phorku's chess blog

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Lost another 3 games at the club...

Last Tuesday I lost all my G30 games at the club. It was not as bad as 2 weeks ago though. I had the advantage in all 3 of my games but could not convert it to a win in the time I had left. I have been playing a more conservative game lately, trying to make moves to improve my position instead of always attacking. In one game the advantage shifted back and forth.

Since I have a problem with running out of time I have started playing 1 or 2 blitz games at lunch to improve my thinking speed. Also this will allow me to play more games and get more experience in different kinds of positions.

I have also started playing some e-mail correspondence games with one of the guys at the club and try to get 1 or 2 standard games in a week.

My tactical studies have slowed some. Last weekend the weather was very nice so I got out and enjoyed it. Also my girlfriend shut down my computer with CT-Art running so I had to redo about 50 level 40 problems.

I will skip the club tonight and work on my tactics and perhaps get another standard game in.

I have also been looking through my Bishop's opening book learning more on how certain positions should be played.

I also found a new PGN viewer that I like much better than the old one and stayed up way to late playing with it, trying to figure out how to add the rotate board check box to it.

Here are a couple fun unannotated games I played recently:
1. A tough win against the BDG. Game(new window)
2. A blitz draw against a much stronger opponent. I had a winning position but let him get away with repitition. Game(new window)

Monday, November 14, 2005

Taking a beating

The games at the club went back to G30 last week and I lost all 3 games. These games are really short for me and do not seem like proper chess. They are probably good practice for me though as I often have time trouble in my 30 30 and 45 45 games. One player in my quad was obviously a better player than the rest of us since he won all three of his games plus all his games at the last tournament. I also lost 2 games on FICS and my internet connection went down on a 3rd lost game. I haven't done much tactical training either compared to the last couple months. I finally finished moving into the girl friend's and cleaning my apartment. What a chore especially since cleaning takes a back seat to work kids and hobbies. I thought one of my losses this weekend was respectable until I reviewed it with Crafty. My opponent and I both missed a mate in 1 (against me) 2 moves in a row.

One big flaw in my playing is that I only know how to attack. I attack prematurely or when preventative measures would be more appropriate. Sometimes I miss taking some pawn's because I am focused on his king. One thing I have noticed with CT-Art is that most of the tactics are checkmate or attacks on major/minor pieces. I rarely see any problems that gain a pawn unless it is close to queening.

One thing that I disagree in MDLM's program is that he says positional and end game study are unnecessary. I really think I could benefit from some positional study especially in these short games where I could be improving my position and perhaps saving some time. I noticed that I often am extended more than my opponents making it easier for them to pick up pieces.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Sorry team

Lost my playoff game vs kosu. Made 2 mistakes one minor and one that lost the game. Didn't see that 13. ...Kh8 dropped a pawn. Then 20. ...Qh4 trying to pick up a pawn drops my N with a rook phork. Here is the unannotated game(new window).

Does anyone know what happened with Lliamah's game?

Friday, November 04, 2005

Sorry Folks

If you use an RSS FeedReader I would like to apologize for re-editting one of my posts a bunch of times. I was having problems with my sidebar going to the bottom of the page and blogger help suggested one of my posts was too wide. I ended up picking a new template to fix the problem. Why? because Internet Explorer is a piece of crap. Why did they ever incorporate this collection of bugs into the Windows OS? Guess they needed to do it to reach their bug quota. Ever notice how if you open 10-15 browsers your system will become unresponsive? Telnet offers a better internet experience than this POS. That is why I use FireFox at home. Apparently MicroSloth will destroy thier products with extra 'features' after they run out of useful improvements to make. Windows seemed to peak with Win2k. I could have done without the rounded corners in XP and all the extra clicking I have to do to that aggravates my repetitve stress syndromes. I would rather have had the bugs and security holes fixed rather than these new annoying features. I'd like to take that office paperclip and make spit to roast the stupid search dog on. What a of time and money not to mention the code bloat.