Congratz yo.

the most depressing game i ever played was a few days ago. i was up a full queen after 8 moves v a guy 100 points better than me. get to the endgame and i have queen and two rooks v a king and rook, the king is dodging in and out of the rook and pawns and it never occurred to me to just take the rook w/ queen, and promote some pawns. i ended up getting an unexpected stalemate, which was actually a 'good' result, given i was about to run out of time in hilarious fashion. it was mindblowingly bad. i couldn't even review the game after it finished.

http://www.ficsgames.com/cgi-bin/sho...85;action=show

i think this is even worse.

this is after losing 5 in a row to this guy (who is certainly way better than i am, i was up good material in 2 other games and got badly outplayed in middle-endgame).

but this, wow. nothing needs to be said about the very end i guess. an embarrassing lesson, but he was pretty gracious about it. it would have been my biggest win ever. sigh.

actually this isn't worse, i can actually look at it and i'm happy with how i played, and i guess i really 'won', but it's still annoying.

one little thing, when i take the rook with the knight i should use my rook right? a lot of times when i'm up material my opponents refuse to trade off, and i find it very hard to win in 3 min blitz. i'm kinda surprised he took the knight at all as i may well have struggled here too.

Sick, especially since Qh6 was mate.

ya. shoulda just done ...Qxg5 on 38 and then not even i can screw up from there. of course it would help if i was even glancing at that side of the board :P

Played my first otb slow game against a strong opponent in a long while. Good result but now my online blitz rating has dropped like 150+ points. Not even like I'm flagging alot or anything. Just playing really ****ty. No idea what happened. lol

Brag: 1900 blitz on FICS, FINALLY. Now I'll never play another rated blitz game again lol

http://www.ficsgames.com/cgi-bin/sho...20;action=show

heahheah

brag: And now it's getting back to normal. I was even playing stupid earlier today so it's not like I needed a good night's rest or anything. I just suddenly went back to playing normally. This is so strange.

Think I'll go analyze a bunch of games into a tape recorder and then do the same when I start playing ****ty again and try to pin point what's going on.

Haha you hit him with a bus.

I always get Discipline and Dire confused because their names begin and end with the same letters. Does anyone else have this problem?

i was really considering picking up an avatar about 5,000 posts ago. just never got around to it.

Sounds like a dire circumstance, garcia. Maybe you just need to exercise some self-discipline?

*crickets*

this

WOW This made my bones crunch with angst.

nh

Hi guys,

I've been lurking for a while and really started to enjoy chess again. I used to play when I was a lot younger (like 9-12yo), but lost interested. Now it's back again i've been playing on fics and some on yahoo. Watched quite a few videos on chessvideos.tv but i still blunder a lot of pieces in blitz games and have a ~1200 rating on fics fwiw.

I used to play on a club and i'm going back to see what's up and might join again if I enjoy the athmosphere. Somewhat scared that I'm the only player in the 20ish range, concidering it's not a huge chessclub. Might even post my first match here if im playing tonight.

Oh and curtains, love your videos man!

Happens to me all the time.

For the record, I never confuse myself with Dire, so I don't know what's wrong with you guys.

think we need a chess forum survivor, so only one of them is left

Either that or make them get avatars (would be funny if they choose the same one).

Or we could each pick avatars and then randomly swap them just to mess with you whiners.

Hey guys,

I'm probably going to make Caro-Kann my main black opening, I've been preparing by playing 1...d5 as that gets into similar positions a lot.

Any advice
Also why is black's c8 bishop so good

I wouldn't play the Caro Kahn because it's not my style, but it's a perfectly good opening. Be prepared to defend during the middlegame, though.

I've never played the Kahn, but I suppose that Black's light-squared bishop is boog because the Kahn is a "light-square defense", in the sense that Black tries from move 2 to challenge the light squares in the center.

So as black I've always played 1. d4 d5, just because it seems like the standard classical idea and I've never studied anything else. I really don't enjoy the queen's gambit though, and always hate when I see d4, I don't like the kind of positions it leads to, so I'm thinking about giving something else a try. The king's indian seems reasonable, if for no other reason than that it's the most common defense played at top levels.

Could someone give me a super basic beginner's summary of what I need to know if I want to play it? Principles only, no theory please, I'm a D class player at best and don't need theory right now, but I would like to know what basic themes I should keep an eye out for and pay attention to when I first start out. Also, what kind of positions does it lead to, in a general stylistic sense? Is it a good alternative for someone who feels super cramped in the queen's gambit and likes wide open games? Or is there some other response to d4 that I might enjoy more that would be better for me to put my energy toward?

My advice would be to flip through MCO and set up the "final positions" from various main lines against 1. d4, and pick the opening whose main line leads to the position you'd be most comfortable playing as Black. It really doesn't matter what the top players are doing since you're a D player.