My Round 2 encounter

One of the great things to come out of the pandemic was that I grew my hair out.  To get an idea just how much check out this picture from my 2019 match with Loren Schwiebert.  That was before the madness.

Well, I won that game 3 years ago.  Caïssa paired us again in Round 2 of the 2022 U.P. Open.  We occupy similar orbits around Chesstopia, although judging by this game I'm at the outer edge of the ellipse right now.

I'm in a mood for offbeat lines, but the three words that come to mind for my opening salvo are stink, stank, stunk:

My therapist told me "I know Alekhine moved to France, but this is ridculous!"  Of course this was another glaring example of PFSD (Post French Stress Disorder) where the stricken player cannot help himself playing -e6 at the most inopportune times.

Which brings me to the inopportune Mr. Pruun.

The 1930s brought independence to Estonia and with it great strides in agriculture, trade and housing.  Alekhine would have been horrified at how his namesake opening was being treated though.  Leave it to Richard Pruun to let me off the hook for a few lines before setting out on the task I laid out for myself this evening.

Clearly I want to do anything than actually write about the game at hand.

So you know your hero is off to a bad start.  How Bad?  Well, this is how bad:

Still regurgitating GIFs, you say?  This game is hard to swallow, and look out for another bout of vegetables!  Not before this musical interlude, over a score of 13 moves, inexplicably bubbling up to a drawn rook endgame. 

The cha-ching of the 

Rook and bishop quartet

Cashing in their chips so soon;

The pawn screeching it's way down the hall

The seventh finger on the E-string squall;

It's all music to my ears.

Just for good measure I string together 4 bad moves like so many peas in a pod.  Then I hold my breath for 39 moves never to resurface.

And now the heroic but ultimately futile effort to tarry the knight with the bishop:

If for some reason my efforts to throw you off this game have been in vain, and you are still here like a pitbull on a ragdoll, well I'll throw you the whole carcass right now.  Enjoy! 

I'm now officially at the point in the blog where I have to admit this probably isn't going to age very well.  I see some comments coming up which serve only to thoroughly distract the viewer from the content of my game.