Thanks for posting, you seem to be a victim of an very experienced player. Next time you may need to transpose to another defense, i.e. c6, e6 or even Nc6. However, its difficult to do if you don't have experience in any of those lines. As you can tell, Alan Glasscoe has been around the block a few times.
2009 Berkeley BCC Championships Round 1 (my game + photos)
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Someone please help me. 10. Bxh6 looks so tasty!! Is this move bad? I just see happy days ahead after ng5 white gets in Ng5 (rook sac on f6).
David - Thanks for the great post! It is fantastic to see this personal side of the game. I think anytime someone makes a forum about ratings blah blah, we linkdrop this forum, so people can see what chess is really about, relationships with our fellow humans and enjoying this fantastic game.
@mnag - I do think I definitely made him work for his win, and I think I have been throwing a lot of higher-rated players off because they see the 1345 rating and think the win will be easy, and then I push them and make them work and they are surprised by that.
Regarding the gambit, I felt pretty comfortable taking the pawn, because I figured I would be up at least 1 pawn, and when I took the 2nd pawn, although he activated his knight, I did eliminate a potential central pawn of his. What I think I should have done was address his Queen move to the h-file beforehand. I saw the move coming beforehand, but decided to let it happen anyway, and I think his threat on my h-pawn could have been avoided if I had addressed this issue beforehand.
@NM TonyDal - wow, that is pretty incredible. It is amazing how time flies. It would have been a pleasure for me to see Alan as a chess player when he was younger. I am sure he was a formidable opponent back then, as he is still a formidable opponent now.
Yeah he's a pretty good I played a nice game against him back in July 2009. Also Im gonna be playing in this next cycle so keep an eye out for me!
@DeathScepter - If you put the position into a computer engine, it says that white can take the pawn with the bishop. What happens after that would depend upon my next move. The one thing that would not be good is if I take back with the pawn. In that case, my king is in serious danger because he is exposed.
As I said in my post, we went over various lines after the game, and we could not find a checkmate or some huge material advantage for white.
@kingsmate618 - It looks like he blundered a piece in your game. Making mistakes in chess is inevitable, and so I would not rate his current chess ability based on his performance with you. I think it was just one of those cases where there was a check he did not see, and you won material, and the game ended.
According to computer analysis, in the game I played against him, I did have a good move after his knight sacrifice, which would be to move my Queen to the h-file. I did see that move during the game, but was very low on time, so I did not work out exactly how that would work out, and played the bishop move instead, which is a losing move.
Hello all.
I most recently participated in round 1 of a tournament held at the Berkeley Chess School, hosted by the Berkeley Chess Club.
The first point to mention is Berkeley itself. Berkeley the city is famous for probably the most highly regarded public university in the world, UC Berkeley. It is a college town, and if you enter the city, at some point it would be hard not to see at least a few students either walking or biking.
The second point is that the Berkeley Chess School is a really unique place, the only place I have seen in this area that does what it does. The school looks like a school with 2 stories and classrooms and they teach chess classes at the school - mostly for kids. It is mainly a scholastic chess school, and scholastic chess has become popular in the US as a way to enhance the learning process in education, especially for grades K-6.
The Berkeley Chess Club is in the Berkeley Chess School, but it is non-scholastic, and it is a very small focus of the School. However, it is the one place in the School where rated USCF tournaments can be held where adults like myself can participate in.
The tournament I attended was the 1st tournament I had ever attended at the Berkeley Chess School and the 1st time I had ever been to the Berkeley Chess School. It is located up in the hills of Berkeley behind the UC Berkeley campus. I actually drove around the back of UC Berkeley campus to get to the Berkeley Chess School.
The tournament is an ongoing tournament of 5 rounds with 1 game every Friday. The game I will post is from Game 1 of the tournament, which took place yesterday. I was 20 minutes late to my game because traffic on Fridays where I live is very heavy, and the Berkeley Chess School is a very difficult place to find driving there for the first time.
My opponent was very gracious, and did not start the clock until I arrived. He could have been up 20 minutes on me, and I would have had to play, but he waited until I was at the board before playing. During the game, it seemed like he never tried to play cheap tricks with time, like punch the clock right after I leave to go to the bathroom, or something like that. He always waited for me, and was probably a model player to play against.
There were a couple of times when he said "adjust" and moved my pieces, which is kind of distracting, and to me it is unnecessary, unless your pieces are really not clearly on their squares, which mine were. He was also one of those players that ate and drank at the table, and I was ready for that, so I got out my water bottle and snacks so that I would not be distracted by him eating and drinking.
Here are a couple pictures:
My opponent Alan. An old guy, a nice guy, a real chess
lover. He was telling me he used to be an Expert,
but that age has affected his game somewhat. I told
him I thought he played a great game, and his mind
was as sharp as ever. In the background you can see
part of the second story of the chess school.
Who's that guy with the old man
Is that some sick
deranged guy; yes, you guessed it - that's me
We were the last 2 people to leave the Chess School.
It was getting late, and you know the kids - they can't
stay out past 9
I should mention that I would have taken a picture with
my buddy Dave, who said he would enter his first ever
USCF tournament, but decided at the last minute
to cancel, saying he had to take care of his kids
I mean good for the kids
but it was one of those
instances where he could have either shown up
and played with me in the tournament or cancelled
in advance, and he decided to do the most
inconvenient thing, which is to cancel at the last moment.
That's my reliable friend Dave for you
Ok, on to the game:
Time Control: 30/85 G/30 w/ 5 sec. delay.
I had my chances, was in time trouble, made a blunder after he sacrificed his knight. He sacrificed his knight at the perfect time, when I was about to run out of time; if I had more time, I may have not played the move I did. But the good news for me is that there were good moves that were going through my head that I did not play, so that at least shows my thought process was in the right place. My bishop sacrifice was made when I was low on time, and I blitzed out moves to make time control on move 30, but by that time, I already had a lost position. We both saw a potential bishop sacrifice on my h-pawn earlier in the game, and with perfect computer play, he might have been able to make that. But there were some lines we went over after the game where the position was very unclear - and there was one line where I could actually take his pawn with check and then grab his knight, so although the bishop sacrifice might have been clear for a computer, it was more difficult to play as a human over-the-board, and he decided not to play that move.