of course it's a big difference of trying to win against an equal player who wants a draw because of match considerations or against somone weaker who is content with a draw because of strength difference. In the second case it's mostly sufficient to keep some play in the position, because it's still likely that the weaker player makes mistakes and can be outplayed later on.

In the first case, there is also the psychological aspect. If you play against someone with weak nerves in this case, keeping the game going as long as possible with slow setups might be better than an attack where the defender sees the light at the end (i.e. if he survives some short term threats he will achieve the desired result).

What could I have done in this game?
http://www.chess.com/livechess/game.html?id=213670653

I won the exchange on a tactic...but I'm terrible at closed positions and lost the game after. 10 minute blitz i'm white.

edit: When I dropped the piece at the very end I was in time trouble

double edit: perhaps if I know i'm bad at closed positions, 13. e5 is a bad move...

A material advantage is only useful if you have something to attack.
You seemed to be doing OK until around move 30.
Once black plays 30...h5 the kingside is going to be locked for a long time (unless you do something like play g4, which you did later), so you need to change your attack to the queenside. The obvious way to do this is to look for play down the c-file with your rooks, so rather than playing Rch1, you should be looking to plau Rc3 & Rhh1-c1, in conjunction with b4-b5 to try to create a weakness on the queenside to attack.
Also in bloacked positions knights can be usefu, so you want to try to keep their influence minimised. Yes, a knight on g4 would be annoying, but a knight on f5 is much more of a problem, as it attacks d4, so if you have to choose between the two, its better to allow Ng4 in that position rather than playing g4 & allowing Nf5.
You also missed Qxe6! after 45...cxb5? which would have turned the game back in your favour, although its tough to see everything in time trouble.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for looking at the game. Yeah, trying to double rooks on the H file was stupid...I should have been doubling on the OPEN file...C.

Also there is an interesting blitz lesson in there w/r/t my opponent hanging is queen on move 45. He had a lot more time than me, but I was moving so fast and frantic that he felt pressure to move fast himself. Move fast to pressure your opponents into moving fast!



for more low content, I watched searching for Bobby B last night...good movie...

So Nakamura's win over Anand today in the London Classic was apparently the first win by an American over a reigning World Champion since 1992?

Maybe so, though I doubt this game will be included in his "Best Games" collection. He has been incredibly lucky so far, scoring 1.5 to 2 points more than his positions were worth. He really should have lost today, after like 20 moves his position was resignable. Aronian was close to a win against him too.

The tournament has been quite entertaining so far. That's the good thing about inviting 2600 players to these tournaments: more decisive games. So far I liked the Short-Kramnik endgame best, very instructive game.

Yeah, it was definitely a game that Anand lost, more than a game that Naka won. Still, though, it's a nice result to have on the resume. Although, the "first win over a reigning champ since 1992" stat is one that gets less and less surprising, as I think about it more, since how many Americans have even gotten to play games against reigning world champs in that span, and of them how many have had any realistic chance of winning? Basically, once you realize Kamsky didn't get a world champion scalp during his comeback, the factoid basically just becomes: "This is Nakamura's first win against a reigning world champ."

you could say that Naka brillantly sacrificed a tempo to force an out-of-form Anand to finally play for a win, blunder and hand it to Naka but i'm not buying this. But the fact that Anand manages to get lost like that is quite alarming. It looks like he isn't really focused or working hard at the board.

I just want to introduce you guys to IM Tania Sachdev since I only discovered her recently and found she's no where near as well known as I would have expected.

I'm completely in love, she is even a d4 specialist - same as me! Now if I could just become about 100 times better looking and gain like 600 rating points I might be in with a shot...

K I'll let her know.

I don't know her, so I could perhaps be wrong, but I would imagine that a tendency toward posting photos of her on random internet forums might hurt your chances more than your physical appearance or your chess rating does...

Heh.

This (and reading the London commentary) remind me to ask where people usually follow current chess events from. I think I'm finally sick enough of chessbase's editorial coverage to change my habits...

Chessbase's weird misogyny, love of Kasparov, and anti-draw-obsession is starting to get to me. The Kasparov stuff I can live with, but the rest is getting tedious. But they do collect the games from ongoing events in a nice way (GM commentary, re-playable boards).

I pretty much get my chess news from this thread, lol. I figure if it's worth my attention, there's probably someone here who feels it's worth mentioning.

lol at Nakamura-Short threatening to go to 50-move rule with queens, rooks and three sets of minor pieces on the board. 32 or so moves already played.

what is Nigel thinking here? My guess:

"pffftchhhhh
i'll play the children's italian, that will sooooo piss him off hrhrhr"

http://twitter.com/#!/JenShahade/sta...795008/photo/1

pretty cool help mate problem, very little pieces on the board so it seems like it should be very simple, but it's harder than it looks.

That was cool.

Confirmed cool!

Pretty sure you all get the same e-mails I do but just in case USCF is having a 20% off sale this week.

Edit: Dec 18 -24.

NEW AT FICS, PLEASE HALP... WANT TO PLAY BUGHOUSE. THE CODE IS WAY CONFUSING

BABY STEPS DUDE

Seriously, need more information on what do you know about playing on a chess server. Do you have software? Thief is good for bug, I suppose babaschess is a good fics interface as well. Channel 24 is the bug channel,.you need to set bugopen 1 to get partnered. Command "bu" - short for bughouse i guess - displays players with bugopen 1, formed teams and the ongoing bug games. Cannot be arsed to type more, read the help files and ask on ch24, you might even get civilized answers every now and then

bugopen 1 didn't work :/ but I still appreciate the post

I don't have any software or anything ... just getting back into chess after a long break.

Did a ton of googling (super hard late night after bunch of beer pong lol) ... type "bugwho
u" ... then names pop up. THEN HOW DO U GET A PARTNER (AND I WANT TO PLAY LOW RATED PLAYERS BC ITS FOR FUN AND IM RUSTY. THX)

get thief or babas, log in, ask help from channel 24, read help bughouse etc. gl getting it to work

ok looks like 2 recs for thief. Will do that tomorrow ... and then will prob be back after I can't get it to work : ) k thx guise