem completely. I learned something from that problem, though. There were two plausible moves, I discarded one because I thought I had refuted it, so that left the other. I had the drawing idea and thought I had calculated it out, but there was a refutation in there that I missed. However, the drawing idea works, but only with that first move. I should've thought to try cross-pollinating the idea.

Anyway, I'm not ready for lesson 5 yet, as I'm still reviewing the answers from lesson 3's quiz. It was very tough!

This Yusupov stuff is tough.

I'm on chapter 3 of the first book (opening stuff). The test was tough. I got 21/31 and was surprised that I did even that well. 15 was passing, 20 was "good". I like this. It is tough and makes me think. It would be humbling if I didn't already know I sucked.

Incidentally, on the first two chapters, I got 15/16 and 16/20 respectively (excellent and good - I just couldn't get one Damiano calculation to work and Greco did not stick with me at all).

Chess Informant

I have a few old issues of Chess Informant that I got off Amazon.com for like $1+shipping. They're old, but my intended use for them is two-fold: games to play over quickly to get a feel for grandmaster chess and positions to try myself against (the combinations and endings sections in the back). They're fairly awesome: I highly recommend trolling around Amazon.com or some other used books service every once in a while to see if you can find old issues floating around for a couple bucks (be sure to search for both "Informant" and "Informator"). One thing I didn't count on was the historical factor. I have the issue containing the Fischer-Spassky match. I have the issue where Karpov was declared world champion. I have the issue with the '86 K-K match and the issue with the '90 K-K match. I think that is fairly cool. I might try to get the Informants containing all the K-K matches. I also have the issue containing games from when I was born. Also of interest are the notes previous owners may have made in them.

NOTE: you may want to check the combinations against computer analysis, since the issue will likely be pre-computer if you purchase with this method.

LATER ASIDE: Speaking of which, Korchnoi and Smyslov are fairly impressive for their ability to perform at high levels, even contending for the world championship title, well into "old age". Interesting interview with Smyslov: http://www.gmsquare.com/interviews/smyslov.html

Yusupov's Chess Course

This isn't a review because I can't really review the books until I've used them. One thing I noticed in glancing over them is that Build Up Your Chess 1 and Boost Your Chess 1 are 90% tactics. There are a couple lessons in each that are strategic, but the rest are tactics. I looked on the Quality Chess site and the higher orders of the series are more strategic. This definitely makes sense. I am looking forward to working hard on these books as Yusupov directs: spending at least 5-10 minutes with each position in the lesson, setting them up on the board, moving them around, trying to understand fully, and then taking 5-10 minutes on each test position treating it like a position in a game and then writing down all my thoughts and the relevant variations. Each part of the lesson should take 1-2 hours. I plan to study these books while at home with a chess set. Very structured. I think the structure will be very good for me, because, while I've been working hard on tactics, it's mostly been solving problems and I've had very little thematic education (besides Lasker's phenomenal chapter on combinations, which I think has been very helpful). The combination of thematic education plus systematic discipline will help me a lot in OTB play, IMO. Most of my chess time, however, will be on the train to and from work, mostly playing over annotated games. I can't concentrate as much on the train, so I will not be doing Yusupov there.

Somebody mentioned somewhere an interesting thought about My System: the material is basic and outdated in some ways, but authors of modern positional texts don't cover the stuff in My System in as much detail as they ought to because they assume everybody has already read it. I'm going to wait until I am at least 1600, perhaps more, to start reading it, however.

I need more tournament play!

EDIT: I realize that the lessons aren't directly 90% tactics, but the topics for 90% seem a lot more tactical, if you catch my drift. In retrospect, I think this statement is wrong. And here's a more exact person commenting on it: http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/gm/115#comment-3341

I won my CICL game.

Turns out they got the colors wrong in the e-mail and I played black. Guy played the center game. I messed up a little and let him take one of my pawns, but his king was still in the center and his queen was wandering around, so I figured I could arrange something to get my pawn back and I did - in such a way that we traded queens and destroyed his pawn structure, making it easy to eventually win a pawn and then the endgame. I mostly slacked off at that point, since the win was in the bag. It was a matter of pushing the passed pawn and forcing him to give up a piece for it, then repeating the process. The guy was mildly unsporting - he tried to claim a draw at the end when I was about to queen a pawn because he moved his king back and forth three times, but I explained that's not how threefold repetition of position works, then he tried to claim I stalemated him, but I pointed out he had a legal move, so he then resigned.

I noticed one inaccuracy at the end that would have shifted me back from a crushing victory to an easy victory - giving him a pawn back when I was two pawns up at a point where one pawn is still decisive. Other than that, no huge flubs, but plenty of minor inaccuracies.

Match for Chicago Industrial Chess League today.

I have white in my game on board 7 (only the first 6 boards count toward the result). I've been playing over a lot of Ruy Lopez games lately. Mostly just quickly over unannotated games to get a feel for the types of positions that come out of it (and a feel for how my database works!). I also read a bit of Watson's MCO on the Ruy. I think I'll try to play the Ruy with white and black. I think everybody needs to go through a phase where they struggle against the open games. Maybe I'm wrong. Kasparov said that when he first learned chess, he learned the first 20 moves of the Najdorf and that if somebody had taught him 1. ... e5 first he would have never gotten over 2000.

