Preview: This weekend I played in the SD Team Championship. I have played in every team championship since 2011 but my team has never won. I have won individual board prizes and the teams I have been on have gotten very close to winning a couple t...
My most recent tournament was a rollar-coaster I will never forget. I have had more than one memorable tournament over the past 6 years I have played tournament chess. I have had everything from brillant victories to shocking blunders. I have see...
Back in September, I played in a big open tournament. I really enjoyed the tournament. The whole tournament had a very professional setup. Usually, you have to bring your own boards to set up, but this tournament they already had boards setup ...
Its been a long time (almost a year) since I have posted a blog on one of my tournament experiences. I will no longer deprive everyone. Several months ago, in April, I participated in a chess tourament in Iowa, the Okoboji Open. My blog is a ...
This weekend I played in an unrated tournament that was held at my local college. I knew I was the favorite but it wouldn't be a walk-over victory. In the 1st round I faced Bruce, someone I have I played many, many times. He is a dangerous vetera...
Last weekend I went to my state's chess championship. It was quite the tournament. I had just recently started college and was coming off a fun exam week. So I hadn't really been studying chess all that much, just playing a lot of blitz online and...
A few months ago, I played in a big open tournament and played horribly. The format was a swiss with 5 rounds, 90 min. time limit for the first two rooms, and 120 min. for the last 3 rounds. I showed up to the tournament with high hopes and a goal...
Very recently, I played a fascinating game at the chess club. The chess opening called the Ruy Lopez is often reffered to as the "Spanish Torture" with the player of the white pieces usually doing the torturing. Hence several members of our club c...
About a week ago, I went to a big chess tourney. I was eager to do well since I ended 2013 on a bad note with a dumb loss to a 1500 in the last game (I pretty much gave the game zero effort). I realized after that tourney that the biggest thing ho...
I came across a brilliant crushing Tal-style game the other day that featured a c3 - Sicilian. I am always surpised when people say that the c3 - Sicilian is a slow, boring opening. Nothing could be further from the truth as this game shows. O...
The Nimzo-Indian is a highly respected opening used by many grandmasters, today I will look at one of the most critical lines. Here is the variation I will look at: This variation is very sharp and one should know this variation very well if one...
For many players the opening is a huge weak point (actually, often they are weak in all the phases of the game, mainly because they are "lazy"). For me the opening is a great strength; often I gain a large advantage out of the opening which helps ...
Here is an interesting King's Indian Defense I played recently:
How is it possible that in the last couple games that you were able to play a "real" Sicilian Najdorf your opponents both play the same line and fall into the exact same trap? The first incident happened at my local chess club several weeks ago. ...
Imagine this: you play a beautiful game, sacing your queen for a knight, rook, and two pawns, slowly and surely convert that into a double rooks vs queen ending, which, in a time scramble, you end up getting three connected passed pawns and your o...
I recently played one of the most interesting and fun 10 minute Live Chess games in my recent memory in which I played like a beast! I started out with a mouse slip when, after 1.d4 by my opponent, I accidently played 1...d6 instead of 1...d5. My ...
Here is a couple fun games I played at chess club recently: A very sharp game. I blundered a pawn, but thankfully my opponent missed that and made the horrible mistake of castling kindside into my vicious assualt. One of those strangly w...
I went to chess club again. Again it was another fun night - there's nothing better than coffee and chess! I played another complicated game. It was a Pirc and I saced a pawn in the opening for excellent compensation. I played kind of lazily at fi...
This weekend I played in a big team tournament. You might have seen my earlier blog posting where I said I felt like my team was counting on me. Well I did ok, I guess. I wanted to win all my games, but things didn't exactly go the way I wanted to...
Tommorrow I play in a big team tourney. Hopefully I do well. The thing about team tourneys though is that you are not alone: you have a team counting on you. This year especially I feel the burden more than ever. I am playing first board and am hu...
Once again the computer made me feel like a total idiot. I went to chess club for the first time in over three months and played an awesome game. I played an idea which I felt at the time was totally brillant but once again, as usual, the computer...
So last time we left off at the end of Day One of my last chess tourney. I had played quite horribly but managed to win one game against a 1800. Going into Day Two, I felt like I was in a must win situation. I fight for the whole point every gam...
