Didn't realize 2+2 was so big on chess.. Kind of feel motivated to play again

Yikes. First three rounds of a weekend swiss today. 0 wins. 1 draw. 2 losses. Go into a side blitz event. 3 wins. 9 losses. 1 draw. Confidence kind of shattered a bit, especially considering the main tournament round 1 game I was up an exchange AND my opponent had doubled isolated pawns in an endgame. It wasn't good, and I just got home with round 4 in 8 hours. It's probably best to just not show up with such little confidence and little sleep and instead enjoy a sunday off of work that i never get to take off.

I feel like I was properly prepared. I didn't need to worry about the openings, because I played against the Latvian (which I never would have studied thoroughly) and some sort of Sicilian that looked like a Najdorf as white. As black, I played against 1. e3. It was, instead, rook endgames. Well, let's take the -25 rating points (hopefully) and get back to the drawing board

You were really asking for it by joining the side event Analyse what went wrong in the games, try to fix the leaks, be stronger next time

The side event was after all of the rounds yesterday, so it didn't affect the play in the first 3 rounds. I figured I'd just play in it since I was already off to a bad start, so I might as well get in a lot of quick rated games and call it a night. I'm going to post three games up here later today and put them into Fritz to see where I went wrong. But hey, we all just have bad tournaments.

Brag: I won a game against an IM on chess.com.

Beat: He resigned in a position that was worse, but far from being resignable. So I won the point, but I am not really happy about it. Another beat: In our second game he is about to mate me...

Variance: He is rated more than 400 points better than me in real life, but has actually a worse rating on chess.com. Probably by resigning games like this.

http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=62965596

Variance: I tested the 2+2 exchange slav antidote (6. ...Ne4) in a serious tournament game.

Beat: ended up in a bad endgame after going wrong in self-imposed complications, but managed to draw.

PGN or it didn't happen:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=76000

I recreated it from memory, so no guarantee for the correct move order.

ND, interesting game. I don't think the endgame was too bad. Granted, I don't think black had any real chances to do anything other than draw, but I don't think white had much there either. It looks like you did a good job all game of containing white.

On a related note, I just looked over an exchange Slav where Morozevich was black, and he played the interesting 1.d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3.cxd5 cxd5 4.Nc3 e5. This wasn't possible through the move order in ND's game, but it looks like it promises some interesting play. The game is immediately imbalanced and surely not what an exchange Slav player is looking for. I hope to face this move order so I can give it a shot. Here's the Morozevich game.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1628426

Yeah I got it, meant that you were doomed to perform poorly in the side event after being out of form the whole day

Ivanchuk does a one hour master class at Gibraltar 2013. Click on the top link in the list. http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com/video/

I posted a month back or so that I'd started playing really dumb openings 1. d3 2. e3 3. Ne2 4. Nd2 / etc type stuff and was crushing. I actually beat my lifetime best pretty easily and beat the rating I was hovering around by over a 100 points also pretty easily. I was in the top 50 human blitz ratings on FICS. Then an interesting thing happened. A massive slump.

So cutting to the chase I then started playing normal openings, though often lines I'd never played before and suddenly my rating started skyrocketing again. I'm starting to realize it's not the opening but my interest in the game. Playing an unknown position I'm looking at every nook and cranny with fresh eyes. But once I play a certain line for a while it starts to become boring. Instead of focusing I start auto-botting.

This led me to start thinking about the top players in chess. Practically all of them have a very wide repertoire. The lines where their repertoire is limited often have a massive variety of game types, like the Najdorf Sicilian. While a large part of that is certainly avoiding preparation/predictability, I wonder how much of it is also keeping the game interesting for themselves. Like the Aronian-Anand game showed or basically any game of Carlsen's a lot of the new generation's opening prep isn't especially comprehensive where it's not generally necessary (eg - Aronian is arguably the foremost expert on the Marshall gambit in the Ruy, but playing that line without opening prep is tantamount to suicide) and sometimes they pay for it, yet obviously they're doing something very right.

Just something I'm considering now. I've always been a firm believer in playing one opening and knowing it well, yet perhaps there is more to having a very wide repertoire than making it more difficult to prepare against.

Yes I also have to do this constantly or I get bored and play badly. It sometimes makes me jealous for the guys who can keep playing the same opening for years (usually after a loss obviously).

DiR, I definitely think there's some truth to what you posted. It's like the old saying, "to get better at chess you have to love it". Same thing is true in a more narrow sense of playing an individual game. If you're playing a position you've played hundreds of times before and are bored with it, you're not likely going to be putting in the effort and won't get the results. I think it's much better to focus in a position that you love as opposed to auto-piloting one you think you know.

Something I always forget, but need to keep in mind, is that the opponent will likely be as unprepared as we are in an unknown line. Whenever I play a line I don't know, I get worried and assume I'm at a disadvantage. But I've got to remember they're likely in the same boat, they probably don't know it either. The only time you'll get burned is if you happen to play into something they know really well. But the odds are small, and if that happens, oh well gg move on.

One of the big things to remember about how an opponent will react against an unknown line is they will often shy away from complications unless they look clearly favourable, preferring instead to play "safe" moves.

