Sometimes the Chess Goddess smiles on you...

Well, in my case it’s probably uncontrollable laughter, but anyhow, I managed to win a game with her help. This game appears to have lessons for both sides. I discovered that my old, bad, chess habits are very difficult to eradicate. For the most part, I’ve got them licked when it comes to match play, where I have several days to move and plenty of time to prevent my known bad tendencies, but when I’m playing a faster time control, 45/45 in this case, time is a luxury I don’t have, and I tend to fall back into bad habits. So for others of you in Chess.com land struggling to improve your play, this game may be instructive.