I've been owned - I did view the personal data page, but somehow didn't pay attention to the age ARC has given them a bad birthday present

Besides, 'Ruthless Queen' is just a song by the Dutch prog rock band Kayak.

Boring draw, offered by me. I think I had a slight edge in this rook and pawns endgame but screwed up my penultimate move, then it looked pretty much drawn (I think). Anyway, logging 1.5/2 against this person seemed like a good deal. Looks like we only now need 2/7 in the outstanding matches to beat the Finest Filipinos. POINTS ON THE BOARD.

17...Bd6 is probably the most exciting move in the game, but he-she recognized it. He-she should have traded queens earlier and would have controlled the d-file.

http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=117265456

I will be delivering those two points imo, . Both games are far from over I guess although it seems to me I have a winning advantage in each.

It's the other match where I really needed to get two full points rather than 1.5/2 since it does not look good there.

15.-Kh7?!
16.-Nxe3?!
21. Nxd5?!
24. Rxd8? (this move is dreadful)
27.-b5?!

Might as well play it out -- White can still mess up, but it should be hard for you to lose.

It's important to know that rook endings like this are not about racing your pawns but about having the most active rook. Active normally means threatening to win his pawns. So ...a5 is a mistake, not just ...b5. Instead, Rd2 or Rd4 would win a pawn while keeping your rook active (you need to analyse what happens if he gets his rook to d7 when your rook gets the open file - but he will still have a lot more weak pawns to eat).

Rei, ...Kh7. I thought they were gonna trade a bishop for 2 pawns and wreck my kingside pawns. I thought I was being patient here.

Thanks RT. I'm terrible at, and hate, R+p endgames. Just seems like I always get outplayed there.

That would have been bad for them, and they probably weren't anyway: 15.-Re8 (also a patient move) 16. Bxh6 gxh6 17. Qxh6 Bf8 18. Qg5+ Bg7, and they have no follow-up so Black will win eventually. 19. h4 Ne4 and 19. Ne5 Nd7 put a pretty easy stop to any of White's ambitions.

I lost my black game against the active players to some precise attacking play. I thought I had equalized comfortably and although I had no good plans, I shouldn't get mated on the kingside. Turns out his attack came quite quickly there.

I think I should have tried to trade minor pieces (Nf6-e8-d6xc4, Bd7-e6xc4. If he doesn't put a minor piece on c4, I go Rc5 and maybe Rc3. Optically I have more space so I tended to avoid exchanges, but with such a beautiful square for his pieces it's not really correct to say White has a space advantage.

Yeah I didn't work all that out. I just couldn't figure out why they moved to Qd2 so I just figured I would defend that pawn.

RT — I don't really understand what your aim was with any of your moves 19–23. Is that the part that you're referencing where you didn't really have a plan? None of the moves seem to generate any sort of counterplay and I can't see how they set up future counterplay.

The biggest problem I'd have with your position at around move 18 is that while black seems to have space, there seems to be almost no counterplay and the only pawn break available is ...f5 which looks pretty tough to set up. I would probably try to either organize that sort of thing or really try to solidify my kingside. Or perhaps try to wrest control of c4 away, since I guess there could be a future pawn breka there, but that seems like a pipe dream since white has full control over it and I don't really see how black even goes about getting control of it. I guess you could try to pin his pieces down by threatening ...c4 in some manner as counterplay.

I have no real concrete variations to offer though so I'm sure Rei will consider this post a bunch of gibbering garbage (j/k...although, yeah, not sure it's a very helpful post).

yeah, it was around move 19 I realised I had no real plan. I was trying to slightly improve my pieces though: Ra5 might come to c5, or e5 after a pawn break, then Qd6 prepares some Nh5 ideas which gets ruled out by g4, then Bc8 clears d7 for the knight and the second rank for the Ra5 - also it might come to a6 in some lines. Qc5 looks less purposeful in hindsight - I was thinking I should overprotect the a5 square before bringing the rook back to a7 to defend the kingside, but a4-a5 is not really a threat.

The computer thinks Ne8 is the critical mistake and Nd7 keeps the balance. If White plays as in the game with 26. f4?! exf4 27. Rxf4 Ne5, and Black has much less to fear on the kingside with such a well-placed knight. It should be possible to keep probing with 26. Qh5 or something, when the computer gives equality but it looks a lot easier to play as White.

