Cool, thanks again! I am already starting to poke around at some of Dan's stuff over at ICC.

Let me ask you: What are your thoughts on Silman?

Been drilling tactics over on ChessTempo, going over master games, and playing 60/5's over on Chess.com for the past few days. I'm starting to get much better tactical board vision and am recognizing patterns faster in games.

Most recent win from last night. 60/5 time controls. Chess.com rating up to 1301.

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1007068360

The tournament down in NJ for the 27th has been cancelled. I have, instead, found two other options for the 28th and the 3rd (January) that I'm contemplating right now. In addition, I have found a swiss style tournament that sets up every Wednesday night just fifteen minutes from my front door. Between the regular tournaments down in Jersey, and the local club by me, I should start getting in the kind of OTB rated volume I'm going to need. In addition to this, I plan on registering at the Marshall club in Manhattan asap and playing there once or twice a month, too.

Feeling happy with my game and happy with my decision to commit to the game. I'm just getting more and more consumed by the game and that's great because I want to get so proficient with these patterns that I can do them in my sleep.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday! I spent the time with family and of course, playing a ton of chess. Things are coming together nicely, too.

I'm really, really happy I got this involved in the game. I'm enjoying it immensely. Since I've last posted, I have been spending most of my time on ChessTempo and FICS. FICS on BabasChess is just an amazing little client. If you haven't checked it out yet and you love chess - I highly recommend that you do. I don't know what 2p2's policies are and if they would be ok with my posting the link, so I won't but if you do a Google search on the subject, you'll find plenty. Basically, this client and the FICS do just about everything (and more) that a subscription to both ICC and Chess.com do. I would know, I have both. Again, I don't want to post a novel about just this but I really do suggest that anyone who has the time and the interest take a look.

As for my chess progress - My board vision and strategical understanding is developing nicely. I am almost exclusively playing people rated much higher than me and with much more experience than me in an effort to fast track progress that I wouldn't have a chance to otherwise. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Here is my most recent game and the best game that I've played yet:

http://www.ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/sho...63;action=show

I definitely missed some opportunities to close the game out sooner and I definitely have TONS of work to do in the grand scheme, but I think this game highlights my progress so far quite well. This was against a 1500 non provisional rated player on FICS. If you look at the clock during the replay, I used it pretty well. I took all of my time and was bouncing around 1 minute for the last almost dozen moves or so. I'm learning not to overextend my pieces too early and to remain centralized while developing a plan of attack. Most opponents I'm playing are extremely aggressive out of the opening so I generally plan on developing faster, castling sooner, and grabbing the center asap. Once I've accomplished this, I generate a counter attack aimed directly at the enemy king and attempt to both complicate or simplify the position as is appropriate.

I'm playing with a +10 or +15 bonus increment at this point. The USCF's 5 second delay is just mindless and I'm far fonder of the internet and FIDE's usage of the accumulation increment. Both of my chess clocks do increment and delay, and obviously it can be set up any way online, so I always have the freedom to do either. In general though, my blitz games have basically become 45/15's, with a lot of 60/15's sprinkled on top. I'm preparing for the USCF's local games here where 35/5 and 40/5 time controls are common, while also playing long chess to prepare me for the 45/45's and 90/30's online, as well as primarily the legitimate 120/5 USCF games and FIDE 3+ hour time controls.

I'm working on the Brilliancies book right now, My System, reviewing opening lines and variations based on the games I'm playing, and doing tons of tactics. I'm seeing the game entirely differently than even a week ago and the volume + study is starting to yield some nice results.

As said, I hope everyone's holiday was fantastic and I'll be keeping you guys up to date on my progress as I continue to prepare to start playing rated OTB games next week.

Silman's books are great. Make sure to get the 4th edition of How to Reassess Your Chess. His endgame manual is very good too.

When you're up a piece for nothing, you can just trade pieces (but not pawns, if you can help it) into a trivially winning endgame (king + piece + pawns vs. king + pawns). By getting into unnecessary complications you'll cost yourself lots of points.

18.-Qh5 in the diagram essentially forces a queen trade. White's attempts to evade it are hopeless: with 19. Qe3 White loses material or gets mated after 19.-Ng4, and 19. Qg2 Bh3 20. Qh1 Bg4 21. Re1 Bf3 22. Be2 Bxh1 23. Bxh5 Nxh5 24. Kxh1* leads to more liquidation (or 19. Qh1 Bg4 and likewise). Not that you had to spot those variations -- the philosophy is what counts. The engine analysis isn't very helpful in this position.


*This line is so cute.

Winning Chess Tactics is far more important than Winning Chess Brilliancies to your development.

nice thread!

