Wednesday, January 24, 2007

1300

In my most recent game in Round 2 of the Team 45/45 tournament, I broke the 1300 mark at ICC.

In the game, he made a crazy bishop sacrifice in the two-knights Ruy (one of my least favorite openings to face as black), and then kept giving me material. I played very conservatively, trading away material until I had a complete lock in the endgame. I was very scared in the beginning at move 8 when he checked me with his knight. Then on move 9 he brought in his other knight, forming a frightening attack with a threat of the queen coming in with check. I had a long think and found the right continuation and the game was essentially over. I was worried he had a big elaborate trap laid for me. He didn't. Strangely, he didn't resign even when I was a queen, a rook, two bishops, a knight, and two pawns up [!] with little chance of stalemate.

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congratulations. The big squigly lines from Fritz should be interesting read:)

1/24/2007 08:38:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that game a little puzzling :)

1/24/2007 08:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congratuations on reaching the 1300 plateau! It looks like your opponent was so excited about the check, he didn't bother to see if there was a follow-up!

1/24/2007 10:58:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work!

1/25/2007 12:11:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congrats! Those chess lessons must be paying off!

1/25/2007 03:03:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like your attitude-suspicious that you might be missing something but solidly moving forward. Good job!

1/25/2007 03:41:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

if you played solid chess according to principles, there is NO WAY that a piece sac will work right out of the opening in a Ruy Lopez mainline. You have to trust yourself and your opening. Think "That HAS to be wrong. I just have to find the moves to prove it." Don't let emotion (fear, desire to punish, thinking about getting home early) cloud your judgment.

The danger is in overreacting or becoming overly passive. You played well, your opponent didnt. :)

1/25/2007 03:23:00 PM  
Blogger Pale Morning Dun - Errant Knight de la Maza said...

Well done. Patrick couldn't be more right. Take the piece and take your time and you will find the refutation.

By the way, how much time did he have on his clock at the end? I'm guessing somehere around 55 minutes.

1/25/2007 07:16:00 PM  
Blogger Blue Devil Knight said...

Yes, he had lots of time. I took tons of time at the beginning, but eventually it got kind of ridiculous and I just played moves that I knew would keep me safe (I didn't want to blow a won game!), slowly build up and wait for more mistakes, and mate when he's got nothing left to defend with.

1/25/2007 10:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

congratulations, also! your hyoThalamus is obviously working!

stuff you already know... 200 elo's: that means you will be beating folks 45 or 50% of the time who you now can only scalp one in ten times.

but is that all? no. at 1500, it means you must or necessarily are capable of occassionally scalping a 1700, so like i said, 200 is a LOT, despite what anyone else says! fair enough?

but all the more sweet when attained, as you surely will.

three years worth of work. im not sure 400 points in 400 days is realistic for most while possible, but a real change is possible, but takes years.

then when we raise our rating, we also fall back, raise and fall, several times, so, to me, a rating 200+ means not just striking it, but staying there.

im not surprised that you are a 1.e4 player, as i see amply.

take care, dk

1/27/2007 01:09:00 AM  

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