When I was testing out the Dmitri Komarov plug-in on lichess, I played a blitz game with one of the weaker Stockfishes. I played 10. Ng5 while thinking about a similar offering of a piece (h-file clearance, convergence on g7) in one of your correspondence games. So that makes you influential.

It's not the strongest move (due to 10.-f5) but by blitz standards it's good enough.

Yeah, the problem with h-file clearance is that the intention is too obvious to opponents and they usually correctly decline such sacs.

Btw, the Komarov plugin works fine with lichess.org/tv, so I didn't even need an account to test it The sound levels of bits of its commentary are terribly far apart, though; I'll try to see if normalisation of the sound files is possible.

Hmm, I'm reading the annotations now. You are a lot more liberal with exclamation marks than I am.

"19.-Bd4+ 20. Kf1 (20. Kh1?? Rxh2+)" is how I would have marked that sequence. Likewise "(24.-Rg1+)".

Hahaha, you're being silly with some of the double-?s. "26.-Rxa1??"?

I've also got good news, I haven't timed out yet (And just made another move because I saw this thread bumped)

I can understand why the Bd4 and the Rxh2+ aren't even '!' (they're way too obvious), but can't the Rg1+ have at least one exclam? You're sounding as if you'd see it in a bullet game; you're killing me

My usage of marks is naturally closer to the way computers do it, i.e. when the eval jumps from -1 to -7 after Black's move, I give '??' to White's preceding move; and in general, I give at least one exclam to a move (even if it's evident) whenever the previous move of the opponent is a subtle (not blatant piece-hanging) blunder (because an exploit of such a blunder usually still has to be found).

Okay sure. One it is.

I use exclamation marks like Dvoretsky and Yusupov do. The recipients of !!'s are predominantly subtle moves based on profound ideas, or truly ultra-sick tactics. ??'s are losing (or draw-surrendering) blunders that are above a certain threshold of egregiousness.

I don't understand strategy and positional play well enough to award the mixed marks (!? and ?!) as freely as they do -- usually to moves that wouldn't ordinarily strike me as noteworthy.

joined the group - saksdal

Welcome aBoard!


Think Im 8-0 in group matches now.

whoopwhoop

got totally smoked by Rei in a unrated game, reminded me again why I don't like playing the 9.Bg5 Tarrasch as White

Rei is the dark knight of 2+2 chess

Thanks to the group administration for opening the 'Movember match' vs Hajduk Split (Split is a sea resort city in Croatia, and Hajduk, pronounced as 'Hidook, is its sports club).

Sadly enough, I took no selfie on the 1st, on the rare occasion when I had merely 3-day facial hair, so there's no sense in keeping my beard till the end of the month, I'll probably trim it off today if I find enough bravery for that

Oops, the Hajduk fans have brought a few strong players in, we need all our beasts to register to balance the teams out

Yes, please push me down against some 1600s.

Well, only ganstaman has joined us since then (thanks for that!), but facing someone ~100 points higher isn't the worst possible scenario, is it? The 1784 opponent is still very beatable (A funny thing is that he has the same name as the head of studies in my last high school!)

As for me, when I saw the message about the match start, my hand reflexively played 1. Nf3 (I had been studying it for a few hours in the morning for other games), forgetting about my intention to play the opponent-specific 3. f3 anti-Grünfeld; it's hard to break the habit , so this opponent of mine will face other opening tweaks instead. He seems strong (underrated?) enough to reach the endgame with at least equality, though.

not going to well for us so far!

Yeah, sorry, folks, for making the match 0-7 and hence lost , I went too far in my calculations and transposed moves in the line I was thinking about (first the bishop somewhere like g4 and then Rd8) and didn't notice that the move order matters and the bishop was hanging in an otherwise won endgame Besides, I was kinda unlucky with my king's position, that it was subject to the fork; I saw the fork coming just after I hung the bishop, but made one more (conditional = 'confident') move for a swindle attempt, instead of insta-resigning.

Nevertheless, I think the premiere of the Basman (Nh6-f7) Leningrad Dutch (named after IM Michael John Basman, better known as the biggest exponent of the Grob) went OK. I mean, objectively, Black's position is badish in the middlegame, and it's really anti-thematic because the typical grip on e4 is missing, giving room to a better control of e5, but it's compensated by the surprise effect, that opponents seldom know what plan to come up with to break the fortress down (in this game, it was the Nc3-b5xa7-c6 spew).

One of the main purposes of placing the knight on f7 is giving power to the 'Sniper' g7 bishop, which should have killed White in the end because he was overloaded and couldn't take care of the hanging b2 pawn. (Needless to say, my attention was drawn to this setup exactly because it looks like an improved Dzindzi-Indian, without giving dark squares up.)

i won a game WOOOOOO

Congrats! Let me not **** my White one up...

I didn't, the score is now 2-7. Brag: that was the first time someone played a conditional move into me at chess.com

I'm rather unhappy by my plan after move 11, should have played a normal developing move like Nc3 or Nd2-f3. My 12. Qb3 disabled the pawn storm opportunity, which woulda been the nuts with opposite-side castles after the opponent handed me such a tremendous centre.

16. Na3 (with the idea to keep the c-file and the 3rd rank open) didn't quite work; 16. Nc3 a better option.

In the endgame, I missed a neat trick 42. Ra6 (threatening Ra5+) Kb5 43. Rd6 winning a tempo in comparison with the game move and hence a pawn.

in wlrs's game

in wlrs's game



in my game

Just blundered my bishop in the 960 game, lol. On the 2nd move too!

Wow, lost both games fast.

I hate knights!

I won my other game too woooo http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=100808014

close match now

Great job, big wins Aksdal!

It's probably not a good thing that you need me to go 2-0 to tie this up.

Then again, the fact that it's been over a month and I haven't timed out is a good thing.

Pretty telling that the only matches left are 3 on the top 2 boards and then my game.