I now have scid!

I'm trying to figure out how to use it. I'm not at the point where it's extremely useful to me, of course. I downloaded a dirty, but free, database of 1.7 million games and I'm going to go back and add a bunch of games from TWIC to it (and try to clean it up a little). Then I am going to enter all the old games of mine I can find into my own little database and analyze them there. I downloaded Arena, too (why? I don't know). Now I just have to figure out how to tune these things to do exactly what I want.

Here are some things I'm thinking of doing that will still be helpful for somebody at my low level of playing besides the obvious tracking of my games:
1. Taking key positions I remember from blitz games at lunch or whatever and making a training database out of them.
2. Taking key positions out of tournament games of mine and making a training database out of them.
3. Viewing hundreds of games rapidly in order to get a feel for certain positions.
4. Playing a lot of blitz on FICS and using scid to analyze the lot of them, then do #1. Analyzing blitz isn't great, but it lets you quickly make a personally relevant database of training positions.
5. Putting positions from books I'm reading into databases so I can easily play the moves in them or train against them.
6. Starting to think about building the basics of a repertoire.

Done with CT Art Level 60.

I finished with a score of 64%. I think the score might have been 65% if I hadn't utterly bombed the last problem. The problem was like witchcraft. The moves did not make any sense to me even afterwards. I think sometime it might be helpful to have Bronstein's The Sorcerer's Apprentice because he has that section with 40 combinations where he takes an entire page to describe how the combination works - not just giving variations, but prose describing what's going on. I think I'm going to take this evening off of chess. I've been plowing through these combinations and need a break. I'm still going to play over Alekhine on the train, of course. What else is there to do on the train?

I ordered Build Up Your Chess: Fundamentals and The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games. I also plan to order Boost Your Chess: Fundamentals. I also ordered a couple CJS Purdy collections of annotated games because they were cheap used. I'm excited about using the former as the cornerstone of my improvement. I'm also excited about the latter because I've heard it's a very good collection. I've played over a lot of the historically significant games of chess, but not as many as I would have liked, and one of the strong points of the book is that it brings new, modern, and rigorous analysis to the games.

EDIT: After, of course, I finish Lasker.

As soon as I find out how to post chess positions...

...I'm going to post a couple from my games showing missed opportunities from my tournament games. In the first, I went from being far ahead to merely being ahead (instead of "far ahead" to "much farther ahead") in a game I won, in the other I failed to exploit an inaccuracy in move order which would have boosted me from a pawn down to slightly ahead in a game I lost. Tactical rather than strategic missed opportunities.

I played today at lunch. It was a terrible, terrible game. I completely messed up the opening and was a pawn down with awkward piece placement, a king stuck in the center, and little prospect for equalizing. The opponent had a bad bishop, but a central pawn majority that could move along and make the bishop good. However, the opponent made the decision to play on the queenside (attacking a weak pawn), which gave me time to consolidate a little and after a few inaccuracies I won a pawn back and got a dominating attack on the queenside which led to a quick back rank mate. The crucial strategic mistakes were not exploiting a lead in development + king stuck in the center, allowing me to catch up on development, and playing on the wing instead of in the center. Then there were the tactical mistakes. My crucial mistakes were utterly flubbing the opening and getting into such a shitty position in the first place. There were a couple tactical finesses I missed, some of them were taken advantage of, some weren't.

Almost done with level 60 on CT Art. Some of the problems are incomprehensible, some aren't so bad at all. I'm running around 66%. A few of the ones I just couldn't get at all were from "R. Fischer, 1963, US". I presume there were from his 11-0 US Championship victory. They boggle the mind.

In other news, I'm at 1541 on the Chess Tactics Server right now. This is okay, but not awesome. My highest is 1605 from 3 years ago.

Done with Level 50

Right now I'm at
Level 10: 97%
Level 20: 91%
Level 30: 77%
Level 40: 71%
Level 50: 69%

I was coasting along at 71% until the very end, but a couple bad tests brought me down to 69% and I couldn't quite make it back up. It's tough from here on out, I think level 60 and higher will be mostly beating my head against the wall.

However, I think this work is reaping dividends. I was reading through an Alekhine game today and got pretty far into one of his combinations before I lost the thread. I found all the moves until the guy resigned, but I didn't see conclusively past that until I set it up on the board (and I didn't know the guy had resigned at that point, of course, because I wasn't looking at the moves). It was obvious when set up, though, that mate would come in like 5 more moves.

What I'm Working on Right Now

Still chipping away at CT Art 3.0 (level 50). Averaging 71% so far on the level, almost done with it. Going over Pandolfini's Endgame Course sometimes. Playing over Alekhine or Capablanca on the train to work. I started using Polgar's brick as well - I do a few mates-in-two and play over some of the miniatures pretty quickly in the evening. The miniatures are a course in attacking/tactics on their own, especially since they're categorized by what square you're attacking. I'm going to take some time to go over my games from the tournament very slowly. That second game, in particular. I was down a pawn, but I had drawing chances until the endgame. I kept simplifying down until I was in a dead lost pawn endgame (rather than a lost rook endgame that required decent technique to convert if the defender is decent).

