The Backyard Professor's USCF Rated Games

Since the Backyard Professor (aka, Kerry Shirts) has apparently retired from USCF competition, I thought it would be useful to post his nine games here. These games were taken from the posted scoresheets on the Idaho Chess Association's web site. In a handful of cases, portions of the scoresheets were difficult to decipher; I hope I got them correct. One compliment I can give to Kerry is that, for a beginner, he keeps a respectably neat and legible scoresheet.

All games had a time control of Game in 2 hrs, with a 5 second delay for each move.

 

 

Game 1:

 

Game 2:

 

Game 3:

 

Game 4:

 

Game 5:

 

Game 6:

 

Game 7:

 

Game 8:

 

Game 9:

Wow!
You got his scoresheets?
You gotta respect a beginner who can keep decent score of the game.

He played reasonably well, a lot better than I expected.
Game 3 was pretty crazy but he won that one.
Still looking...

Game 4 must have been heartbreaking for him.
I think he got more desperately aggressive as the tournament went on. Lots of tactical weakness of course, but it's evident he has ideas about strategy.
His win with Black in game 9 was a beauty, almost a real brilliancy. Nice way to end the tournament.
Not bad at all for a tournament debut, but I guess too painful for his expectations.

He has the positional understanding of a 1400, judging by these games - not bad at all for a first tournament. Unfortunately, in implementing his strategies, he hangs pawns and pieces to simple 1-2 move tactics. 

The last move, ...Nh3, was a good move, and I was surprised he played it, given his tactical ability. 

He ran the gauntlet, losing bits of flesh at every step.
And this is why tactics are important!

For some reason, these games remind of essentially worse versions of @2Q1C's games. Logical positional play, but weird tactical oversights.

Seems like his play was evolving through the tourney, reacting to his losses, getting more tactical in later rounds, looking for forcing moves and active piece play. Some tactical work at home, and a few more tournaments probably would have raised his rating many 100s of points in less than a year.

I doubt he would have found Nh3 if that game had been in the first few rounds.

His opponent sacked his bishop for not much, instead of developing a piece or castling.

If you look at when these games were played, they are very early in his development. His first video was August of 2011, the games here were played in April 2012 (first four) & Sept 2012 (Remaining 5). The Backyard professor admits he started out playing his shredder app at 500 & losing most of the time. He made videos until July of 2014, getting better as he went. He was definitely better when he stopped making videos than what he was when these games were played. He also plays two of the final five (sept games) against 1700+ players. He really can't be blamed for those two losses. I really think that the provisional rating of 789 isn't really accurate rating of his strength as a player.

It's quite possible that he got better later on. However, since he stopped playing tournament chess, we can only speculate on what his later rating might have been. My purpose for creating this thread was simply for historical reasons; I wasn't trying to imply anything about his rating.

 

P.S. - FWIW, even if you were to throw out his two losses against 1700+ players, it would hardly change his rating at all. (1 rating point or less, according to the USCF Rating Estimator)

He had a very poor approach to chess improvement, which is already tough for someone at his age with a lot of other things in his life. Gotta focus on tactical strength when you're a beginner; otherwise you'll have games like these where you demonstrate reasonable positional understanding and then lose because you hung all your pieces anyway.

Yeah I learned that Kerry Shirts is not nearly as good as I am after going over these games. I do not know what my rating is, but, if Cherub is not Trolling like I think he is, Kerry Shirts positional Understanding of 1400 makes mine at least 1800 or so, but I doubt that, which is why I believe Cherub is trolling. This bites. I actually enjoyed Cherub posting. Now he is just another troll.

Kerry Shirts was playing the queens gambit, however, it seems he was playing the opening by ear as it looks like he did not know how to play against the Benoni, or the Nimzo. Queens gambit declined is a highly theoretical opening. You need to know a lot more theory to play it rather than e4, which is why I believe part of the reason why he did so poorly was because he choose to play d4, an opening he doesn't even know. Quite the handicap to play an opening you don't know in a tournament. He also didn't have good black openings. I know I'm probably beating a dead horse, but, I think his lack of an opening repertoire probably contributed to his poor performance. Not saying he should memorize 20 moves deep. 4 or 5 in most cases should suffice. Then again I could name 3 people that have no idea about openings and could beat me any day of the week, but, those people played losts and losts of games with strong players, and have good memories. I personally cannot remember the exact way the games I played went unless I backtracked shortly after I played the game, and I would not be able to do it if I played a lot of speed games in short succession. So I'm forced to study opening theory. Moral of the story is Kerry shirts did not play "tons" of games. He is just a beginner below 1000 rating. So, he needs a guide to follow, to help him play consistently. This guide, is an opening repertoire. I did not come here to argue about this point. I just came to state my opinion. Anyone can disagree if they want to, which is why a lot of noobs to chess quit all the time, like Kerry Shirts. They get people that didn't even need to try to get better tell them they don't need opening theory and to just make it up as you go along, but this stuff doesn't work for everyone, for a variety of reasons.

His strategy/positional is bad too - look at game 8, 3.d5 White obviously MUST play to get advantage, Later Qc2 just misplaces the queen on the c-file where it can get attacked, then f4 was bad too, as it gave Black the e5 square outpost.

rip bumpydoccio

What does that mean and why did you bump this thread?

Are you sure we're talking about the same person? This games looks that were played by kids, I mean really beginners and anyone who plays chess with frecuency (in a club, internet, etc) could play better. This does not match with his videos and he was a good teacher.

Yes, I'm sure it's the same guy. He even posted a few videos taken during one of his tournaments.

From what I remember, I don't think I did very well in my first dozen USCF rated games, either.