Luddes training journal

I was once a decent chessplayer and had something like a "chess career" in the 80s and 90s. After that came work & kids (it's probably possible to combine an active chess-life with one of those, but not both!) and I haven't played a real tournament in almost 10 years. During that time I have more or less only played 3-10 games a year in the Swedish team competition. Lately, at the age of 43 I have felt the urge to play coming back strongly, especially after spending some time with old chess-friends who are still active. So now I'm starting to try to go forward towards a small comeback and hopefully play a couple of tournaments this year. If I can make it fit with family and work the first one is a round-robin happening in early June.

To prepare for this I have set up a couple of targets until then:

1. To rebuild an opening repertoire. I realize I can't play all the ultra-sharp variations (I used to play 8.Rb1 against the Grünfeld f ex) I used to when I had more time for preparation, but will have to go for more restrained positional lines. Still I have to have a decent idea of the main ideas in those lines. I should build a basic repertoire and use chessbase to familiarize myslef with the typical positions arising. I will keep a few openings from my past - the KID and Alekhines defence as black, but will play 1.Nf3 as white aiming for Réti or Catalan. I will make a small database of my openings and at least have a clear idea of what to do in most lines up until the middlegame starts.
   
2. To play some turn-based games here on chess.com and a little blitz on ICC to get back some "feeling for the game".
3. To try to solve some tactical problems in a structured manner with time-pressure. These excersizes must be scheduled since I know how lazy I can be if.
   
4. To learn from my past chess history regarding my weaknesses and strengths. I know that in the past I enjoyed analyzing tactical tricks in my pet lines, but rarely made objective analyses of the resulting positions from a positional point of view. Learning by plyaing might work when you play a lot, but not under current circumstances.
5. To annotate all serious games I play in order to judge them objectively and also present them here.

To achieve this I will try to post here weakly regarding how I have fared. Appreciate any feedback!

Welcome and thanks for sharing with us! It is evident, from the thouroughness of your prep plan, that you "had a past" - I am sure all the fun will be back in no time, and that results will follow. I am in a situation (age, work, family) very close to yours, so I share most of your feelings...

One question: I see you talk of "pet lines", which is something I hear very often of (there is even a ChessMentor course about "pet openings"), but I still didn't manage to undertand what it means! Could you help me understanding what a "pet line" is?

Cheers,

Andrea

I suspect a pet line can mean different things to different people, but to me it is lines I feel I know fairly well, and I like to play. Typically it is not the main variations, but often some slightly off-beat varaition. I can mention that a pet line of mine from the past was the unusual c3-continuation in the Leningrad Dutch:

Which is not by any means the most critical handling of this variation, but it suited me well, and I played some nice games with it. The sequence leading up to the diagram would typically be 1.d4 f5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 g6 4.c3 Bg7 5.Qb3.

I think the fact that you have some fond memories of games played in a variation is one key part in defining it as one of your pet lines.

Makes sense - thanks for the info!

Today I played a team-game in the Swedish team Champiosnship. My team plays in the third division (illogically known as division 1, but there is one division called "elite", and one called "super 1"). I was clearly higher rated than my opponent, and played a reasonable game (well, one bad decision along the way, but perfections is not within my grasp)...up until I lost track completely. At the end I carefully avoided all winning lines in favour of a drawing one. Hopefully it is just proof of poor form, and not actually not being able to calculate variations...Here's the game:

So at least I have worked a little with the game, but I felt very frustrated with my finish immediately after. Any thoughts are welcome!

In my initial post i set up some targets. One of them was to play some turn-based chess here on chess.com in order to get back some feeling for the game.
I signed up for a tournament, and was slightly surprised to realize that this meant playing 18 games in round 1! Now this is finished and I hope it will be a while until round 2 starts.
Most of the games were decided quite early on due to tactical mistakes, but quite a few were interesting. This is especially true for the following game.
As a teenager I used to analyze this line together with friends in my club. It is called the Frankenstein-Dracula variation and was dubbed so by Tim harding in the 70s
because the bloodthirstiness of this was such that "a game between Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster would not seem out of place." A little more info can be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein-Dracula_Variation

I've commented the game below. Any thoughts or comments are welcome

Thank you for sharing. Interesting game.