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.

Clawing my way outta the basement

After my brilliant 0-5 start on ICC, I’ve managed to dig my fingernails in and gain a bit of a hold for the time being. After sliding to a rating of 912 (912?!?!) I managed to win my last two games. My last game was against a 1305, and I totally pulled a checkmate outta my ass to win. My rating is now back in the 4-digit range – at 1099.

Here’s the game that I pulled outta my butt.

[Event "ICC 10 12"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2008.01.04"]
[Round "-"]
[White "PeteyDaddy"]
[Black "catamaran1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ICCResult "Black checkmated"]
[WhiteElo "993"]
[BlackElo "1305"]
[Opening "Réti opening"]
[ECO "A04"]
[NIC "QP.11"]
[Time "21:06:56"]
[TimeControl "600+12"]

1. Nf3 Nc6 2. g3 d5 3. Bg2 Bf5 4. O-O e6 5. d3 Bc5 6. Nbd2 Nf6 7. b3 O-O 8.
Bb2 h6 9. e4 dxe4 10. dxe4 Nxe4 11. Nxe4 Bxe4 12. Qxd8 Raxd8 13. c4 a6 14.
Rad1 Rxd1 15. Rxd1 Rd8 16. Rxd8+ Nxd8 17. Ne5 Bb1 18. a3 a5 19. Nd7 Bd6 20.
c5 Be7 21. b4 axb4 22. axb4 c6 23. Bd4 f6 24. Bf1 Kf7 25. h4 Be4 26. Nb6 e5
27. Be3 Ke6 28. Nc4 Kd5 29. Nd2 Ne6 30. Bc4# {Black checkmated} 1-0

I think I came out of the opening down a pawn, and so my opponent was quite happy to trade pieces with me for a bit. Yes, let’s get those pesky Rooks and Queens out of the way. He managed to lock his Bishop in, while mine were still fairly mobile, but he started jockeying for position. I cast about desperately for a plan. Since this game was 10 12 time controls, I felt rushed, so I started just trying not to do anything stupid.

Then he brought his King into play. I’m still not quite sure why – I guess he wanted to have an extra attacker to help push his pawns up the board, but with my knight and both bishops still on the board, he was asking for trouble.

After I made my 29th move, I saw it. Checkmate. It didn’t look like your standard mate, but nonetheless it was there, illuminated by a beam of warm sunshine.

He didn’t notice it… Checkmate. Whew!

I’ve still got 13 rated standard games to play so I can register for the Team 45 45 tourney as one of the Patzer Boyz. Gotta get busy!

2008 Championship on RHP

I woke up this morning to a slew of emails. The 2008 championship has begun on Red Hot Pawn, and so I have sixteen new games starting today, against players from all over the world. Woo hoo! Lovin’ it!

What a way to kick off my Year of Chess! I’ll write more on that in a day or two. We took the kids to Legoland today, so I’m too pooped to write.

ICC play = I suck

I improved to 0-5 for Standard rated games on ICC. This time, I lost against an 11-year-old, which is doing wonders for my ego.

I really don’t know what the hell my problem is. Actually, that’s not true – I know exactly what my problem is. When a game timer is involved, I tend to rush through things. This leads to blunders, which leads to five losses in a row.

I need to work on playing under time constraints. Even under longer time limits, I rush through my moves. When I know that someone is sitting there waiting, and the clock is sitting there ticking away, I feel pressured to move.

I’m going to try to play another game this afternoon or evening, and I will take as much time as necessary to make the right move. I may end up getting into time trouble, but I may not.

This losing has got to stop, that’s all I know.

I love looking at Red Hot Pawn on the Internet

I think it’s important to support good software. If there is a program or utility that I use and enjoy, and that is distributed as shareware or freeware with a donation link, I usually send the developers some money. Since I hope to one day have my own small software company, I like to support the little guys when I can.

Even though I’ve already subscribed to ICC and WCL, I subscribed to Red Hot Pawn yesterday. Even though they offer most of their services for free (you occasionally have to look at an advertisement), I think that their site is excellent and I like to encourage and support excellence.

I haven’t had as much time in the evenings lately, so I haven’t been on ICC too much. But I currently have several games going on RHP. I usually get in several moves per game each day, and I enjoy the lack of time controls. If there is a sticky position, I can stare at it for ten minutes and really analyze the position before I make a move. This seems to cut down on the number of blunders I make.

I also like that I can access my games from my iPhone. So if I’m waiting for my wife to try on shoes or something equally dull, I can whip out the phone and play some chess.

If anyone out there is on RHP, look me up and challenge me to a game or three. My username is PeteyD.

It’s really quite depressing

I’ve played four games since I joined ICC, and I’ve lost four games. Does ICC have such high-caliber players that I suck even more than I thought I did?

This is not good. I’m finding myself in time trouble in nearly all my games, which leads me to make hasty decisions. Perhaps I should try longer time controls and see how I do. I think I’ll try that tomorrow with some 20 10 time controls or 30 10 or something like that.

Tomorrow…. because I’m done with chess for tonight. I’m gonna go turn on the boob-tube and try to forget about my bad baaaaaad chess.

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.

OK – I’m on ICC. Bring it!

I signed up for a year of membership on ICC tonight. My handle is PeteyDaddy (duh), so if you see me online, feel free to challenge me to a game or three.

I’ll be putting Chessic, the Mac client for ICC through its paces to see if it will suffice for regular play. I hope so, or else I will need to dust off stinking PC and download the Dasher client. I’ve already tried the Java client – Jin, and while it’s pretty nice, it doesn’t seem to be logging my games so that I can review them later, which is a dealbreaker for me.

Enough blogging for now – I’m gonna jump on ICC.

ICC, here I come?

I am getting fed up with the severe lack of players on World Chess Live. I just logged in, and there were three non-computer players seeking games. Three. That’s just sad. For giggles, I logged in as a guest to ICC to see how many people were seeking games. Holy crap! The seek graph was lit up like friggin Vegas. And that was after I hid all the computer players.

So yeah, I’m thinking that I might switch to ICC. Everyone and their grandpa seems to be on there. And they do have a Mac client of sorts, which would mean that I won’t have to use my wife’s Windoze machine to play.

I’ve put a one year membership to ICC down on my holiday wishlist. Seeing as there isn’t much else on there (except for a new chess clock, since I still have one of those old cheapo wind-up ones), I’m hoping that I get it.

Sorry WCL. I’ll still drop in from time to time, but I’m running with the popular crowd now.

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?