Holy Cyclops

Last night’s WCCC game was a pretty one, although I probably attacked prematurely.  I was paired against the club master’s 1500-rated nemesis—how it is that he gives Michael more trouble than anyone else in the club is a mystery, possibly partly (but only partly) explicable by the fact that Charles plays an opening system that no one else in the club plays.  It seems to be of his own devising, although I have recently seen something like it referred to as “the Hippo”—a sort of extended Hedgehog formation.  I had White against him, and I was able to sacrifice a knight for the attack early on:

1 e4 b6 2 d4 Bb7 3 Nc3 d6 4 Nf3 e6 5 Bc4 Nd7 6 O-O a6 7 Ng5 Qe7 8 f4 h6 9 Nxf7 Qxf7 10 f5 Ngf6 11 fxe6 Qg6 12 exd7+ Kxd7 13 d5 Re8 14 Bd3 Qf7 15 Qf3 Be7 16 Ne2 Rhf8 17 Qh3+ Kd8 18 Nd4 Bc8 19 Nc6 mate.

June was a really bad month for me, chesswise.  I lost to two players rated in the 1400s; at the quads, I offered a draw in an elementarily won position and, in a winning position, I hallucinated an undefended piece, which I proceeded to start to capture with my queen before realizing my mistake and resigning; I went 1/2-2 1/2 at the quads and was 0-3 in the club’s Morphy Swiss before, finally, winning last week.  And this week—another win. 

Oddly, both wins have come out of the opening.  Last week’s game, Johnson-Jin, began 1 e4 c6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Nf3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Bg4 (4…Bf5, as in the Classical Variation, gives White a big advantage after 5 Ng3 Bg6 6 h4 h6 7 Ne5 Bh7 8 Qh5 g6 9 Bc4 e6 10 Qe2) 5 Bc4 Nf6? (5…e6 was necessary) 6 Ne5!  My opponent then thought for half an hour before the game continued 6…Qd4 7 Bxf7+ Kd8 8 Nxg4 Qxe4+ 9 Ne3 (Black has limited her losses to a pawn and the loss of her castling privilege) Nbd7 10 d3 Qd4 11 Bd2 (I don’t have Fritz; one might want to analyze the variations following 11…Qxb2 12 Rb1 and 13 Rxb7 Nb6, with the threat of …Kc8, trapping the White rook; at the time, I trusted that she wouldn’t take on b2) Ne5 12 Bc3 Qf4 13 Be6 Kc7 14 Qe2 (threatening Nd5+ and Bxe5+, winning the Black queen) Ng6 (now both king bishop and king rook are locked out of play) 15 g3 Qd6 16 Nc4 Qc5 17 O-O-O Nd7 (I expected 17…Nd5, allowing 18 Be5+ Kd8 [18…Nxe5 19 Qxe5+ Kd8 20 Ne3 wins a pawn for White]) 18 f4 Rd8 19 f5 Black resigns.

This week’s game, Park-Johnson, also featured an early win of material:  1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 Nf3 g6 4 Nc3 Bg7 5 e4 cxd4 6 Nxd4 Nc6 7 Bf4 d6 8 h3? Nxd4 9 Qxd4 e5, forking bishop and queen.  Play continued 10 Bxe5 dxe5 11 Qxd8+ (I expected 11 Qxe5+) Kxd8 12 Rd1+ Ke7 13 c5 Be6 14 b3 Rhd8 15 Ra1 Rac8 16 b4 Rd4 17 a3 a6 18 f3 Bh6 19 Kf2 Rd2+ 20 Be2 Rc2 21 Na4 Rd8 22 Rad1 Rxd1 23 Rxd1 Bc4 24 Nb6? Rxe2+ 25 Kg1 Be3+ 26 Kh1 Bb5 27 Nc8+ Kf8 28 Na7 Ba4 29 Rb1 Bc2 30 Ra1 Nxe4 31 fxe4 Bxe4 32 Rg1 Bxg1 33 Kxg1 Rxg2+ 34 Kf1 Ra2 White resigns

I can’t help being pleased with my opening play in these two games—in particular, with my noticing the wins of material.  We’ll see how I do at the quads next weekend—not this weekend, as the club doesn’t want to compete with the World Open and therefore delays its July quads to the second Saturday of the month.  I managed to drop seventy-one rating points, from 1838 to 1767, in the course of seven games (including the first of the two wins).  We’ll see how quickly I can get back to 1800—and we’ll also see if I’m ever able to reach 1900!

Thursday night, as usual, was my night for going to chess club.  I played a slightly weaker player, but, with Black, I got a really bad position out of the opening.  He should probably have crushed me.  But I defended, and he missed his best moves, and I wound up a piece and three pawns ahead in material before doing something I only rarely do these days:  Blundered away a piece.  It was in time pressure, so I have some small excuse, but still—leaving a knight where it can be taken for nothing is not good.

But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good, and after blundering away the piece, I was still up three pawns, with a killer central passed pawn.  Once I got through time pressure, the win was easy.

Back on my Web site, I’ve been adding color to my chess diagrams.  (I’ve also fixed a little bad analysis in my Playing for the Endgame “little lesson.”)  It looks great!  And I discovered that I can print out those diagrams after all—I had thought that although the diagrams displayed well, the bits of HTML code that call the program that makes them display as diagrams would just show up as gibberish when I printed the page.  But no—they print beautifully.  (But my printer needs new cartridges, both color and black-and-white, and my sister’s printer now needs a new black-and-white cartridge, so I’m temporarily not printing anything—an inconvenience, since I wrote a poem for tonight’s “poetry slam” that I’m now going to have to copy by hand in order to take with me.)

