This game was played on the third round of the WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that was held at the FIDE Online Arena March 18th 2015. I had gathered two wins from the two games before this one and things seemed to go well for me. This was the second time I faced this opponent, in the first game I was able to hold a draw with the white pieces and this time I lost with the black pieces. I think we have faced each other now four times and the score is still in favor of andrei2015 but in the two games after this we played two draws. So, three draws and one loss, something I might want to change if we play again. Then again I have been happy with the draws, so if I can't win in the next game either, it won't be a bad thing to get a draw... All four games have featured almost the same opening but some minor differences each time. Yesterday I played probably the best tournament I have played at the FIDE Online Arena so far, I managed to win my second WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament but this time I won all my five games! Something that I have not been able to do in any tournament before that one. My performance rating in the tournament was 2413!! It is the highest performance rating that I ever remember of having. Chances are that this might be once in a lifetime thing but I do what I can to repeat this success or even improve on it. I have added three mate in twos, one mate in six and one mate in eight today. Until tomorrow, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
31 Mar 2015
C97 Closed Spanish Game: Chigorin Defence: 11.d4 Qc7, sidelines (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.h3 d6 9.c3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.d5)
30 Mar 2015
D00 1.d4 d5: Unusual lines (1.d4 d5 2.a3)
The game below was played in the first round of the WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that was played March 17th 2015 at the FIDE Online Arena. This was by no means an opening theoretical master piece as the game went out of theory on move two. What surprised me was the fact that some quite decent players have played in a similar manner for three first moves. So the move 4.b4 is a novelty that no one had played in my reference database that consists of over 6 million games. I have thought about removing some games from the database but I am not sure if I should do it. It is interesting that there are some games that I have played as well, none of them have appeared as reference games in any of the analysed games that I have posted here. I am happy in a way that those games have not been there but there have been games from people that have much lower rating than I have. Those lower rated games I have thought about getting out of the database because what would I need them for. I am not sure why they are added in the database in the first place but I guess there is a good enough reason to do that. I have also added one mate in two, three mate in three and one mate in thirteen.
29 Mar 2015
B56 Classical Sicilian: Unusual Lines (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Nb3 a6)
The game you see below now is from the fourth round of the third WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that I have played at the FIDE Online Arena. This tournament was a good provider of content for this blog, let us see if it continues on the final round as well. The final round game I will post quite likely tomorrow. I would like to get back to my correspondence games for a bit as some games that interest me have finished, for example, I have lost my first chess960 game and would like to take a look at that. I think I suffered my first loss in my 19th chess960 game. It was a nice run while it lasted. The game below I think was one of my best during this tournament as I did only small inaccuracies but no clear mistakes in my opinion. My assumption that I could quite easily hold my rating in rapid games over 1700 for 50 games was proven wrong today as I lost one point too many in the tournament I played today and now my rapid elo rating at the FIDE Online Arena is 1699... I guess I will try my luck with blitz games next. I think I should avoid playing in tournaments unless there is a rating limitation, in order to better ensure that I would not lose that many rating points with each loss. The problem with blitz is that the game requirement is 100. I think it is much more unlikely for me to keep my rating in blitz for 100 games than it is for 50 rapid games, so the odds are not good but I will test how it goes. I have added two mate in twos, two mate in threes and one mate in five today.
28 Mar 2015
C69 Spanish Game: Exchange Variation with 5.0-0 f6 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.O-O f6 6.d4 exd4 7.Qxd4 Qxd4 8.Nxd4)
As new opening variations keep coming from these 15 minute tournament games, they keep getting into the highlight of my daily posts. This is from the third round of the third WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that I have played at the FIDE Online Arena. My poorly played games continued in this third round as well. The positions in this game were quite good for me at times but like so many times before, I self-destructed and let the good positions die out. I think my opponent in this game was one of those underrated elo players who had their unmonitored elo much higher than official elo rating. Due to some distractions I could not play more rapid games at the FIDE Online Arena yesterday but I should be able to play more today. I do not feel, at least for now, at all tired and I hope that it continues until I have played that tournament. I still have quite a lot of moves to make in my correspondence games that I would like to do today. I have managed to decrease my game load quite a bit from my most active times as I only have 246 games in progress anymore. That would be much less of course if I would not start new games from time to time. Sometimes I would like to start even more games and truly have several hundred games in progress at the same time. Luckily I have avoided that quite well so far... I have added one mate in two, one mate in three, two mate in four and one mate in six today to the puzzle pages of this blog.
Game number two. This was played in the second round of the WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that was played at the FIDE Online Arena on March 30th 2015. After two rounds I had two points but there were still more to come in this tournament. This has been the only tournament that I have played at the FIDE Online Arena that I have with a score of 5 out of 5! Maybe there will be more someday but that would mean I would need to start playing these again and at the moment I do not feel like playing tournaments there, only challenges.
