Hey fellas, I'm planning on playing the vegas chess tourney in a month. What bracket should I enter? (As in, how bad are unrateds? Can I automatically assume I'm X good based on online play? etc.) Thanks!

Congrats BJJ
Without any games of yours or (site specific) ratings to work with I'd assume unrated would be the right place. Not familiar with what your options in an US system are though.

Without knowing how good your online play is, there's no way to answer that. We'd also need to know what the different sections are (If the lowest section is U800, then you might get a different answer than if the lowest section is U1400).

I'm somewhat familiar with this division and tournament. In ICC terms, I think the unrated division winner will often have a 5-min rating of ~1800. Most of the players will be very weak but you always end up with 4 or 5 who are inadvertently sandbagging the section due to circumstance - be it a strong online player who just hasn't played much live, a foreign player with a no direct USCF rating conversion who just decides to play in it, or other things along those lines.

Good luck, don't underestimate those damn 10 year olds!

Fresh from the Bazna Kings tournament the game Nakamura-Nisipeanu : Black finds a way to lose on move 60 http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=45771 f3 are you serious :|

Ok, thanks. this is what I was looking for It appears there is U1400, U1200, Unrated, etc. My FICS blitz rating is 1400, standard 1700.

My guess is that you'd find any of those divisions fairly competitive.

1400/1700 on FICS is way too strong to be playing in the bottom sections imo. My FICS standard rating is 1879 and I'd expect to be competitive in the U2200 section -- maybe I'd even be too strong and not allowed to enter it!

Since it's your first live tournament you might take a while to get used to playing live, so maybe try the U1600. I doubt you'd get blown away in the U1800 or U2000 either.

Finally, was the tournament not this weekend? I googled it there and it looks like there was a huge tournament just finishing yesterday (Sunday).

I think I was at 1500 on FICS back when I know I would have struggled in an U1200. That was a long time ago, though.

But your blitz rating is also in the 1800s, not 1400. My FICS blitz rating is around 1440 (I haven't played standard games there in either years or ever). I haven't played live/rated games in so long, but I know U2200 would be too much for me (years ago I was rated 15xx USCF, I have to be better now, but not by 600 points or so, I wouldn't think).

You know, this might get me to play a few standard games now. Not sure what I'll do with the extra time after the first 3 minutes thouugh.

Ilyumzhinov visited Libya. Glad to see FIDE's determination to promote chess all over the world.

The most important bit obviously is that Gaddafi plays the Sicilian; it shows his fighting spirit...



MOSCOW — President of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi told him over a game of chess in Tripoli on Sunday he had no plans to stand down or leave his country.

As fighting between Kadhafi's forces and Libyan insurgents raged across western Libya, the Russian eccentric who once claimed he hosted extraterrestrials, also sat down for a game of chess with Kadhafi's eldest son Muhammad and the two played the Sicilian defense, Russia's Interfax news agency said.

"The meeting [with Moamer Kadhafi] lasted around two hours, we played some chess with Kadhafi," Ilyumzhinov, who is on a visit to Tripoli in his capacity as FIDE president, told Interfax.

Link

I definitely disagree with this assessment, I think RoundTower is probably very uderrated in FICS standard, and overestimating your abilities based on that. I'm about 1300/1600 on FICS, and while my actual USCF rating is 8 years old and not too relevant, I'm pretty sure I'm <1400 strength right now (and maybe worse). At 1400/1700 you're probably good enough for the U1600 section, but I would say that's BEFORE accounting for your unfamiliarity with live play, not after. U1400 is probably a better fit, I don't think you're in danger of massively outclassing the field there, if your FICS ratings are stable and relatively accurate measures of your true strength.

Ok, I just did it. At some point in the past, I had played and lost 4 standard games, for a rating of 1335. I just played someone rated 1462 in a 15min game (he only wanted to play white against those rated under 1400 -- of course, I tricked him since my current playing strength is better than my old rating).

Anyway: http://www.ficsgames.com/cgi-bin/sho...62;action=show

I won and gained 150 rating points.