I don't think it's possible for Black to play that position for a win directly. If White does nothing Black can't get anywhere - f5 and c4 are not realistic pawn breaks. So the goal should be either to exchange enough pieces that White won't have a winning breakthrough on the kingside, or prepare to have some counterplay after a pawn break by White. After g4 his only pawn break, f4, gives me a square on e5. So I think Ra5 etc make sense playing to occupy that square - but Ne8 is not consistent with that, because the N is by far the best piece I could put on e5.

Think I'm going to beat this guy christianatchess in the active turn based match, as white. He's 1873 to my 1614.

No comments please but it's a somewhat neat game if you want to take a peek. After he likely plays 25...e5 26.qd1 looks crushing. I think I end up +3 in material, at worst, with his queen gone and mine retained. We'll see.

re ARC

Aren't these comments?

Anyway:

I'm not opening those spoilers. Or can i? I assume those are for me only.

I've got sick planz n9 matter what he tries though. Hope I'm not missing anything!

those are legit spoilers, dont open them

That guy resigned, so I'm freerolling that match (though losing the other).

14.Bg5 was a cheeky move for me. If he captures, it frees up the file for me, and if he blunders by retreating his knight, leads to a checkmate. I didn't expect him to, but still liked the play. This is the kind of move I am trying to get better at identifying: choosing squares that are good to exchange on. I see stuff like this in master games and so I start looking for them in my own.


21.f4 took me a while to spot. His queen must stay on that diagonal, and it is confined to the g7 square. I had first dismissed it due to 21...Qxe3+ but after 22.kb1 he has no safe access back to the a1-h8 diagonal to defend qh8#.

Enticing his pawns to f6 and e5 was fun.

Nicely played. His play was too passive all-around.

10. Nxf7 would have won a pawn.

12.-Qe7?!; he should play 12.-Bxe5, whereupon 13. dxe5 leaves White with an entombed bishop but is necessary because 13. Bxe5 allows 13.-f6 14. Bf4 e5 15. dxe5 fxe5.

13.-Nf6?!

14.-hxg5? This is terrible. I'm not sure how one willingly enters this position.

17. Qg4!? I like this pawn sac. White has great compensation.

22.-Rac8?! Pretty clear that White can build up a strong attack if Black acts slowly, so Black should start with 22.-b5, meeting cxb4 with whichever is best of c4-c3 or a7-a5. The Black queen actually has potential as an attacking piece along that diagonal, so Black's attack might be stronger and force an exchange of queens.

23.-Kf8? At the very least this is a complete waste of two important tempi after 24. Qg5 forces 24.-Kg8.

24.-f6. This leads to the losing position we encountered. But 24.-Kg8 also loses to 25. Rh6! and Black can't stop 26. Qh4 and a deadly rook-first invasion along the h-file, so 23.-Kf8 was the losing move.

Looks like we already destroyed Team Greece. I think my opponents position is lost in my 2nd game. Or draw at worst. Id offered a draw a few moves ago (and twice this match), but now i think ill win. I was down a pawn for a long time after mis-stepping early. Were 52 moves in, with 4 rooks, a bishop, and handful of pawns left still. But im about to win his soon to be pinned bishop. And my pawn is 1 away from promotion, currently blocked bt a rook.

There was a point earlier ehere i didn't know what to do and I remembered a video I watched where someone said if you don't know what to do pushing a pawn can't be too bad as it puts more pressure on the opponent I tried that in a game a while back when I didn't know what to do and ended up winning so I tried it again this game and now it looks like I'm probably going to win so I'm glad I learned that tip yes I know it doesn't make sense to just push a pawn just because

From my short sample size and career with the 2p2 chess.com team, it seems we destroy everyone except that active turn based playing group which I assume is simply a pool of 23423423423432 completely unrelated players and they will always be able to field a very strong team. Seems kind of lame to me for real team play since the community aspect of the team is what makes it fun for me.

I'm pretty sure I'd play almost no correspondence games if it weren't for being on the 2p2 team or if I was playing the games in complete isolation without this thread or feeling like there was at least some small sense of team.

Also, having Rei as a high-level cheerleader helps, .

Don't forget we still have the open match that started in February! And I've gone that long without timing out!

Also, don't get too excited about our second match against the Active team in which we are tied, I am a pretty huge dog in both of my matches.

Who said that? It's actually quite nebulous advice and will lead to more bad moves than good ones. The guideline "improve your worst-placed piece" is a lot more reliable. A better pawn guideline is "passed pawns must be pushed".

Maybe that was the quote. I don't remember the video. But the first time i used the advice was in that 59 move win against preacherboy a couple months back where i lost my queen early and he missed a forced mate late.

can i be the head coach?