Last week my buddy Mu played GM Timur Gareev in a simul at the Portland Chess club and drew him. He played a great game, one that even the computer liked, and I thought I'd share it for him on his behalf. Annotations are my own.
This game is hardly free of errors, but I thought the light-square play was instructive. Hope you enjoy
Went 3.5/4 last Sunday and took home a big cash prize. The games aren't spectacular, but the last two are at least interesting. In particular, I hadn't seen Bird's Defense to the Ruy Lopez before, so figuring out a way through that was a bit of a ...
Been a while since I posted games, but last Saturday, I played in the Marshall's G60 swiss. I had some fairly simple wins, as well as an interesting third game before ducking out to go get my drink on. I picked up a dozen rating points, putting me...
I mentioned this a while back in my blog post about the ChessIQ October G60, but as you may remember I submitted my game to the show "Melik and Me," on which GM Melik reviewed it. Well, I found the video, which I thought had been lost to time fore...
On Saturday I played in the U1600 section of the Marshall G45. While my chess slowly worsened as the day went on, I still went 3.5/4, which was good enough for second place and a 30 point rating bump, putting me at 1615. I won $77, and put myself ...
I don't really have much to say about these games. I played marginally better chess than last time, though I still felt a bit foggy and made plenty of poor decisions. During my analysis, I was all like "what was I thinking?"
Rapid chess--particularly against people way better than me--isn't really my thing. G25|5, though I'm as responsible for beating myself as they are for beating me. Apparently this affects my standard ratings as well as my normal ones. If I had...
I also just concluded a game with Mu--I've posted that here too.
My apologies to Phil and Quinn--I've been pretty busy and haven't had time to write these up.
For my last tournament in Chicago, I took part in the ChessIQ G60|30 Quads. I played really well* and was for the most part very happy with my games, a nice bit of redemption after my poor performance at the Winter Open. The postings haven't gone ...
I just played a tournament this Saturday, but until Sevan gets around to submitting it to the USCF, I'll hold off on posting it.
My recent DHLC weekly games. The first one I had the white pieces in a Ruy Lopez where black sacrificed a pawn for some mean counterplay after the opening didn't go his way. I managed to stifle the attack, and after he dropped an exchange, the res...
Over the weekend, I played in Tim Just's Winter Open. Branded as the longest running tournament in the Chicagoland area, the Winter Open was the first major tournament I played in, and so it marks a year of chess since my return. It's been a good ...
This morning, a seven game winning streak took me over 1600 Elo in blitz for the first time on chess.com To celebrate, here are two slow games played at the DHLC where I blundered horribly, including playing Nd5 in the dragon as white (which is al...
Some more games from the last two weeks. A loss in a poorly played KID on my part, where I failed to have a cohesive plan and follow through on it, and a neat win against the Colle System that according to the computer was about as error free as I...
On Saturday I played in the open section of the ChessIQ November Plus Score. This was the first time I qualified for the open section of a tournament, and it meant that the competition was tough. However, I thought I proved myself equal to the tas...
I've been playing slow games fairly regularly recently, though I haven't been tournamenting it up. My new (and improved) standard rating I've managed to keep in the low 1700s through the end of the adjustment period, so that's good. I also raised ...
On Saturday I played in a quad at ChessIQ, my second tournament of the month. I played well for the most part, scoring two out of three and bumping my rating up to 1518. In this blog post, I'm going to try something a bit different--listing one mi...
Yesterday I played a casual Quad tournament at ChessIQ up in Skokie. Unlike the last quad I played in, I was in a quad with people at my rating (actually, everyone was higher rated than me), and all of them were old enough to play with some maturi...
Today I played in a Quad (G60|30) back in Skokie. I was in the bottom quad, and apart from my first game blew my opponents out of the water. Even tactical blunders go unnoticed when you play people in the 1000s. I need to work better on getting on...
Sometimes Cassia is on your side. On Saturday I played in a local G60|30 tournament in Skokie in the U1500 section. Through no fault of my own, I won all four of my games, and the division. My rating shot up from 1318 to 1477, and I got a better...
Both of my games this week were very interesting, and since they are the last slow games I'll be playing for a week or two, I thought I'd share them. As always, comments and analysis are appreciated. My first game, I had the black pieces in a Smi...
This week, I played two slow games as part of the DHLC Weekly Slow League. I had the black pieces in both, and I was (mostly) happy with my play. I realize that I need to work on my calculation/visualization, and need to be better at keeping it si...