It is an interesting arguement about whether it's better to specialise in one particular opening or vary your repertoire. I can't remember who it was but a GM who knew the Marshall Gambit inside out complained that the only time he got to play it he was up against some home prepared variation - everyone else just side-stepped it!

Today I had the pleasure to play the Bxh7+ sacrifice in my league game. I had played the opening inaccurately and landed in a slightly worse position, when my opponent played 15..Sc6-a5?! 16. Bc4-d3 a7-a6??:



r4rk1/1bq1bppp/pp2p3/n3P3/3N1B2/2PB4/P3QPPP/R2R2K1 w - - 0 17

Suddenly Black is totally lost. Houdini takes a while to see it, but if you click into the lines the evaluation jumps quickly.

17. Bxh7+ Kxh7 18. Qh5+ Kg8 19. Rd3.

Now Black has two tempos to organize a defense to Rh3 and Qh7/h8# but he doesn't succeed. Everything is losing.

In the game he tried 19..Bd5 20. Rh3 f5 21. exf6 Qxf4 22. Qh7+ Kf7 23. Qxg7+ Ke8 24. Qxe7#. (22. f7+ would have been a move quicker.)

Other tries:
a) 19..f5 20. Rh3 (Not 20. Nxe6 Qc6 21. Qg6 Rf7 22. Rh3 Qxg2+ 23. Qxg2 Bxg2 24. Kxg2 and Black can still play a worse endgame.) 20..Bd5 21. Qh7+ Kf7 22. Rg3 Rg8 23. Nxf5! exf5 24. Qg6+ Kf8 25. e6 +-
b) 19..Bc5 20. Rh3 f5 21. exf6 Qxf4 22. f7+! with mate.
c) 19..Qc8 (or Qc4) 20. Rh3 f5 21. Qh7+ Kf7 22. Rg3 Rg8 23. Qg6+ Kf8 24. Nxe6+ +-
d) 19..Bxg2 20. Rg3 and now the additional threat Rxg7+ decides. +-
e) 19..g6 20. Qh6 achieves nothing for Black.

Very cool, Ajezz. Opportunities for the Greek gift are few and far between. Thanks for posting black's various replies as well, I enjoyed the analysis.

Played in a G/90'+30" increment tournament this weekend. I took a bye in round 5 (Super Bowl this evening), but scored 2.5/4 in rounds I participated. Beat an 1800 and 1600, lost to a 2462, and drew a 2235. All in all not a bad weekend.

Beat: I took a draw an ending which was unclear to me at the time but turned out to be winning for me. Hate that feeling.

Play against the french more!

I think a good rule of thumb is that if a player 200+ points above you offers a draw in a rated game, refuse it - you're winning.

You're absolutely right. What's frustrating is I gave this same advice to someone not long ago and didn't follow it today. During the game, a couple of thoughts went through my head.

1) We were both low on time in what looked like an unclear position to me, and I couldn't figure the position out. I studied the position for a while until the clock got as low as possible, then accepted his offer.

2) On the psychological side, I had been worse for the majority of the game, so when the draw offer came, I was more inclined to take it. Once I got a clear head and looked at the game at home, it looked much better to me than I thought. Frustrating.

I really need to go back to the thread to see whether I offered this as a good face-saving measure when accepting draws in those situations :-).

Being about to turn this around quickly is important, but hard.

Honestly, I don't think this is that bad in a lot of situations. Where one can play on easily, almost risk free, one should. Sometimes that's just not as easy. Given that you don't like losing games, a draw there feels OK to me.

Everyone has difference tolerances in final positions. It's more important to just realize that the draw offer has this information: my opponent thinks he has no winning chances, and is probably lost.

(Sometimes he is wrong...not everyone plays with a clear head after throwing away a promising position, either.)

You make a great point. This wasn't one of those positions where I was on the sunny side of a draw, and could play risk free with some cat and mouse games hoping he makes a mistake. At the time the position was unclear to me (and my opponent, we talked a bit after the game), so I was satisfied with the draw. Let me see if I can post the final position.

Here is the final position, white to play.



We repeated the position with 1.Rg4 Ne5 2.Rh4 Nf3 and my opponent offered the draw.

During the game, the line I looked at started with 1.Rc4, trying to harvest black's weak pawns on the queenside. What concerned me, and made me take the draw, is I felt like I couldn't give up the g5 pawn because then black would have connected passers supported by the knight and king. With no white pawns standing in the way, I thought the pawns would roll too quickly. White has a free hand on the queenside, but the problem is white has to spend several moves taking virtually all of the black pawns to create a passer there. It's tempo consuming. At the time, my intuition told me the black pawns would advance too quickly, so I accepted the draw. It was only after I got home with Houdini that I found that white can queen faster than black.

Tex: View the fact that he offered a draw as the achievement. Accepting changes nothing.

Brag: Won my first game against the french.

Beat: My book informed me afterwards that after 1. d4 e6 2. e4 d5 3. Nd2 Be7 4. Ngf3 Nd7 5. Bd3 dxe4 6. Nxe4 Nf6 7. Qe2 Nxe4 8. Bxe4 Nf6?, i missed Bxb7.

The best way to think about it.

But in this case, you do need to trust (or know) that giving up the g5 pawn is safe...