Long-ish term goal

In light of the last post on "real" rankings, where it was found that, once you got rid of the low-ranking juniors, the median rating of active players in the USCF is around 1800, I decided to revise my long-term goals slightly. I think my long-term goal will be to get to a solid class A level. I think that is very attainable if I work at it. I will then be able to compete reasonably in open events, though I won't come close to winning anything with decent competition. I think part of the reason for the high median rating is that people, either kids or adults, don't stick with tournament-level chess unless they're good at it. If they aren't, they're much more likely to stop going to tournaments because it's a lot of time, work, and money to go to a tournament, especially if you're not playing at a reasonable level. You can enjoy chess a lot without going to tournaments, after all. Also, the people who really enjoy chess as children and continue that through to adulthood are probably much more likely to improve to a reasonable level while still a kid.

So, where do you really rank among active players?

I like the feature on the USCF rating website which tells you where you rank among active players in America (active players are those who have had a rated game in the last year). However, the ranking is a little deceptive, since there are large numbers of junior players ranked below 1000. Naturally, one would probably want to compare oneself to adult players or at least reasonable chess players, no slight on underrated juniors intended. The discrepancy can be pretty great, since there were 46,000 active players, but 33,000 of them are juniors and those are mostly toward the low end of the spectrum. I was bored, so I did a little exercise. I picked a random junior player with a rating of around 1450. His overall ranking was in the 77th percentile and his junior ranking was in the 92nd percentile. Approx 11,000 out of 46,000 and 2700 out of 33,000 respectively.

Now, suppose you're an adult player of a similar rating and want to figure out how you compare to adult players only. It's a simple bit of math: (11,000-2700)/(46,000-33,000). This puts you at around the the 25th percentile, which is a lot worse than the 75th percentile, I tell you what. A better adjustment might be to disregard the juniors rated beneath you, but include the ones rated higher than you, so the equation becomes 11,000/(46,000-33,000+2700) which is again around the 25th percentile. I think this ranking is much more reasonable for an adult player of that rating.

Then again, I find low rankings and bitter defeats to be inspiring: I'll fight for a higher ranking and learn from my defeat. Some people don't get motivated by that, so they probably should not find out that, instead of being in the 80th percentile, they're really in the 30th. Me, I just like having another metric to track my progress and evaluate my performance.

EDIT: For instance, in this method, a 1700 rating only puts you at the median. I think that seems realistic. A 2000 rating puts you at only the 80th percentile of active adult players and a 2200 is about 95th - perhaps a little harsh. It might be a good idea to include all juniors above a threshold rating rather than just those higher rated than the test rating. Perhaps above 1300.

EDITED AGAIN: A junior rated 1200 will be ranked around 4900/33,000. I think that's a good point to start at. This would put somebody with a 2000 rating at around the 86th percentile of active players. I think that's still kind of surprising.

How I botched a knight vs bishop endgame

I had an advantage, then blew it to go to a drawing endgame, but my opponent right here made a critical mistake a couple moves ago, so now I, White, have a win. Unfortunately, I missed it and made a move which loses instantly. I got a gift back later, though, and drew the game.

The correct move here is 1. h5! Both ...g5 and ...gxh5 lose. After 1. ...gxh5 2. Nf3 White puts the knight on h4 and starts pushing the f-pawn. Black will lose the h-pawns and have to give up the bishop for the f-pawn, leaving an easy win for White.

attacking chess

I've been studying a bit of tactics and endgames while going over games collections (mostly Alekhine) and reading Lasker. I think my next project should definitely be going over some work specifically on attacking, like Vukovic. I really don't know how to attack well and I'm almost helpless against my opponents' attacks. I'm playing a rather informal correspondence game against a friend of mine who seems to be getting his groove back and I slipped up, ignoring his mounting threat on the kingside. He hasn't executed the attack yet, but it's really a rather textbook attack and I don't see how to get around it. I might find something. I don't know. It's not a "serious" correspondence game, so I'm not going to spend several hours looking at the position, just as I didn't spend several hours getting into this position. Anyway! Attacks and attacking. This is not an atypical experience. I'll also look at the section of Polgar's brick with the example games with the attacks characterized by location.