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=999430912

i'm looking at this game, here's some thoughts. bear in mind i'm a 1400-1500 5min blitz guy who never plays slower, hasn't improved in years, and who you'll probably surpass extremely quickly

so, not all of this will be sound, and i'm looking quickly, but:

8. qd5 forces ..qe7 to defend the mate threat, and allows you to then peel over for qh5+ and further weaken his pawn structure

10. Nd5 - you'll often hear 'don't move the same piece twice' in openings as a general rule. i'm not sure what this move is achieving. i prefer Qg3, freeing up your bishop, threatening g7, he can't castle or play Rg8 because of Bxh6. i guess he defends with Qe7, you can then take the knight and double his pawns then plant your A rook on the D file threatening d6 twice. it's looking rather bad for him already at this point.

12. here you miss a chance to take with the pawn giving discovered check, i assume you saw this. he then drops back with the knight, you can double, on that file, but it's probably not working out in the end after the king tucks in to f7. so using the bishop as you did is probably best.

17 i'd use the other rook to retain more flexibility

21 nice

ending is ok, i'd probably double the rooks when you had the option and start to get your king across to the centre of the board, but he obviously just gave it all away

nj

Props to Warcrazy for his dedication to the game!

Check out my website for some extra stuff for BabasChess, since you mentioned you really like it. I've edited a whole bunch of pieces to work with it, and collected board graphics and sounds, etc. for it.

http://gorgonian.******.com (Downloads section)

Good luck. Following along.

I would imagine so in all reality ...although I was trying to make smart purchases and I already have the Gold sub to ChessTempo so I really don't have any shortage of tactics work. That said - I plan on buying Tactics soon. I really like the way Seirawan teaches and I am enjoying Brilliancies a lot.

Thank you very much!

Well, since you guys hadn't heard from me for a week or so I'm sure some of you wondered "Was that it?" - NO! I've been beyond busy with play and study since the last time I've posted.

Online and offline I've started playing much, much better. I specifically am picking games over and over that I know I should lose. I win about 30%. I keep feeling encouraged after each loss to look and see that the guy has like 15,000 games played online going back to 2002.

I've been spending almost all of my time on ICC, FICS, and ChessTempo. I have been working through the video compendium to My System and have actually gone ahead and ordered both:

http://www.uscfsales.com/my-system.html

and

http://www.uscfsales.com/chess-praxis.html

They should be here any day. I love My System so far and it is drastically increasing my understanding of positional chess and as a result, is bolstering my tactical ability as well.

As said, I play on ICC and FICS. Almost entirely on ICC now because it is, by far, the toughest competition I can find online. I had been winning on Chess.com and FICS a lot lately (Up to 1336 on FICS) so I wanted to spend yesterday getting my ass handed to me. ICC was happy to step up to the plate and perform that task! I went 1-8 but we're talking games with 50+ moves. I'm playing 45/45's regularly now, and also a lot of 25/25's, 15/12's, 30/30's, and I've begun playing the 15 minute pool over on ICC a ton to work on time management and pattern recognition. The plan of rapid + long chess, along with extensive review, is teaching me a ton of lessons in a short period of time.

Each day I become more and more determined and obsessed with the game. I love it. This is exactly the kind of mental challenge I needed at this point in life. I can see how difficult this is going to be and how many years of hard work this is going to take and all I can say is, bring it on! I'm eagerly looking forward to each and every game.

If you guys check out my profile up on Chess.com, I've been posting a lot of my games lately. I'll have to dig into this forum here to see how I can post them here, as well. In the meantime, I'll come back to this thread later and post a game or two from yesterday. Probably the 45/45 that I lost after 2.5 hours yesterday as this is the game that I stand the most to learn from.

As for openings - I have settled in nicely with responding to 1. d4 with the QGD and the Grunfeld. When they open 1. e4, I e5 or queen's knight into the Nimzowitsch. With the white pieces, I'm experimenting with the Spanish, The Scotch, and the Italian games but I always open 1. e4 at this point and I like the kind of games I'm getting a lot. Of course, my long term plan is to learn as much about both opening systems as possible. I don't want to leave anything on the table when it comes to knowledge and theory.

I see a couple of you have written out some alternate line suggestions for me pertaining to a few of the games I've linked to this thread. I appreciate these and believe me - Even when I don't respond back right away, I open up Dasher and Stockfish and run the variations out. I'm going to make a point of becoming even more talkative when it comes to variations and possibilities as I realize creativity and trial and error are huge keys to growth here.

It's snowing like crazy out where I am and I just got back from running a few quick errands. I'm settling in to play for the rest of the day here and looking forward to it. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the thread thus far and I will absolutely be around!

Yeah we've been talking on FICS a bit. Thanks for the links to the downloads. Indeed, you know I really like Babaschess. I like Dasher, too. I tried out the Diamond on Chess.com but I doubt I'll be renewing it as I literally never use any of the diamond features. With ICC, FICS, and ChessTempo, I have more than I could need and am surrounded by better, more experienced competition.

