Chess Habits
Sunday Night Chess
By Paul Anderson
Colorado Springs Chess Club President
The Colorado Springs Chess Club is an affiliate of Chess.com and meets every Sunday night for online chess. We typically have a 30-minute, Blitz Arena at 6:15pm followed by a Rapid Swiss at 7:00pm (4SS, G/10+10).
https://www.chess.com/club/colorado-springs-chess-club?ref_id=7846680
This year I posted a one pound weight-loss. It may not seem like much. However, it marks 10 consecutive years with a loss, bringing me from a high of 295 pounds down to this year’s low of 167. I had to make some major adjustments to my health habits in the final month to get that one pound. But the changes worked!
Now I am trying to find similar adjustments I can make to my chess habits to offset the 10 years of losses in those numbers as well. It is interesting to note that my peak rating of 2102 was in 2015 when I was my heaviest.
So, if you have any good chess habits that have worked for you, please send them my way.
Here is a list of my 2024 online chess habits:
- I played over 81 Wallmails. Wallmails are the chess emails sent out by LM Brian Wall. I collected them into a library on chess.com after using the analyzer to go over them. So, if you aren’t getting his emails, you can view the games here: https://www.chess.com/c/nZQyrRqp
- I played one Rapid game per day until I got my rating to my personal best of 2159 on 12/9/24.
- I also played a lot of Blitz games and got my rating to my personal best of 2269 on 12/15/24.
- I moved 80 old blogs to my new website. This habit of writing blogs used to keep me motivated to go over my own games, especially the losses. Last year, I had 29 wins and 9 losses. The percentage wasn’t bad. However, the upset wins were few and the upset losses were many, which put me on my ratings floor. https://cschessnews.blogspot.com/
- I played in my fifth 40 Move Challenge. This habit started during the pandemic as a way to, hopefully, learn openings I never play. Each week in the Sunday Night Chess Rapid Swiss, I try to win with all 40 legal first moves in as few attempts as possible. After setting my record at 57 in 2023, I did pretty lousy this year.
|
Year |
Color |
Attempts |
Score |
Win % |
|
2024 |
White |
33 |
21.5 |
65.15% |
|
Black |
38 |
21.5 |
56.58% |
|
|
2024 Total |
71 |
43.0 |
60.56% |
|
|
2023 |
White |
24 |
20.0 |
83.33% |
|
Black |
33 |
22.0 |
66.67% |
|
|
2023 Total |
57 |
42.0 |
73.68% |
|
|
2022 |
White |
33 |
23.0 |
69.70% |
|
Black |
40 |
22.0 |
55.00% |
|
|
2022 Total |
73 |
45.0 |
61.64% |
|
|
2021 |
White |
29 |
22.0 |
75.86% |
|
Black |
31 |
21.5 |
69.35% |
|
|
2021 Total |
60 |
43.5 |
72.50% |
|
|
2020 |
Black |
32 |
22.0 |
68.75% |
|
White |
38 |
22.5 |
59.21% |
|
|
2020 Total |
70 |
44.5 |
63.57% |
|
|
Grand Total |
331 |
218.0 |
65.86% |
Tuesday Night Chess
By Paul Anderson
Colorado Springs Chess Club President
The Colorado Springs Chess Club is an affiliate of USCF and meets every Tuesday night for OTB chess. We typically have a month-long, Swiss tournament (G/90+30) at 6:00pm. See the calendar for details:
https://sites.google.com/view/colorado-springs-chess-club
While the online chess habits had some positive effects on my ratings by the end of the year, the Over-The-Board chess habits didn’t have as much impact on my rating. Maybe age has a larger impact on slow chess. I did notice that all the old-timers at the club (Buck Buchanan, Dean Brown, Mark McGough, and I) were at their ratings floor some time this year.
Here is a list of my 2024 Over-The-Board chess habits:
- I added 378 photos to the Colorado Springs Chess Club’s album. https://photos.app.goo.gl/gaavHWG1X1crJE9y5
- I played over 374 tournament games. While the quality of my game analysis has deteriorated, the quantity has increased greatly. As the tournament director, I go over all the score sheets from the club. However, I don’t spend as much time on any one game since I haven’t been publishing games since 2021. Although, I have been asked to pick it back up again. Gary Vines was coming to the club when I first started to blog, and he is coming back again and mentioned the old blogs. I picked out a Game Of The Year blog for him (see below) since it might be awhile before I get caught up on my backlog and on to new material.
- I directed the 58th City Chess Championship, which was won by Chris Motley for his 2nd title.
