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.