With my first round over, I'd like to share a few key points from some of the games. Before I do that, a word of appreciation to the other players in my group as there was no cheating and a decent level of play. Also, will put my group's table for...
As always, I'll do a final summary of my round. There were almost no easy wins here, and every game supplied lessons. This already makes this tournament a good time investment. There's the usual question of why should anyone care about my lesson...
15th of July f6 was planned here and I see no reason to deviate. If he waits, my next move is Re4, with the idea of a4. He’ll likely go back with Bc2, after which I’ll play Bd5 – going back to what was planned yesterday, only...
12th of July The day starts with delivering another mate to Trustcarefully. 5 games left. I made a couple of bad mistakes here. The only difference is that in this case, the opponent wasn’t at a high enough level to punish me. ...
7th of July Another result in the table: chess_lover inflicts another win on VFK. At least there’s going to be a proper battle for the 2nd place and I’m still planning on participating in it. I did get my tempo with the Rb2...
4th of July Hello Independence Day! The heat wave continues unabated and the advisory keeps getting extended. Yesterday, I couldn’t step out of the house. In the news, there are reports that Death Valley might hit a new global temperature r...
30th of June Yet another game where I did not explore my opponent’s options enough. He has tied up my main forces and is trying to pick up the kingside pawns. If I played h5 rather than g4 on the last move, it would’ve b...
28th of June Yesterday, I had the first shock of the tournament. The endgame against the leader is lost; I missed a basic trick on the 8th rank. Spent a bit of time consoling myself, but it’s not easy to get mental balance after investing s...
25th of June Starting with Dumblecore who continues making his moves: There must be some killing blow here. The forkable rooks, the knight on a5 and rook on d8 that invites a bishop fork, the bishop on g4 – all of that just begs for...
23rd of June Dumblecore keeps doing his moves against me. I’m playing with the idea of Nc7 to go after another pawn, but it seems too greedy. Back to d4 we go. This is my main game at the moment: I was planning Re7 here fo...
21st of June First quick think of the day: I saw last night a very interesting idea here – Bb5, which goes after the hamstrung white knight with a temporary pawn sacrifice. (I was planning the more mundane Be6 a few moves/days back)...
19th of June Making a few quick pre-planned moves this morning. A couple of games are still in the opening book, which makes things temporarily easier. There was a second draw in the group last night: First game to analyze today: I w...
16th of June Starting the day with this Giuoco Piano game: This is more or less standard stuff, with the exception that black played a5 rather than a6 and didn’t bother to get the bishop to a7. I suspect black’s idea is to att...
13th of June Andyh timed out in a few more games: In the white Draqlek game, I might have finally caught a small break: I was much more concerned about Nxg2 than Nxd3. The lines still look very similar to how I left them yesterday. ...
11th of June The day starts with a bunch of new results in the tournament: First game to analyze is the furiously-fast (like the nick) white: As I suspected, he is trying to hold the symmetry with Qe6+. If there was ever a need for p...
9th of June I got a couple of timeouts with Hortik. 19 games left. Artem lost another game, unsurprisingly. In both of my games with Hotrik we were still on move 5, so nothing to analyze there. By the way, he did not exit the tournament, mak...
7th of June No new results in the group. I start the day by making a few moves in the slower games. Have a tough choice in one of them on whether to stick with the Italian game or do another Ng5 swindle. My opponent plays at 2000+ level, so event...
I'm a casual player at about 2000 daily, and this is my 6th year at the annual daily tournament. I write this blog in a form of a diary. During the tournament I capture my thought processes and then put them in this blog as they are. After the...
This final installment in the series will summarize my overall journey in round 2. First, I have to thank my opponents. There was no cheating, unlike most other years, and some of them (especially Tautzies) gave a real fight that made for some in...
11th of April 2024 Made a couple of easy moves against Fabio early morning; I’ll try playing ASAP against him to get the 1-s in the table and clarify the situation. I’ll slow down the remaining Tautzies game a bit, since I’ve got a guaranteed draw...
9th of April 2024 Fabio still hasn’t moved in the black game; I begin to think that he simply did not see Be8, and is now coming to terms. Made a couple of moves during the night with Tautzies in both games, as they were pre-planned. A bit later,...
7th of April 2024 11-15: In the white Tautzies game, I’m coming to terms with the fact that it is going to be a draw. The black game looks winnable, but not sure that will be enough to make it out of the group. So, I’m also reconciling myself with...
5th of April 2024 Couple more moves happened in the Tautzies white game – where he went Rc8 which is yet again a leftfield move: Not so leftfield, as it puts up the spectre of e5. Immediate e5 or f5 were slightly better, but Rc8 is a dece...
2nd of April 2024 The day starts with mate being delivered to Vedant during the night. That zombie game had been feasting on a steady diet of pre-moves for a while, and finally has finished its inglorious existence. We’re getting to the showdown n...
31st of March 2024 07-30: No new results in my group. In the main game, I said yesterday “I trust my opponent’s ability to come up again with something that I haven’t even considered”, and so he did. Black played Bf6, which is another shining ...