- I won the 1st City Quick Chess Championship.
- I won the 29th City Speed Chess Championship when Lawrence Scafuri and I agreed to share the title after tying for the best score.
Colorado Springs Chess News
https://cschessnews.blogspot.com/
End Of The Season
Monday September 06, 2004
You may not be aware that the chess year has an off-season, but it does. The chess season ends when the NFL season starts.
Oh sure, some die-hard chess fanatics keep playing all year round. In fact, I will be playing some myself. However, the games are far less newsworthy. So, as a chess news website, I am forced to switch my focus from updating this website each week to updating my football-related blog.
I know this news is very upsetting for all my readers. So, I have a couple of suggestions to help you make it through the next several months. If you can’t do without my beautiful prose, check out my fantasy football league: https://spamfootball.blogspot.com
If it is more chess games you crave, check out:
https://www.chess.com/club/colorado-springs-chess-club?ref_id=7846680
Game Of The Year
For the final game of the year, I had a tough choice to make. I could have reprised one of the games I published earlier this year, but I didn’t want to repeat myself. I could have pulled one from my stockpile of games other people have given to me, but I thought, “Who wants to see yet another Brian Wall victory?” So, I decided to pick one of my own games.
It has been making news on its own without the aid of my shameless self-promotion. Buck Buchanan selected it as one of the games from the Pikes Peak Open to go on the CSCA website, and he even gave me an exclamation point on move 26.
Brian Wall demanded I publish it. No really, he did. He even made it the topic of a couple emails he posted to his yahoo group. The reason he likes it so much is because I took the “System” from one of his emails. He listed four elements that are used as white in the Queen’s Gambit Declined and gave an example that ended in 13 moves.
So when I got that opening in the Pikes Peak Open, I figured I could use a quick win. How hard could it be to get four elements into 13 moves?
Well, it is harder than you might think. Brian wrote, “Paul Anderson adopted one of my systems and has been having great results.” Actually, I have played it twice (in a row) in USCF-rated play (40/2+60 and 90) and still haven’t gotten all four elements. I am undefeated with it, but someday I would like to get the “Bishing Pole” element into a game. Nobody pushes h6 for me.
In this game, I castled queenside, pushed e4 in one move, got the king to b1, but my bishop got pushed off g5 and by the time I got my opponent to take my bait (knight) there the firing lines were clogged with knight and pawns.
But I was undaunted. Even though I was well past 13 moves, out of elements, and a stranger in a strange land, I put my trust in the “System.” It had gotten me this far, and I wasn’t going to abandon it now. I decided the “System” would require something bold.
So, my plan was to annihilate and demolish the stronghold around the king, and I did just that. Fritz liked it well enough to award me an exclamation point and a double exclamation point in the course of 4 moves. Not bad for the first time with the “System”.
Game Of The Year
[Event "Pikes Peak Open"]
[Site "https://cschessnews.blogspot.com/"]
[Date "2004.08.08"]
[Round "5.4"]
[White "Anderson, Paul"]
[Black "Krowczyk, Mark"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "D53"]
[WhiteElo "1761"]
[BlackElo "1770"]
[PlyCount "97"]
[EventDate "2004.08.07"]
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. Nc3 O-O 6. Qc2 c6 7. h4 Nbd7 8.
O-O-O Ng4 9. e4 f6 10. Bf4 e5 11. Bg3 dxe4 12. Nxe4 Qa5 13. Kb1 f5 14. Neg5 e4
15. Nd2 Ndf6 16. Nb3 Qa4 17. d5 Nh5 18. Bc7 cxd5 19. cxd5 Bxg5 20. hxg5 g6 21.
Bc4 b5 22. Bf1 e3 23. Rd4 b4 24. d6 Bd7 25. Qc4+ Kg7 26. Rxg4 fxg4 27. Qd4+ Nf6
28. gxf6+ Rxf6 29. Rxh7+ Kxh7 30. Qxf6 Qc6 31. Qe7+ Kh8 32. Qxe3 Bf5+ 33. Bd3
Re8 34. Qd4+ Kh7 35. a3 Re1+ 36. Ka2 bxa3 37. Bxf5 gxf5 38. Qc3 Qe4 39. Kxa3
Rd1 40. Qe3 Qb7 41. Qe7+ Kh6 42. Qf6+ Kh7 43. Qxf5+ Kh6 44. Qxg4 Rd3 45. Qe6+
Kg7 46. Qc4 Rd1 47. d7 Rxd7 48. Qg4+ Kf6 49. Qxd7 1-0