My nephews decided that they wanted to play a little baseball today, so we went out and played with a plastic ball and plastic bats.  One of them had drawn home plate and three other bases, along with baselines and a pitching rubber, on the driveway, in chalk.  I pitched what was essentially batting practice to them, but when they hit fair balls they ran around the bases.  They seem to really enjoy it.

I don’t think I reported on last Thursday night’s game at the West Chester Chess Club.  I played a boy, P.D.—perhaps ten years old—and won, but I had a chess hallucination and made the win more difficult than it should have been.  I had White, and the game began 1 e4 c5 2 Nc3 e6 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 d4 cxd4 5 Nxd4 Bb4  (I wasn’t really familiar with this variation, but the way I handled it worked out well.)  6 Qd3 Ne5 7 Qg3 Ng6 8 Nb5 d6  (I was expecting 8 … e5, after which might have followed 9 Bg5 Nf6 10 O-O-O) 9 a3 Bxc3+ (9 … Ba5 Nxd6+; 9 … Bc5 10 b4 Bb6 11 Nxd6+) 10 Qxc3 Kf8 11 Be3 a6 12 Nxd6 Qf6 (12 … Qxd6 Bc5) 13 Qc5 N8e7 14 O-O-O Ne5 (It’s here that I hallucinated.  I thought I could play 15 Nxc8 Rxc8 16 Bg5 Qg6 [16 … Rxc5 Rd8#] 17 Qxc8+ Nxc8 18 Rd8#, winning brilliantly.  Unfortunately, the e5-knight now blocks my queen’s coverage of the square g5.)  15 Nxc8 (I should just have played Bd4, winning the e5-knight) Rxc8 16 Qc7 g5 (A good response.) 17 Rd8+ Rxd8 18 Qxd8+ Kg7 19 Qd2 (I wanted to keep pressure on him and not let him attack my king along the c-file.) h6 20 Be2 N7c6 21 Rf1 Rd8 22 Qc3 Ng6 (I thought his letting me trade queens was a mistake, since I could win the pawn-up, two-bishops-for-two-knights ending; I thought he needed to try to generate pressure against my king) 23 Qxf6+ Kxf6 24 Rd1 Rxd1+ 25 Kxd1 e5 26 c3 (taking away Nd4) Nf4 27 Bf1 (preserving the two bishops; a question I’ll try to remember to ask the club master is whether I should have done so or whether I should have played 27 Bxf4, reducing the number of pieces on the board) Ke7 28 Bc5+ Kd7 29 g3 Ne6 30 Be3 Ke7 31 Kc2 Kf6 32 Kd3 Kg6 33 a4 Ne7 34 b4 f5 35 exf5+ Kxf5 36 Bg2 Nd8 37 Bc5 Nec6 38 Bb6 h5? (permitting me to win a piece) 39 b5 axb5 40 axb5 Nf7 41 bxc6 bxc6 42 Bxc6 Kg4 43 Bd7+ Kf3 44 Be8 Nd6 45 Bxh5+ Kg2 46 Bc7 e4+ 47 Ke3 Nc4+ 48 Kxe4 Kxf2 49 h4 Black resigns.  So, I thought I would win brilliantly, and then had to grind it out.  15 Bd4 would have been much better than 15 Nxc8 was!

I don’t know what causes chess hallucinations.  I’ve miscalculated combinations by looking at a bishop sacrifice and then, later in the combination, foreseeing myself using that same bishop.  This time, I missed that his e5-knight blocked my queen’s coverage of g5—I had been eyeing Bg5 for a while, and didn’t notice that it was impossible.  It would have been really lovely had it worked!

Meanwhile, I’ve been adding to my Web site ( www.holycyclops.com ).  I now have five “little lessons” on my site—Playing for the Endgame, Building Walls, Tempo Moves, Outflanking, and Entombed Pieces.  And I’ve just learned how to make the squares different colors!  Maybe I’ll go back and do a little tinkering with diagrams. 

Now that I have the use of ChessImager (see previous post), I’ve been able to put a few “little lessons” in the chess section of my Web site with diagrams.  I have sections on playing for the endgame, on building walls, and on tempo moves, and a couple of other sections are planned.  I’m delighted!

I played Black against the club master last night, and although I lost, I’m happy, overall, with the game I played.  I played a Caro-Kann, he played his 1 e4 c6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Qf3 line–the one that caught me off-guard once before when we played–and I completely neutralized his advantage.  We wound up in an endgame with two bishops each and pawns on both sides of the board in a nearly symmetrical position, but somehow he managed to win.  I suppose that’s why he’s a master.  Of course, I missed a couple of his moves, including the one that won a pawn for him.

Tomorrow, I play in the First Saturday of the Month quads. 

At last, I can put chess diagrams on my Web site!  Steve Eddins, bless him, has created a little snippet of HTML code that you can put into a program to make a chess diagram show up.  It’s available at http://www.eddins.net/steve/chess/chessimager.  I’ve already used it to put several diagrams in the Chess section of my Web site (http://www.holycyclops.com).  Steve deserves an award.