Marathon of Crap

OK, I just played a zillion games of chess, in order to obtain a non-provisional rating on ICC. I did this so that I could compete as one of the Patzer Boyz in the next Team 45 45 League tournament.

I played a lot of chess. More specifically, I played a lot of bad chess. My rating currently stands at 1090. Ugh. After plunging to 912 right outta the gates, I managed to win/draw a few to bring it up to 1181, before a slew of losses that brought me back down to my current state.

My last two games were the worst. In one of the games, I was dragging my Queen across the board to take the opposing Queen. However, my finger left the mouse button one square short. I tried to take back the obvious slip, but my opponent chomped down on my free Queen. I resigned, and immediately re-challenged, because I was pissed. For such an obvious error, I would have granted a takeback in such a situation, since it wasn’t a tourney game or anything. Oh well.

So I was out for blood in my next game, and I would have had it too, if I wasn’t such an idiot. Here’s the game:

[Event "ICC 15 5"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2008.01.14"]
[White "PeteyDaddy"]
[Black "LuckyGuyThatEarnsRatingPointsFromMyStupidity"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ICCResult "White resigns"]
[WhiteElo "1090"]
[BlackElo "1212"]
[Opening "Réti: King's Indian attack (Barcza system)"]
[ECO "A07"]

1. Nf3 d5 2. g3 Nf6 3. Bg2 c5 4. O-O e6 5. d3 Bd6 6. Nbd2 Nc6 7. e4 dxe4 8.
dxe4 O-O 9. b3 b6 10. Bb2 e5 11. Nc4 Nxe4 12. Nfxe5 Bxe5 13. Nxe5 Qf6 14.
Bxe4 Bb7 15. Bxc6 Bxc6 16. Rb1 Rad8 17. Nxc6 Rxd1 18. Rfxd1 Qxc6 {White
resigns} 0-1

At move 17, I had calculated the combination. I would take the Bishop at c6, then he would take my Queen, then I would take his Queen with my Bishop, and we would probably then trade Rooks. This would leave me up a Knight, a formidable advantage so late in the game.

So I had it calculated out, but what do I do on move 18? I take his Rook instead of his Queen. What. the. hell.

I think this clearly illustrates why I shouldn’t play quickly.

But I have my non-provisional rating. woo. hoo.

Yeah, I really shouldn’t play when I’m tired

Check out this magnificent display of suckitude. Here’s the position after like 16 moves. I’m Black:

It’s my move. So what move do I pull? Well, I actually stared at the board for about two minutes. My mind wandered a bit, and I roped it and pulled it back. And then I figured that I would like to start forming a battery on the d file. So yeah, I moved Rd7.

My opponent’s response? Why, he obliterated my queen with his knight, of course. The move was obvious.  

Duh. Big stinking duh.

My rating on ICC sucks hard right now. Like triple digits hard. Ouch. I’m gonna have to rest up and come back tomorrow.

Update: As I was about to log off, Chessaholic logged in, so we played a 15 0 game. It was a pretty close game, but I spent way too long, and ended up in clock trouble. I lost on time. Brain no go fast tonight. Petey tired. Petey go sleep.

First Tourney on WCL

I played in my first tournament on WCL tonight. They have a nightly 15 0 tourney at 7pm my time, which is right after the kiddos are tucked away in bed. It’s a four round Swiss, so the maximum time for the entire thing is about two hours.

Tonight there were eight players, including myself. The average rating was 1787, so I was definitely playing out of my league. I was looking forward to seeing how well I could stand up to the big guns. How long could I last?

Round one had me paired against someone rated 1815. I had black, and I managed to play my Pirc against an Austrian attack. I know what opening White played only because WCL tells me so after the fact (I love that feature).

I held my own into the middlegame. However, White had a pretty strong position, and by move 16 I had blundered away a rook. After that, it was downhill.

The second round had me paired against the tourney manager, who was only rated 1620 but played very strongly. I blundered early, and he pounced. I could never really recover after that.

Two lame-o’s disconnected after the first round, so in the third round, I had a friggin bye. Yeah, I got a point, but I’m not playing for the points. So basically I had a half-hour to kill while the other players battled it out. I watched some games for a bit, and I started this blog entry.

The fourth round saw me paired up against someone rated 2085. Yeah. Like I had a chance. I had White, and played my standard KIA. He mirrored my moves, which I was really glad to see, since such a passive defense should have given me the upper hand. And it would have, if I hadn’t been lulled into such a sense of complacency that I blundered away a rook. I was so into developing my position that I didn’t see it coming until after it happened. Yeah – total smackdown. Ouch.

Despite my horrid performance, I enjoyed playing in the tourney. I’m definitely planning to analyze these games, and enter another tournament in the near future.

BTW – I tried to paste the output from Chess Publisher into this entry, so that all of you could experience the titillating thrill of one of my games. But WordPress keeps removing the iframe tags. What gives? I even disabled the WYSIWYG editor to no avail. Anyone know how to get iframe tags to stick in a post?

The Odyssey begins…

So I thought I would kick off this blog with a “State of the Union”-type address. You know, so that all of you out there in the Big Blue Blogosphere know just what you are dealing with here. And as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will spare you the reading (for now).

The position pictured below occurred in a blitz game that I was playing on FICS last week. I’m playing white, and black just played Qf3. What move did I play in response?

Kxf3 you say? Well, if anyone else were sitting behind the white pieces, that would be an excellent guess! But I was the one sitting behind the white pieces, not someone that actually knows how to play the game of chess. You have to think more blundery.

For some reason, I had it in my head that the Queen was covered by another black piece. Clearly, this is not the case, but in my head at the time, that Queen was invulnerable. So I played the only move (in my feeble mind) that would get my King out of check. I played Kg1.

Every time I look at that picture, I wince. It’s little consolation to remember that I had less than a minute on my clock at the time. That’s really no excuse for a blunder this spectacular. I proceeded to lose the game, after my opponent picked his jaw up off the floor, ate my Rook, and continued to punish me for my error.

Ah well, live and learn. That’s what I tell myself to avoid bursting into tears.

I started this blog to chronicle my journey along the path to chess mastery. As you can see, I’ve got a long way to go. Stop laughing, sit back, relax, and enjoy. It should be quite a trip…