Chess

[regoarrarr]

So after beating someone from Mexico this afternoon, I got curious to see how many countries I had "beaten", so I took a quick look through my finished games and added a section to the "About Me" section of my chess.com profile

http://www.chess.com/members/view/regoarrarr

Final tally is 24 countries and 14 US states (though many US members do not include their state of residence). A few RB members on that list, though conspicuously there is no Germany on there....

[Sian]

Black takes the bait with 16 ... Qxa1. White then gets checkmate by
17. Nc7+ Kd7
18. e6+ Kd8
19. Qd6+ Kc8
20. Nxd5, and Black resigns because Qc7# is unstoppable.

Well ... theres Na6, but then Ne6# is rather cheeky

[Gustaran]

Some good stuff in our team match, it seems Jkaen already grabbed an extra pawn after only a few moves with no compensation for his opponent.

Also MJW is playing an interesting game against a Benko gambit, I will follow that closely after just having watched GM Ramirez' two DVDs on the subject.

[Jkaen]

About to lose that extra pawn I think though

[Gustaran]

As a general rule in chess you should exchange pieces when ahead in material and avoid exchanges when behind.
That is because it is virtually impossible to lose an otherwise equal endgame when you are up a pawn and the relative strength of your material advantage increases with every exchange.

[Jkaen]

Just got a queen rook fork in the other game, so now 2 points up there. Starting to think I may actually get something from these games

[Gustaran]

Oh nice, finally the Queens are off. Good job! And I don't want to take anything away from your performance but how did this guy get a rating of 1648?

In one game he blunders a pawn on move 6 and has to surrender the bishop pair in an open position. In a Grandmaster game he would probably lose the vast majority of games from the actual position and certainly win none.
In the other game he misses a one move knight fork, losing the exchange on move 12 and has nothing to show for it either.
Now, if this was speed chess, I could somehow understand, but turn-based with access to databases?

Anyway, I think you are in excellent shape.

[Jkaen]

The reason I didn't take the queen initially is I thought it left him so much better developed than I was it wasn't worth the trade. That pawn move gave me no option

[Gustaran]

The reason I didn't take the queen initially is I thought it left him so much better developed than I was it wasn't worth the trade. That pawn move gave me no option

If you had traded immediately, after some normal developing moves (these are not necessarily the best):

7. Qf3 Qxf3
8. Nf3 Nc6
9. d3 g6
10. Be3 b6
11. 0-0-0 Bg7

White may have two extra tempi, but what exactly is he going to do with them? You could have just castled either way and developed the light squared bishop to several nice squares. So two moves later you would have had three things going for you

a) an extra pawn
b) two beautiful bishops
c) your opponent has a bad pawn structure/two weak pawns

[MJW (ya that one)]

Gustaran. I'd would have posted the following earlier but might have helped JKaen. It is very easy for a slight lead in development to snowball. After JKaen's mistake of Nd5 white has the advantage. What's amusing about this blunder is that it's intentions are good; trying to reduce material.* The reason why it is a mistake is that it wastes a move and white was one move away from getting compensation by attacking c7.

I also disagree that a pawn is as big of an advantage as you make it out to be. Remember the average rating of USCF is 657. There's a bunch of USCF members who only play a few games and get creamed. If you throw them out then I would guess the average rating is 1000 USCF. At that level it's only a matter of time until someone drops a piece and pawns really don't matter that much. (Although they are certainly worth the move it takes to capture them.)

* You might ask what would be a move with bad intentions... An example would be traps that damage your position if your opponent doesn't fall for them.