27 Mar 2015
C01 French: Exchange Variation (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.exd5 exd5 5.Be2 Bd6 6.Nf3 O-O 7.O-O)
This is from the same WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament as the game I shared with you yesterday. This was played in the second round of that tournament. I had a decent start for the tournament as I got a win and a draw from the first two games. The games themselves were not all that good though, from my perspective that is. I ended up being quite lucky in both of these games as I could have easily lost them both, had my opponents been able to take an advantage from my mistakes better. I am currently going through these 15 minute games as I kind of want to know how to improve my game in them. I face the same opponents almost every tournament so I can maybe prepare something against them. I am still missing 29 rapid games from the required 50 games for the title. I managed to get four monitored elo games in the tournament I played yesterday which was great as I have never before managed to get those on every round. What was not that great though was the fact that my rating stayed the same as it was before the tournament. It is of course better than losing my rating points but I still need to play my back against the wall as one really bad loss might reset the game counter. With my luck that happens just before I would get that 50 games played... I have added three mate in threes, one mate in five and one mate in seven today. When I looked up the opening variation for this game, I noticed something interesting, in all the sources I looked at, there was the same little mistake in the move numbering. In every single one the moves were marked 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 3.exd5, even though the last one should be 4.exd5. I guess there was a copy paste like error somewhere along the way and no one who did the copying did not correct the mistake...
Game number two. The game below was played in the third round of the WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament at the FIDE Online Arena. This loss was my first in this tournament and I had won my first two games. I have found it difficult to play against safmoon and this game was no exception. I do remember winning a game against safmoon, at least once, so I can win occasionally but I need to play my best in order to do so.
26 Mar 2015
D46 Semi-Slav: 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3, Black avoids the Meran (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.c4 c6 4.Nc3 e6 5.e3 Bd6 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 O-O 8.O-O Nbd7 9.e4 e5 10.d5)
The game below was played in the first round of the third WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that I have played at the FIDE Online Arena. I played quite well in this game for some time and then I started to mess things up a bit. I won only due to the fact my opponent lost on time. That being said I think that the engine was a bit too optimistic in its evaluation of the position where the game ended. It does not even show a convincing path to victory for White before it thinks that White is completely winning. In my arrogant opinion Black's d-pawn is quite strong and offers nice counterplay. I may look Black's position too optimistically as I was playing with the black pieces in this game but unless there is something other in the position than winning a pawn for White, then I can't really say that White is winning. Maybe further study of the end position is required to give a better evaluation but this will do for now.
If you have been visiting this blog before, you have undoubtedly seen some chances in it. I have today tried different layouts and other things in order to make this more friendly to mobile devices but it might be far from perfect still. I do like the old layout in some ways better but this layout has its own good aspects as well. There might be some changes in the near future as well but the content will always be accessible in one way or another. I have added two mate in ones, one mate in two, one mate in three and one mate in six today. Until tomorrow, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
25 Mar 2015
E43 Nimzo-Indian: Rubinstein: 4...b6 (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Nf3)
In this rare occasion I am able to publish two games at once in an opening variation I have not previously covered. This first game was played in the 2014 August Grand Seven Fourteen II tournament. The tournament started August 11th 2014 and it is still ongoing. Only two players are still in the fight for the first place and I am one of them. This 21 player tournament features players from beginners to more advanced players and everything in between. Even though I am currently the highest rated player in this tournament, it may change quite quickly to something else as people play lot of simultaneous games and ratings are calculated immediately after the games end.
Even though missing one tournament in the FIDE Online Arena does slow my game requirement for the title a bit, I still think it is wise for me to not play today as I am quite tired. I hope that I am more rested tomorrow and can play well so that I could get my monitored elo up a bit again. It is still too close to 1700 and under no circumstances should I allow it to drop below it. That would mean that I would need another 50 rapid games for the title as the counter would reset at that point. The fact that I am tired is not the only reason that I should playing today as I still need to move in lot of my correspondence games today and it would be nice to go to sleep a bit earlier than yesterday. I have added one mate in one, two mate in five, one mate in seven and one mate in ten today.