Liquidation and simplification - Two gentleman I've made friends with lately. I actually just got into a situation like this in a 15 minute yesterday where my opponent was the one in time trouble. I simply simplified the endgame and watched him waste his time exchanging pieces to no avail.

Since I'm logged in here so often: BoardOfWar is my ICC handle. As said, I think FICS and Babaschess are fantastic, too but I spend almost all of my time on ICC with their videos, watching master class + players play, and analyzing games with Stockfish. Oh, and of course...playing a little bit of chess myself.

The USCF also just partnered with ICC recently and is now holding online rated blitz tournaments there every Monday night at 7pm. I never really wanted to spread my playing out to several different places online so ...consider ICC my home. And yeah, ChessFM is just amazing. Miles ahead of the Chess.com videos and live coverage of events.

Imo, having enough WIM for 7+ years is going to be the biggest issue. I'd guess you're a dog to actually enjoy chess enough to go after it hard enough. If you enjoy chess that much, you would have played a bunch more earlier in life.

I'd favor any random person who has barely played chess (or hasn't) at age 30 to become 2200+ USCF by age 40 if proper motivation was applied (e.g. someone they love would die or they'd get $10 million or something). I have no idea where to put the % chance of it, though. I'd like to think (not being a master myself at all) a very high % of people simply couldn't do it, but I think that is simply wishful thinking.

Very few people have the mental fortitude or slightly insane mental makeup to follow-through on a project like this unless they absolutely love chess (and somehow didn't realize they loved it for almost 30 years of their life).

Oh, also, you can't just love chess for this, you have to love beating people and raising your rating. I do think a lot of players love chess but basically gave up trying to get better at actually playing it simply b/c that aspect of it wasn't fun for them. That's the part I liked the most but also why I don't play chess and can't ever seem to get myself back into it. I know I will be a depressed mess unless I get better and I know that won't be trivially easy like it was when I was weaker/younger.

Well, first I just want to say to everyone that I'm going to start putting more work into this blog here on 2p2. I have spent a lot of time posting games for analysis and asking general questions on Chess.com but I'm transitioning more to doing that here and on a couple of other forums online. I'm looking for groups of people who take the game seriously and that isn't always what one will find over on Chess.com.

Where I have been playing, 99% of my games, is ICC. I've only fallen further in love with that place and become pretty addicted to it. I have started using Blitzin exclusively and learned a ton of commands for it and I just couldn't imagine playing online chess any other way at this point. The competition is fierce on there and I think the auto pairing pools are fantastic.

This also leads into a few new developments, too: I have played my first OTB USCF rated games and I have started incorporating blitz into my training regime with fantastic results thus far. My first two OTB rated games were losses. They were also both against 1500+ players and both went 35+ moves. I learned a lot from both losses. First loss was a result of not castling until move 18 and feeling pretty stupid about that and the second loss was just a matter of a better player with a lot of experience. He attacked my 1. e4 opening with the Latvian Gambit and I handled it wrong at the time. I wound up totally cramped on my queenside and couldn't respond to his kingside attack. Checkmate on move 36.

As for blitz - I stopped hanging pieces a while ago already. I never do it other than now and then in blitz chess but in standard, it's very rare. That I reached that point, and everyone at the club and online was doing it, I decided to start playing some 5/0 blitz on ICC. It's worked out very, very well. As a result of playing blitz I have developed a whole new (and better) opening repertoire, move much faster during games, and have progressed tactically to the extent that people think it's laughable. In the past week, I have just started winning a lot of games I would have previously lost.

I open 1. e4 with the white pieces 100% of the time. I ideally looked to go into the Scotch. I like to avoid going into the Spanish right now for a few reasons and I like the Scotch better than the Italian. I'm toying around with the idea of using the Vienna Game as a surprise opening in blitz and rapid but for now, I'm working on the Scotch Game. With the black pieces, 9/10 times I defend against 1. e4 with the French defense. It's become my staple defense and what I used in my first OTB game. Vs. 1. d4 I play the Accelerated Semi Slav or the QGD, with a transposition possible of course. My only exceptions to this is that sometimes I'll just respond to 1. e4 with e5 and play the open game. Other than this, though ...this is my opening repertoire at the time and what I've settled into playing and studying.

My standard rating has crossed 1200 on ICC now while my 3-minute and 5-minute auto pairing pool ratings are over 900. My 15-minute auto pairing rating is 1188. All of these ratings have started climbing in the last 3-5 days and I fully expect these to really start moving up now. I haven't played on other sites in weeks (other than a few games on ChessCube) but my ratings are clearly approaching 1500+ in live standard there. On Chesscube, my long rating is already ~1450. As for ChessCube - it's my web based backup. When I feel like web based chess, I play there at this point. I find the competition to be better than Chess.com's and I like their preset pools, like the 25+10 rapid. It's only $6/mo. for the VIP there and with ICC, I don't need Chess.com's Diamond.