I thought the game started off well enough. I like 11...g5 (the move pops up in the French from time to time, to pull away the pawn on f4 to weaken e5). I'm eventually up 3 pawns without seeing any real compensation for white. He then sacs a rook for a scary attack, but I don't think I was supposed to be mated by it (and if I did miss something in there, then he did have very good compensation for the pawns). For unknown reasons, he then trades queens and hangs a bishop. Doesn't seem too different than blitz yet...

EDIT: Uh, I should start setting rating limits on my seeks, and slow down in the opening. Just played a 2072 and got killed in 14 moves.

http://www.ficsgames.com/cgi-bin/sho...89;action=show

re: The Vegas National open. Here's an easy to way to see what you'll need or how you can expect to do.

2010 Vegas National Open results: http://vegaschessfestival.com/results/2010/
USCF ratings lookup: http://main.uschess.org/component/op...er/Itemid,181/

So here are the top three players from last year's unrated division and their USCF ratings:

1. Dilig,Ruperto,Jr 2003 http://main.uschess.org/assets/msa_j...n.php?14313031
2. Centeno,Gerald 1690 http://main.uschess.org/assets/msa_j...n.php?14454086
3. Canafe,Al Matthew 1470 http://main.uschess.org/assets/msa_j...n.php?14454106

The 1470 guy never played another USCF tournament, he's Filipino, so you can expect he's probably underrated.

edit: I was just skimming through the lower class sections and there seems to be much less sandbagging in those sections. So it may be better to play in one of those. Does anybody know if an unrated can receive prizes in a class section tournament? I know the world open has restrictions but there's much more money at stake in their class sections.

Dear U1400s everywhere:

Castle. Castle. For the love of dog, CASTLE!

Or don't, I like quick wins. Either way.

Love,
Kyle

Well, that was nice and instructive. I just finished the section in HRYC where Silman talks about not letting your opponent dictate your view of the board. He gives examples where a player makes a blunder based on a false belief, and the mere fact that he made the move convinces his opponent that the false belief must be correct.

So, of course, in my next game I proceeded to fall victim to that exact syndrome twice.



Opponent says: You just lost a pawn, because after Kxf2, I can play Qb6+ and win your bishop.
I say: Well, I think that's right. But I can play Kf1 instead and there's some interesting stuff that results in me coming out roughly even, maybe only a little behind instead of two pawns.
Reality says: Kxf2 Qb6+ Nd4 and I'm just flat up a piece for a pawn.

This next one was even better...



Opponent just played Nxe5, implicitly but confidently asserting that I can't respond Bxe5 because of my back rank weakness.

Which if of course rubbish, I can play Bxe5 and I'm just fine after Rd1+ Ng1. But he must have hypnotized me or something.

I went on to lose, but I consider that a useful loss because it really drove home a lesson I had just read.

Anyone plan on playing in Pardubice this year?

No, I'm afraid not. I have always wanted to play there but it has never worked out so far with work and everything.

But I have already registered for the Vienna Chess Open August 13th-21st. Great playing venue, great tournament.

I was thinking about playing in Vienna for a couple years now, but it is just a tiny bit too late in the calendar for me, I have to return to the US at around August 20th or so. Sucks

yeah I'm going, planning to play the A section this year which should be interesting as we never get tournaments that strong over here. Will definitely try to catch up with you for a beer or six this time!

Brag: Beat a 1900 (ICC) with a pleasantly aggressive game.

Beat: Going over the game again, I had a mix of very nice ideas and inaccuracies that probably should have cost me the game, but he was playing very passively.

Variance: This was after I got destroyed in two d4 games against stronger opponents. At least I can say I gave it my best effort.

Looking into possible business ideas ...

Do you think there would be sufficient interest in a video-based chess training site, along similar lines to Card Runners, Deuces Cracked, etc??

If yes, how much would YOU pay for content (per month/year)?

Chess.com has a pretty extensive video library.

All the major sites, playchess/icc/chess.com, already have extensive video libraries. chessvideos.tv also, independently, has thousands of free videos. Chessbase sells hundreds of one off videos from experts in various fields, including from players such as Kasparov, for $50 - $100 per video.

Seems like a pretty tough market to break into.

It's much more fun to play against fellow human beings. There are some good online sites out there.