Chess

[Sian]

Man ... had a long game against my opponent in the chess club tourney today ... 75 moves, including some 25-30 moves of endgame my king danced around my 2 connected pawns protecting them from and oppotunistic strikes from his rook (which was largely tied down to babysit his own pawn) with my rook keeping a latent attack on his pawn ... i'll try to get the pgn posted if anyone is interested in looking at it

5/5 in that tourney as of yet ... second best is 3.5/5 ... out of a total of 7 rounds, so another half point and i'm winning the tournement on tiebreak

[waterbat]

Nice sian! GL!

[regoarrarr]

I've been playing a few games of live chess. Wanted to share a few of them. Please go easy on me as I'm sure I made several bonehead moves in both of them. I have not yet ran them through Fritz though I probably will do that tomorrow

First one was last night - http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=451578633

Felt I was doing well in the early game, and went up a pawn at move 15 ( which I promptly blew ). In the mid-20s I probably missed some good moves - it was pretty open and I had a lot of pieces in play but made a bonehead 25. Nd5+ ?? losing a knight, then even worse 28. Re4, losing a bishop.

I think his 31. gxf3 was a mistake as it let me retake his bishop for a pawn. At this point we're in the end-game, though move-wise we weren't even halfway into this 78 move slugfest! He has rook + knight + 4 pawns to my rook + 3 pawns, so clearly he should win this. Not to mention I'm way down on time.

I even us up on pawns with 38. Rxb7 and we continue dancing around. I take another pawn on move 42 and a third on move 44, while he is trying to promote his f-pawn, but he misplayed it and I take the pawn on move 50. Rxf2! Now I try to promote one of my 3 pawns, but I'm running out of time (under a minute at this point probably, with nothing per-move). He plays 53. Kb3?? which lets me take his knight and by this time I'm definitely winning if I have enough time.

I promote my h-pawn on move 58. I play 60 Qh4?!, sacrificing my queen for his rook. This may not have been a great move but I really had no time to think of moves. After he takes my queen and I take his rook, we're in a rook+king end-game, which is actually one that I know fairly well. But do I know it enough to get it done in ~15 seconds?

BOOM! 78. Rb1#, checkmating him with 0.4 seconds left on my timer! I gotta tell you that was a euphoric feeling!!!

Next one was earlier today - http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=452162143

He played 2. Qh5 and I really need to figure out the best way to respond to these aggressive early-queen plays. I see them often playing in the dregs of chess.com (where I belong! ) - It seems like there should be a defined way to beat them back slowly, protecting things while still developing pieces. I screw it up though and after his 10. Qa8+!, he is up a rook + 2 pawns on me with a 3rd pawn on move 11. He declines my queen exchange, which I think was a mistake. Up that much in material I would think he'd want to simplify the end-game.

He castled queenside on move 17 and I open up his defenses by exchanging bishops on b2.

But my best move was 20. Rc8!!, sacrificing my knight to his pawn attack to threaten 22. Qxa3+! He wisely saw through that, moving his knight from a3 to c2, but I followed up with Qc6, threatening Qxc2+. He again moves his knight to protect c2, so I move my queen back to a8, threatening the original check on a3. He could have moved back to c2, which I think would have ended up in a 3-move draw?, but instead he moves 24. Rc1??, leading to my mate in 3.

Shhh don't tell anyone but I've won 7 games in a row

[GaiusMarius]

Hey there, if anyone is up for a game, feel free to send me a challenge (my username on chess.com is ReOsIr).

[Jkaen]

Just got above 1400 rating for the first time! (apart from my fake rating having won my first game)

So I guess all this practice and guidance is paying off

[Jkaen]

I've been playing a few games of live chess. Wanted to share a few of them. Please go easy on me as I'm sure I made several bonehead moves in both of them. I have not yet ran them through Fritz though I probably will do that tomorrow

First one was last night - http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=451578633

Felt I was doing well in the early game, and went up a pawn at move 15 ( which I promptly blew ). In the mid-20s I probably missed some good moves - it was pretty open and I had a lot of pieces in play but made a bonehead 25. Nd5+ ?? losing a knight, then even worse 28. Re4, losing a bishop.

I think his 31. gxf3 was a mistake as it let me retake his bishop for a pawn. At this point we're in the end-game, though move-wise we weren't even halfway into this 78 move slugfest! He has rook + knight + 4 pawns to my rook + 3 pawns, so clearly he should win this. Not to mention I'm way down on time.