Now, getting to the post I've quoted: Without writing a novel about my personal life at this time, I will just say that it's certainly been a unique journey thus far and I wouldn't say that I found chess only recently but simply just returned to it when I had an opportunity to. I learned the moves by myself, out of a book, at 4. I started a chess club with my Kindergarten principle teacher. Shortly thereafter, life took a couple of bad turns and I never really got much of a minute to breath and turn my sites back on who I really was and what my true interests were until somewhat recently in life. The day I started playing chess online and thought back to how much I liked it when I was a kid, was the day I started feeling like I truly found the game I wanted to play for the rest of my days. I'm beyond thrilled that I've come back to it. Or should I say, I'm thrilled that it's found me again.

As said, I'm going to spend more time posting here on these forums and updating this blog at this point. There's quite a bit going on with me pertaining to the pursuit of this goal so do expect pretty frequent updates from now on. I've been working through My System (Chapter 6 now) and Brilliancies (up to the 3rd game) as well as doing tactics on ChessTempo and studying ICC videos. I'm learning TONS and loving every minute of it. I'm actually about to go put up a seek for some games on ICC but I'm sure I'll wind up thinking of something to add to this soon, or come back to edit something.

Thanks to all who have commented and followed thus far and as said, do expect more frequent updates to this in the future.

Final position of my most recent game this morning. Time control was 20/20 and neither of us were in time trouble. Opponent resigned on move 32 facing mate in 1 after declining a draw earlier in the middlegame. My move 31 was Rxf3 (knight), sacrificing the rook to get rid of the knight defending game in 1. Easy win.

ICC standard up to 1231. ECO for the game is A05 (Reti).

Checking in with Tata Steel this morning over on ICC and doing some standard tactics over on ChessTempo. Going to focus on untimed problems there today and some longer chess online and OTB as I get ready for my two games on Wednesday night. They're 35/5's, and go extremely fast OTB, so I spent most of the last week or so playing 5/0 and 15/0 chess on ICC so I could sharpen my tactical ability in time trouble. Today, I want to get back to the root of my positional and standard chess study and also look around for some g60+ games this weekend or next week.

edit: Just remembered that it's an off day @ Tata Steel so I'll be digging right into ChessTempo, My System, and some 30/30's or 45/45's online.

What is your year end goal?

Another site for you might like, would be the chess tactics server at chess emrald.net. Their problems are basically bullet speed, with a fast time decay. Much faster than ChessTempo Blitz. It's good for seeing basic patterns faster.

You know, I wanted to get my feet wet in the game a little more before I actually started making short term goals like that. I want to legitimately know what my intentions mean. I'm sticking to the longterm goal of 2300+ FIDE and of course my shorter term goals of by the day and week.

Right now I'm just playing a lot and improving on tactics and the endgame. My opening theory is just exploding as a result of playing and reviewing master games (and using Stockfish) and tactics and the endgame are what is going to keep shooting me up at this point.

I continue to play OTB, on ICC, and study heavily. I just won a 51 move 20/20 on ICC that was probably my best game played to date. Definitely in the top three. I'm really starting to grasp the big picture through playing out difficult, complicated endgames with tough opponents. Longer time controls and larger increments also ensure that the endgame will be played out in it's conclusion and this is absolutely necessary for anyone in my shoes looking to improve.

I'm debating between going and playing two rated 35/5's at the club tonight or waiting to go down to NJ on Saturday for a 60/5 quad. I'm really leaning toward Saturday at this point as a few lengthy, challenging OTB games are what I really need most right at the moment.

As said, my current routine consists of studying My System, games in Brilliancies, ICC videos, reviewing my games extensively, and working through a lot of tactics on ChessTempo. I'm up to chapter 6 in My System and up to the 3rd game in Brilliancies. I've also been using "What Every Russian Schoolboy Knows", an ICC video series by GM Yermolinsky that focuses heavily on complex endgames. Things are going great and I'm having a lot of fun. Not only that but, during this long cold winter we're having thus far - It's really keeping me active and is extremely healthy for me.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game...e/nice-icc-win

Most recent game played this morning. The 20/20 where I simplified a pawn (and then two pawn) advantage into my opponent's resignation on move 51.

I will note, since his name is in the game, that this opponent is my favorite on ICC so far. This is the 2nd 20/20 we've played together in as many nights and they've both been phenomenal and educational. The first one was a 50+ move draw. He has been the best sport that I've met online and I look forward to future wars with him.

Thanks for the link - I'll check it out. I also really like your screen name. Quite cool.

...32 c2 looks crushing

confirmed



http://en.lichess.org/wwqkQn4U/black#64