45 to 50 + Attila

3/11/13 Polgar 5334: 368, Chess School 1a: 617+, Logical Chess: 5, Winning Chess: 60, Bain: 155, Gillam SCM: 200, Pandolfini BC: Completed, Silman Endgame: Starting Part 3, Mueller DVD: Recap Beginning of Chap. 2

Things have been hectic the last few weeks here in the City Different. Proposals at work flying out, trips to small towns, and the general responsibilities and chaos of life with kids getting sick, doctors visits have taken their toll on my piano and chess studies. I have continued to work through the simple books and computer tactics program but need to get back on the wagon with the piano/Ivanschenko/Polgar routine. I also need to revisit the last section of endgame studies and try to get in some slow games.

I tried joining the Tuesday night ICC tournament which looks like it'll satisfy my need for a nice weekly game. Failure after figuring out the archaic commands and signing in with the bot, I didn't get a pairing. Found out that you need to play 20 standard rated games on ICC to be able to play in the tourney... Not too bad but still a drag to have gotten all excited about Tuesday to have my hopes dashed.

On the Attila front, we went over some opening issues that I had. The strange thing is last lesson, he sent me a database of Center Counter games. I took it to mean that was recommending that I play the CC, so I started playing it and really liked it. Turns out he sent it to me because in a previous game with MicMic, MicMic played the CC against me and I was in real bad shape until he made a mistake in the endgame. Attila sent over a database with white winning against the Qa5 to show me how to fight against it. During the week, I was wondering why he would send me a db with black losing every game if wanted me to play it. I went to the tube and saw some Qd6 videos and learned what to play for black and play a lot of good games with it. With this week's lesson I realized the true intention of the db but I told Attila how I loved the CC and he took the misunderstanding of the db as a serendipitous event that would change the course of my chess playing forever and decided to roll with it and then proceeded to show me some great ideas with the CC.

I didn't have a game annotated for review since I was planning on using my new game against MicMic which never happened and then my first ICC tourney game which never happened. But all in all it was a really good lesson and the bonus... ...I found out that in Euroland they actually have a second Valentine's type day called International Woman's day. Attila was getting ready for that. I asked him about it and he said that they also celebrate Valentine's day which I thought might have been just a US holiday lobbied for by Hallmark and American Greetings. Why have a second Valentine's Day style holiday less than a month after the 2/14 original? The E.U. needs better planners. Put this Int. Woman's day in July or August, space it out. As it is now it seems like a kid having his birthday on December 23rd. He gets the shaft when it comes to presents compared to a kid whose b-day is in April or May...

Anyway now that things have eased up a bit, I will be back on my regular schedule and routine.