Aaaargh! phorku 6 - club 1

What a night. Last game of the championships and I get paired against a speed player. He never keeps score and I get to the board and he has it upside down making it extra difficult to keep score. He plays the Sicilian and I play the Halasz gambit. I drop a N in the first couple moves, slow down trap his B and end up with a good position 2 pawns down. I have massive pressure on the King side and his N is trapped most of the game. He castles long with a weakened pawn structure and I advance my Qside pawns to break it open. Instead of ripping him open I push my pawn through planning on getting a pawn fork that never materializes. Next thing I know my flag falls. We shake hands and I look at the clock and something is horribly wrong. According to the clock we used up 2.5 hours in an hour and a half. I say something is wrong, he doesn't pay attention and goes off to play his $.50 a 5 minute game with his buddy. Then I notice his clock is stopped because he didn't wind his side. He is already at another table and some squirt is standing there talking to me while I am trying to figure out what the deal is. Squirt keeps trying to show me how to wind the clock and I keep pulling it away from him telling him to stop that some thing is wrong. Squirt must be and idiot savant because he keeps trying to show me how to wind the clock. I am getting really irritated with telling him to stop and him constantly reaching for the winder. I take the clock and go over to my opponent because I am ready to punch squirt in the fucking face and don't want to spend the night in jail. My opponents 5 minute buddy says give him another half hour on the clock and my opponent agrees. The position is tough now and I am still very irritated and go down in flames shortly afterwards. My opponent was 1522 just over 100 points above me. While I should be happy about my overall performance I am mostly still pissed off about the whole thing with second game in a row with a blunder, misplayed a winning position, backward board, non score keeping opponent, stupid analog clock and squirt. Squirt better hope I never face him over the board because I want blood, I want to send him crying back to his mommy for some more breast feeding. Aaaaaarrrrgh!

BDK's Blunderwareness curse...

So... I was reading through a couple blogs before my teamleague game on Sunday and came across BDK's Blunderwareness post. I skimmed over it and thought I haven't made a blunder in the longest time, my thought process is pretty much automatic now. So I have black and my opponent opens with NF3. Ugghh... another ambiguous opening game. So I respond with my own ambiguous opening g6. 12 moves into the game and things are kind of tense and I am not sure how to continue. Clock is draining away and I start getting frustrated. I still can't come up with a good plan and decide to move my light squared B into his position so I can close things up with out making my B totally bad. I make my move click click. Instantly I see that I just put it on an unprotected square just 2 squares in front of his Q. I cry out 'What the hell did I just do?'.

An old weakness that I rarely encounter has just reared it's ugly head again. Too bad I had to learn that lesson the hard way... I thought I was smarter than that. Oh well. Now that the lesson has been scorched into my brain I have one more tool to use. Hopefully that will be the end of that weakness.

Well I am off to the club for game 7 of the club championships. It kind of sucks being undefeated. Every game I win makes me worry more about losing the next one. Just got to keep in mind that I do this for fun and have had an outstanding tournament.

phorku 6 - club 0

Got paired against one of the lower rated players at the club. Total blowout in 15 moves. I was cautious during the game. I have played this person several times before and she plays far too aggressively. Occasionally wild play pays off so she has had a couple wins against me. One or 2 weeks to go and I guess I am guaranteed to come in first in my 'section' whatever that means.

Here is the game. I have the white pieces.

For ookwelbekendalsemc

By your request here are games 4(Play for the center?) and 5. I am not going to post the other 3 since they are not really that interesting.

Update: Since I have won all my Parma CC games so far I have the winning side in each game ;-)
Oh, ok... I have black in 4 and white in 5.

phorku 5 - club 0

Had another win at the club championships Tuesday. Pairings are all screwed up and I ended up playing someone I already played. It was a tough game Bishop's vs the French. Dumb I know but I have a lot of success with it. I get a passed pawn in the early middle game and did everything in my power to hang on to it looking for opportunities for good trades to get to a winning endgame.

There was a lot of pressure on both sides throughout the game and I used a new found general principle to stay alive. Trade off your opponents most active piece(s).

We ended up in an even rook and pawn endgame except I already had one protected passer. I manuevered my K and R to prevent any meaningful penetration. Spent mor time on the endgame than opening and middle combined. Anyway he couldn't defend against the passer and prevent my king from penetrating. I abandoned my passed pawn so I could eat up his kingside pawns and win the q race.

phorku 4 - club 0

Won my 4th game in a row at the club championships. The pairings got messed up and originally they had me down to play the same guy I played last week. After the switch this week I won a hard fought game against a ~1514. This was my first 'real' game at the club. We usually play G30 and many members can't handle G90. This guy used about as much clock as I did. I was down an exchange after he forked my rook with a mating threat. I after I lost the exchange I set up a nice mating threat. I feel he moved his king to the wrong square. I penetrated and managed to get the exchange back and think I have a mating net in the middle of the board. Before I make my mating move he sees me counting off the escape squares. I move my rook to mate, hit the clock, write my move down and he casually takes my rook with his king. I say DUH! After all my hard work I throw my game away to looking at the pawns backward syndrome. Then I realize it is an illegal move and was just a joke. We bust out laughing. Most fun I have had at the club in a long time.