A Friendly Tactic
I switched it up yesterday, and played a friendly game against Fritz 16 instead of playing against Komodo. A nice tactic showed up on move 17 and fortunately, I did find it.
Taking Ten
I have been playing long-play games against Komodo 12.1.1, which I own. I have recently upped the skill level of Komodo to 9. Since it starts with skill 0, that is actually the 10th level out of 20 that are available. I figured I would try the 10...
Another Daily Game in the Books
I just finished up my fourth daily game on this site. I played Claysive, who gave me a tough game. I had grabbed some material. As result, he had a pretty dangerous attack going on my King-side. Here is the annotated game:
Taking on a GM
I have never played against a GM before, so when Simon Williams decided to do a Simultaneous for his Twitch followers, I was keen to participate. I might even learn a little about my game by doing so. The format was 30 minutes with 30 second incre...
Against The Ropes
My latest daily game was a real test. I got an advantage out of the opening, but then my opponent played an incorrect but tricky move, 13. h4 that threatened to trap my knight. I took Qxh4, which is correct. But after 14. c4, I should have played ...
Another Shot at Komodo
It has been a while since I played Komodo here, so I decided to give Computer7 a whirl. It is currently rated 1446 in rapid. I beat it pretty handily as Black. I have continued to make progress on my Yusupov. I'm currently working on chapter...
Milestone made: 1600 Tactics
Clearly tactics is an important part of the chess. As part of trying to get good at this game, I decided to do 10 or more tactics problems a day at chesstempo. My tactics clearly needed work and I hit a low of 1349 fairly early on, I think in Apri...
Playing Above My Class
Last night I went to chess club again. I got their before the others so I got to test my mettle against the Class A head of the club. He asked me which color I wanted and I chose black because I wanted to work on that part of my repertoire. I got ...
Slaying Komodo
I do quite a bit of playing against computers as part of my training. Yesterday, I played Komodo 12.1.1 on skill level 6 (equivalent on this site to computer7; the numbering starts at 0). I played at a long time control as most teachers consider l...
London Madness
I'm not much of a blitz player. I'm just too slow and methodical, and I have very little experience playing fast time controls. I'm much stronger at longer time controls. Still, I enjoy an occasional game and I am trying to improve. Every once in ...
A night out
Friday night I headed out to the local chess club. The crowd was pretty thin, I think because the club was having a tournament on Saturday. As a result, I got to play the head of the club, who is an A player. I was very pleased with how the game w...
Down and Out
I had a rather rough day yesterday as I wasn't feeling all that well. Still I did my 10 tactics problems. The result was pretty ugly. My tactics rating dropped from 1568.2 to 1546. I went way past my normal 10 problems. After 10 problems I had dro...
Heading Past 60
I am currently 59 years old and rapidly approaching 60. I was recently thinking about retirement. I'm the kind of guy that can't just sit in a house day after day. Two or three days and I have a strong case of cabin fever. I need to get out and do...
