T37

Registration for T37 opens on April 1st, for all us fools. Are the PatzerBoyz gonna bring our special brand of chess beatdown to the virtual boards of ICC?

I’m in if you are, guys.

Hot Streak

I am on a bit of a tear on RHP these days. The guy at work told me that he can’t seem to climb to the 1700 mark. Every time he gets close, he loses a game. Last time he neared the mark, he dropped two in a row to me, which caused his rated to plummet.

As of Monday, he was at 1696, so I challenged him to a game, telling him that I would be a spoiler again. And indeed, I was. Check out my mad skills with the King’s Indian:

[Event "Challenge"]
[Site "http://www.redhotpawn.com"]
[Date "2008.02.28"]
[EndDate "2008.03.06"]
[White "PeteyD"]
[Black "GuyFromWork"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. Ng1f3 d5 2. g3 c6 3. Bf1g2 Bc8f5 4. O-O e6 5. d3 Ng8f6 6. Nb1d2 Bf8d6
7. b3 Nb8d7 8. Bc1b2 O-O 9. e4 dxe4 10. dxe4 Nf6xe4 11. Nd2xe4 Bf5xe4
12. Qd1xd6 Nd7f6 13. Qd6xd8 Rf8xd8 14. c4 Rd8d3 15. Nf3e5 Rd3d2 16. Bb2c3 Be4xg2
17. Bc3xd2 Bg2xf1 18. Kg1xf1 Nf6e4 19. Bd2e3 f6 20. f3 1-0

He really wanted to prevent me from pushing my pawn to e4, so he loaded up his pieces around that square. I was able to maneuver equal forces into the area, so when I pushed e4 I knew I would come out of the resulting melee no worse off than even.

However, he played 10. .. Nxe4 instead of Bxe4, which set him up to trade a piece for a pawn. I clung to my two pawn advantage for dear life, and when he saw I wasn’t going to give up the advantage, he resigned.

I am just playing out of my mind lately. I’m sure I’ll be going on a massive losing streak sometime soon, but I’m obviously really enjoying the winning streak for now.

BTW – my RHP rating jumped to 1440 after this game.

Round one of RHP 2008 Championships heating up!

And I’m neck-and-neck with another player in the bracket. Only the player or players with the highest score move on to the next round, and it looks like I may have to win my last two games in order to do so. I think if I win both, I will at least be assured a tie for first in the bracket.

So my last two games are a bit more tense, but I currently hold slight advantages in both. I’ve been playing very good chess (for me) recently, and confidence is high. Sometimes, I think that’s half the battle.

In other news, the PatzerBoyz are wrapping up our first T4545 tournament, and we may actually go out with a win! Good luck to Chessaholic this weekend! No pressure, buddy.

If you’re interested in the tournament standings, you can view them here. Personally, I finished the tournament with 2 wins and 2 losses, and I’m pretty happy with how I played. One of my losses was pretty ugly, but it taught me a lesson I won’t soon forget, so it was probably worth it in the long run.

I look forward to getting the team together for a go at T37. There is talk of a U1400 section for the next tournament, which would be totally sweet. We were the perpetual underdogs (way, way under) in T36.