I even us up on pawns with 38. Rxb7 and we continue dancing around. I take another pawn on move 42 and a third on move 44, while he is trying to promote his f-pawn, but he misplayed it and I take the pawn on move 50. Rxf2! Now I try to promote one of my 3 pawns, but I'm running out of time (under a minute at this point probably, with nothing per-move). He plays 53. Kb3?? which lets me take his knight and by this time I'm definitely winning if I have enough time.

I promote my h-pawn on move 58. I play 60 Qh4?!, sacrificing my queen for his rook. This may not have been a great move but I really had no time to think of moves. After he takes my queen and I take his rook, we're in a rook+king end-game, which is actually one that I know fairly well. But do I know it enough to get it done in ~15 seconds?

BOOM! 78. Rb1#, checkmating him with 0.4 seconds left on my timer! I gotta tell you that was a euphoric feeling!!!

Next one was earlier today - http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=452162143

He played 2. Qh5 and I really need to figure out the best way to respond to these aggressive early-queen plays. I see them often playing in the dregs of chess.com (where I belong! ) - It seems like there should be a defined way to beat them back slowly, protecting things while still developing pieces. I screw it up though and after his 10. Qa8+!, he is up a rook + 2 pawns on me with a 3rd pawn on move 11. He declines my queen exchange, which I think was a mistake. Up that much in material I would think he'd want to simplify the end-game.

He castled queenside on move 17 and I open up his defenses by exchanging bishops on b2.

But my best move was 20. Rc8!!, sacrificing my knight to his pawn attack to threaten 22. Qxa3+! He wisely saw through that, moving his knight from a3 to c2, but I followed up with Qc6, threatening Qxc2+. He again moves his knight to protect c2, so I move my queen back to a8, threatening the original check on a3. He could have moved back to c2, which I think would have ended up in a 3-move draw?, but instead he moves 24. Rc1??, leading to my mate in 3.

Shhh don't tell anyone but I've won 7 games in a row

Just looking quickly, I would say your first mistake in the long game was d5, leaving the e5 pawn hanging

As for the queen 2. Qh5 Nc6 would be fine

[Gustaran]

He played 2. Qh5 and I really need to figure out the best way to respond to these aggressive early-queen plays.

The Wayward Queen attack goes like this for Black: (sometimes bad players keep playing for cheap tactic against f7 with Qf3 and Qb3)

1.e4 e5
2.Qh5 Nc6
3.Bc4 g6
4.Qf3 Nf6
5.Qb3 Nd4
6.Bxf7+ Ke7
7.Qc4 b5
8.Qd3 Kxf7

[Jkaen]

Are any of you playing in the official chess.com vienna gambit tourney?

Currently 4-0 up but the way the games are atm I think I will get up with 6.5/10 which i think will not get me top of group (top from each group advances to next round).

Think I suffered from having too many games on the go quite often example is this game:
http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=64749196
Where on move 8 I thought to break the fork by exchanging bishops and then moving the queen. come move 9 I forgot all about that cunning plan and did a really stupid move losing the queen as all I reviewed was that the queen had just taken my bishop and was threatening a pawn!

[Azza]

I'm playing it (since even us non-members can play as many official tournaments as we want), have a 4-4 record so far which has me 2nd atm in my group. Played some good games, but also played a few howlers. Literally gave my queen away for nothing in one game.

[regoarrarr]

Thanks for the comments. Are there other suggestions for (free) analytic tools? From Gustaran's other thread, I just am using Chessbase Light 2009 with the Fritz6 "kibbitzer". That shows me moves that I missed if I replay through the whole game, but it doesn't analyze the whole game at once. I didn't know if there was another setting in CB or if that's something that you have to pay for.

On the first game, I can't believe I missed 5. Qa4+. Also missed forking his knight and rook with Be5 for several moves in a row , before finally playing it after I had screwed things up by moving my knight in the way . As I suspected, by move 30 Fritz has me at -11.09. Clawing back with 32 Rexd2, but on move 44 he had me in a "Mate in 17 ", starting with a fork of my king and rook. He really did miss SEVERAL mating opportunities when he was up a knight, which I guess is one of the benefits of playing people that aren't good (like me )

Eventually when he moved his knight out of the way allowing me to play 50. Rxe2 killing his last pawn, I had evened things up (0.00). I missed a quicker mate due to my time issues.