That was a pretty bad game!

I went over that last game. It was pretty bad! That previous post is indicative of how the game went. The guy who made the second-to-last mistake certainly won in that one.

scid's auto-annotate feature sometimes borks up on me, and I think I noticed in this game where that happens: on moves it ranks with a "??". I suppose the way to fix this problem is to stop making stupid mistakes in my games. And change the criteria so that it only awards "??" for mistakes of magnitude +9 or more. If I make a mistake that bad, it deserves to break my computer...

I won tonight, but it was a close game.

I screwed up more than once, but it wasn't noticed. He also screwed up a couple times, but I missed it. In the end, I found a tactical line that he couldn't quite find his way through - the best continuation would just get some pieces off the board so the position was less volatile - and he ended up getting creamed. But here's a position where I screwed up majorly. I just played Nb1??, thinking it would save my a-pawn. I should not have castled queenside in the first place, it was a bad idea.

Black to move and win.

Whoops! Fortunately, he did not notice and played O-O-O instead.

How my chess.com games are going.

So I've won two of my games so far. That gives me a rating of 1644 so far (ha!). In the first, I played quickly because I was in theory (the Tarrasch Trap - he accepted being a pawn down rather than falling deeper into the trap), then I played quickly because my choices were fairly easy. I made some less-than-precise moves. In the second game, I was playing slow until I saw I could win a pawn and then things got easy, so I played faster. I think I kept things fairly precise there. I'm in the middle of a few more games, mostly against weaker players than the ones I just beat. The one game against a strong player is still going on. It's still very sharp and it's probably a matter of time before I make a small slip that leads to an explosion - unless I already have.

I'm going to try to keep five games or so going at once. I'll probably have to start editing the lower end of the default strength option on my open seeks, since I want to play people stronger than me and there are so many players around 1300 that they will likely suck up any open seek that includes them (which wouldn't be so very bad if it didn't seem, at the moment, that the 1300 level is not going to be satisfying opposition). It will take a bit of experimenting to find that sweet spot where the opposition is challenging, but not completely insurmountable with the level of effort I'm willing to expend on these games (namely, treating it like a 40/2 game, or maybe like a G90).

Speaking of G90 time controls, I really should play slower in my CICL games. I have a tendency to speed up and get sloppy once I get an advantage (ugh, see above!).

It's a trap!

Alas, there is no Admiral Ackbar in our heads during the game. An opponent in one of my current games fell into the Tarrasch Trap. This is why I always make it a point to look up the famous traps in an opening before trying it out even casually. Sometimes they are rather subtle. It stinks to fall into one and sometimes you get a free point. Even if it never comes up, the tactical idea is often valuable.

This isn't such a bad trap, though, so the game isn't over yet.

I finished the first volume of Alekhine's game collection.

As mentioned in the title, I finished the first volume of Alekhine's game collection. Suddenly, I feel like I am a much better attacker. I am going to start on the second volume on the train ride home tonight.

I also started a couple more correspondence games on chess.com. I just put out a couple open seeks. I have no idea how good of an indicator chess.com ratings are for playing strength. The first person who accepted is rated 1300 and the second is 1500. I'll try my best, they'll try their best, and then we'll see how it looks. The motivation for this is that most tournaments require you to have had at least 5 rated games, so I want to get 5 rated games in. Then I can think about what openings I'm interested in getting into and play in thematic tournaments. That seems like a good way to learn an opening. I can also then figure out what rating level at chess.com would constitute a challenge to me at my level of involvement and then try to play people at that level (as mentioned in previous entries).

EDIT: I've added a couple more games. Right now I have five rated games going.

So I won my game today.

But it's like that anecdote about the two hikers who see a bear and one of them starts running - he doesn't have to outrun the bear, he just has to outrun the other guy. It was somewhat of a struggle. My opponent played the Schliemann and I didn't play it right (I took on f5). Anyway, I have a couple endgame positions, I'll show them to you later once I analyze them myself and remember them.

My correspondence game with the strong player is nerve-racking. I'm probably going to get blown off the board rather soon. That's what I get for getting in over my head in a sharp variation of the Sicilian. I spent much of the weekend analyzing the position because I spent a lot of time waiting in the airport and sitting on a plane. What else can you do when you've finished your novel and don't feel like playing over yet another Alekhine game? I'm finding it very educational.

Done with first four levels of CT Art again.

Level 10: 98%
Level 20: 92%
Level 30: 79%
Level 40: 73%

I was coasting at around 75% on level 40 until the last 50 problems. I perhaps went through them too quickly. I'm not sure whether I will continue to go all the way through CT Art again or whether I'm going to start another pass through the first four levels. The combinations at level 40 are probably too difficult to expect myself to be able to see them instantly, but level 10-30 might be that easy, and it's good to get faster at level 40. Not too sure about using level 50+ this way. Some of the problems are rather tough.

Those results are still fairly weak.