EDIT: Yes, I realize that I said previously that I also have no positional sense and would need to work on that. But I think preventing oneself from getting blown off the board and being able to blow people off the board is a good idea.

Ratings and stuff

So I went back and calculated what my rating would be if the tournaments I played in this year were my first forays into rated chess. The calculator spit out that I would have a rating of approximately 1580 (based on 15 games). This is pretty far from the rating I started at this year, but not terribly far from what my rating is right now. I think it's probably a pretty decent approximation of my actual playing strength, but who really knows? These are really just labels we attach to things.

Sometimes people dislike the rating system because ratings don't "accurately" portray the play of somebody who is returning to chess from a long break (they've either grown weaker in absence or stronger in absence), but I think my rating is catching up very quickly to my playing strength even after only 4 tournaments, especially given that 2 of the 4 tournaments I've been at I played at a mediocre level (losing two rating points at one, even). I played around with the rating tool and found that, if somebody rated 1200 plays at about a 1600 level for 16 games, their rating will be over 1500. The exact parameters depend on the number of games in each tournament, exact ratings of opponents, and exact performances in the tournaments, but that seems like a very reasonable amount of activity to get to one's "real" rating after a spell of inactivity.

Survived the Marshall Attack.

That was a close one. My scheduled opponent forfeited, so I played a game against somebody who had a bye. He played the Marshall. I thought, oh, drat, I don't know any Marshall theory and this is a highly theoretical system. Anyway, I held onto my pawn and I think I went into the ending with a positional advantage, but I think erroneously simplified down to a knight vs bishop ending (I had the knight and an extra pawn) instead of keeping the rooks and keeping some pressure on. I still had all the winning chances, I think, but I made a mistake which let his king in and rapidly changed the evaluation. I think I had a draw set up, but then I made a mistake which let him simplify to a very easily won pawn endgame. Oops. I was about to resign, but I decided to let it go just a little bit longer and he made a mistake which made the ending turn into a dead drawn Q vs Q+P ending. I queened first and then won his extra pawn, forcing the draw. Hard work. A swindle.

EDIT: Since my scheduled opponent forfeited, that puts me at 6-0 for the tournament. It's a round-robin with 8 games and, based on the scores, I think it's highly unlikely that anybody will catch me in my section. I also think I'm 7.5/8 for all the CICL games I've played - still undefeated!

Mysterious Line in the Cordel: When Does Bxf2+ work?

Twice now scholastic players have played the Cordel and, when I eventually went for the center fork trick, played Bxf2+. The first time, it was at a point where he could recover the piece, but he wasn't doing himself any favors. The second just gave up the piece for nothing, but I played inaccurately and had to give it back. For those wondering, here's the latest line (IIRC): 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Bc5 4. c3 d5 5. Nxe5 Bxf2+?? Okay, this isn't a fork trick right there, since the knight is pinned. But it was the other time.

What I'm wondering now is if some coach in the area is showing them some games where there is a thematic Bxf2+ sacrifice after Nxe5 and they are incorrectly following the theme, thinking it always works in similar positions. That's twice now that I've seen it (and the third time somebody has played the Cordel against me, I didn't try the center fork trick in any way in the first encounter).

Also, the kid annotated my c3 with a question mark and his ...d5 with an exclamation. I wondered whether I should get the tournament director to inform him how making annotations during the game is not allowed or inform him myself after the game, but it didn't seem worthwhile. We didn't have time to go over the game, either, as I would definitely have informed him that c3 is the book move and ...d5 isn't. Anyway, I presume I'll keep seeing this ...Bxf2+ move, since the Cordel seems popular with kids around here and I like Nxe5 at some point.