More on my performance this weekend.

So, I had some goals for this weekend. I think I met them in two out of three games. In the last game, I just did not play "real chess". In the second game, I don't recall enough about my thought process to say whether I had lapsed out of it or had a mistake in judgment. Either way, I have several lessons to learn.

I ran my games through the computer to double-check some of my tactical thoughts, and I was pleased at a couple junctures where it confirmed my calculations. In the first game, however, there was one situation where I was worried about how to preserve my advantage in the face of an attack. I was up the exchange and a pawn. I saw a clear line which gave back the exchange, but kept the pawn in a position where that would be an overwhelming advantage. I also saw a more risky line that I couldn't clearly evaluate and had some complicated lines where he gets a couple of my pawns and there are attacks on my king and what not. So I gave back the exchange. It turns out, however, that the attack fizzles out and I end up ahead an entire piece in the line I didn't choose. I didn't look at all the analysis, though, just the "+4.18" - I want to work it out on my own! I might post the game with all its blemishes once I figure out the best way to do that. I will do a critical examination of all three games, but I don't know if I'll post my losses. I'll be more critical of them, though!

Still a patzer

It was a three round G65+5.

I won my first game against a 1400 playing the Dragon. I forced a trade of the dragon bishop, won a pawn, then won the exchange, but had to give the exchange back to stave off his attack. Endgame was easy, won another pawn, used up all of our time, but he made me mate him, which was annoying. I had a bishop and two pawns against his king. You can resign there. I'm not going to lose on time...

The second game, a 1350 played the Scandinavian. At one point in the opening, I noticed that he'd win a pawn in one line, but I had a big lead in development that might turn into an attack, so I thought I had some compensation, but nothing came of it. He held onto his pawn until the two rook endgame, I traded down to a rook endgame, thinking that I could hold onto the draw, maybe, but he engineered a trade of rooks to a dead lost (for me) pawn ending. Pretty sure it was dead lost, I didn't really have any good counterplay. I didn't feel so bad after I got home and looked him up and saw he'd gained 170 rating points in his last tournament and 100 in the tournament before that, so this suggested that he's underrated. In that last tournament, he beat all four of his under-1700 opponents and lost to his three over-1700 opponents, which suggests a higher rating than 1350.

The third game, I just straight up lost to some 1375 who played the English. I miscalculated a line so I lost a pawn, then I made a little patzer mistake a few moves later trapping my own bishop, so I decided to just resign and go home.

So I went 1/3 with a really shitty 1260 performance rating. At least that first game went okay.

Goals for this weekend.

Three game tournament this weekend. My goal is to not be lazy, in accordance with what Heisman's book is revealing. My goal isn't to win anything at all, it's to try to play chess well. Yeah, I'll try to win all my games, of course, but I won't be disappointed by 0/3 if I played "real chess" every move of every game. My section is U1800, so I think playing "real chess" would net at least one win in there.

Dan Heisman's Looking for Trouble

Dan Heisman's Looking for Trouble is exposing me as a lazy ne'er-do-well. I certainly have the ability to sit down and calculate lines sometimes, given that I sometimes solve level 50 problems on CT Art (not often enough!). I'm just not doing as well on this as I should be. I'm often content to say, "Oh, I've found the threat, here's a line that looks okay, I'm done," even when there are six possible ways of dealing with the threat that need to be evaluated.

I also butted up against the problem of not knowing the pattern meaning you just can't solve the problem. It was on a level 50 problem based on a Tal game (of course!). I kept calculating lines and found one that looked good, but just couldn't get from the position I ended up in to a mate (and I would need a mate). It was the most promising, though, so I tried the first few moves and they were right, but then I got to the tough position and still couldn't figure it out. The 5x5 hint was... that same position. Drat. Once the computer showed me how to solve the 5x5 (bishop to the corner!), I got it. So I have another pattern now.

being careful not to develop bad habits

I've been working on solving tactical exercises lately. Since we're starting to get to more difficult problems, I really need to be careful not to develop bad habits. Namely, you have to sit there and spin out all the variations before making the first move. Sometimes you can stop on some of the variations if you know that you'll have an overwhelming attack and you can work out the details over the board, but you can't rely on the fact that there is an answer to guide your choice. However, I really do with there were a good "give up and show me the answer" option in CT Art, because sometimes that would help me avoid developing some bad habits. The scoring is also annoying sometimes. If, on level 50, you just can't see it, but they give you a hint immediately after you fail and you can figure it all out from there, hey, you get 37/50 points. If you see the idea, get all the variations right, but at the very end you miss the maneuver that the problem wants you to take that has a slight plus over whatever it is you've tried a few times, you get, like, 22/50. In the first one, however, you completely missed the idea and probably lost the game with your move, so you should get 0, but you've still won the second game.