Chess Diary #3

First, some links. I like what Michael Goeller is doing at his Kenilworthian blog: after a tournament like the Tal Memorial, create a catalogue of links to news articles about it. Good to have all the analisys published at various sites together: http://www.kenilworthchessclub.org/kenilworthian/2009/11/tal-memorial-2009-webliography_15.html .

He started doing this with Nanjing: http://www.kenilworthchessclub.org/kenilworthian/2009/10/carlsen-wins-to-finish-nanjing-with-810.html

Anyway, chess yesterday. I stayed at home because my daughter was ill, and had a bit of a chaotic day. A new chess.com tournament started, and I suddenly had 9 new games. Also, I'm trying to take my correspondence chess to a higher level: not blitzing games anymore, but trying to do real analysis, and storing it.

So I put all my ongoing online chess games into a Scid database, and started analyzing one of them, late yesterday evening. Unfortunately I didn't reach many solid conclusions after +- 20 minutes, but I've got a bunch of lines and decided on a move. He answered today, with the move I regarded as most probable, so now I can build on this analysis for the next move. A decent start.

The new games are still in opening theory, and they give me a chance to work on my other project -- putting the theory books I use into electronic form. The way I do this is for every move I make and for which I use a book, I work a little bit on putting that book (those lines) into a database. After playing some line a few times, I should have the theory on it electronically, and then I can start adding original analysis and my own preferences to it. I hope it'll grow into something awesome. For now though, it's just a huge pile of mindless work... Not recommended, unless you have the same sort of obsessions I have :-)

Yesterday was a good chance to work a bit on my book on the e3 Nimzo. Earlier I had entered the Index of Variations, yesterday I created games for each of the chapters and annotated games in it. Next time I need to make a move in the games that I'm playing with it, I'll expand the relevant chapter a tiny bit.

Resolutions:

- Spend 10 minutes on making a move, no more, no less. It's more than I do now, but it's good to set a maximum to prevent this hobby getting out of hand.

- I'm going to give myself "prediction points". After opening theory, if the opponent plays a move I at least entered into Scid as a possibility, I get 1 point. If he plays a move I hadn't seen coming at all, and it's not a complete blunder, I subtract 2 points. Seems to me that at least acknowledging all reasonable moves the opponent might make is the lowest bar to set in correspondence chess.

Today I get 1 point, as my opponent did reply with the expected move in the game I spent time on.