24 Mar 2015
B00 Goldsmith Defense (1.e4 h5)
This is one of those offbeat openings that I would not recommend to anyone. There are much better ways to answer 1.e4, for instance, 1...c6, 1...c5, 1...e5 and 1...e6 that should get you a better game than if you play 1...h5. As there are players of all skill levels in the database that I am using as the reference database for these analysis, there are examples even of this opening. In that database there are currently over 6 million games and I get updates to it every week for another 5000+ games. The game below was played in the first round of the 2014 September Glacial Super Casual I tournament. There are eight groups of eight players in round one and only the winner of the group will advance to the next round. Which is probably a good thing considering the slow pace of the tournament. 21 days are reserved for each move and if you do go over that time limit, there are also 21 days in the bank. So you could spend maximum of six weeks thinking about your move. Vacation time would actually increase even that time... Not that you would need to take vacation time with these long time controls. My opponent in this game is actually one that I have played most games against at Red Hot Pawn. Ended up in the same tournaments and same groups for some reason. I have added four mate in ones and one mate in five today. Any feedback you can give me is always much appreciated!
23 Mar 2015
C67 Spanish Game: Berlin Defence, 4.O-O Nxe4 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4 5.Re1 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.Nxe5 Be7 8.d4 O-O 9.Nc3)
My second tournament at the FIDE Online Arena did not start at all the same way as the first one did. This game was played in the first round of the WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that was played at FOA March 15th 2015. The game below was my first loss in the tournaments played there and many have followed after this. All the tournaments that I have played there have been with 15 minute time controls, except the one I played yesterday and to my surprise it did not feature any monitored games and thus my game requirement did not change by that tournament. So in some ways it was a waste of my time. This game was not played all that well by me and I wish I had seen the move 26.Bf6! as that would have been a nice move to play in the game. Today I have updated the mate in one, four, five, nine and ten puzzle pages by adding one more puzzle to them.
The first time I made clearly a wrong decision in this game was in the position below after my opponent's 14th move Nxe3. For some reason I decided to take back on e3 with the pawn. The move looks really horrible now that I look at it, but I guess I understand the reason why I played it. I am assuming that I wanted to keep my current threats to the bishop and to the pawn on c7. Unfortunately those two threats are easily dealt with as THUMATI could just move the bishop to b6.
There might have been another reason behind the move 15.fxe3 and it is that I might have been worried about Bd6 if I take on e3 with my bishop. It would not have been as dangerous as I might have thought at first during the game. While my 15th move was the starting point for my downhill, it was not the losing move. The losing move of the game I played in the position below after 17...Rfe8.
I played 18.Rad1 and most likely realised my mistake right after I had made that move. I can't really remember all that clearly anymore, but if I did not understand my mistake before my opponent made the next move, I certainly understood the mistake after the move 18...Bg4 had appeared on the board. I continued what may have seemed like a pointless resistance after the blunder, but then we reached the position below after 24.Rg1.
In that position THUMATI played 24...Bd4, going from a winning position to a losing position. I replied with 25.Bxd8 and things looked going my way. THUMATI continued with an interesting idea 25...Rxd3. At this point both players probably were under some time pressure. Unfortunately for me I was not able to find either of the two good moves in the position, 26.Bf6 or 26.Qc8. It would have been a decent idea to play 26.cxd3, but the two aforementioned moves were winning while 26.cxd3 was only good enough for a clear advantage. Instead of winning the game, I blundered it away by playing 26.h3??
22 Mar 2015
C99 Closed Spanish Game: Chigorin Defence, 11.d4 Qc7 12.Nbd2 cxd4 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O b5 6.Bb3 Be7 7.Re1 O-O 8.h3 d6 9.c3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.Nbd2 cxd4 13.cxd4)
This was played on the second round of the Smaller Tournament. I advanced from the first round by winning group 4 with a half point difference to the player who finished second. Only the winner or winners of each group will advance from every round. I was able to get 6.5 points out of the possible 8, on round one. This second round has already gone worse than the previous round for me, as I have lost two games out of the five that have finished so far. My losses were against rudobrody, who is clearly the highest rated player of the group and he is also very likely to win the group and advance to the next round. The player who is currently second, _Henry_, has theoretical chances to tie rudobrody in points and in doing so would also be able to advance to the third round. I know for sure that I am not able to tie rudobrody anymore, because that would mean that I would have to win all my remaining games and he would need to lose the last game he has in progress. Which is very unlikely because his opponent has not been online in months...
When compared to the first game in this post, the first new move in this game was seen when I played 13...Nc4. In the first game andrei2015 played the move 13...Nc6. My novelty, when considering the games I have played in this variation, was not a good one. It would have been a step towards difficulties, had my opponent replied accurately. However, my move was not a clear mistake and only very precise play may have led to an advantage close to a clear advantage for my opponent. Rudobrody played the move 14.b3 and my opponent was only slightly better. 14.Nxc4 was the strongest move for my opponent. In reply to 14.b3 I played 14...Nb6, which caused me more trouble than I had experienced previously in the game. The position after 14.b3 can be seen below.
Rudobrody answered with the move 15.Bb2 and my opponent was very close to a clear advantage. My more significant downhill started with my 15th move exd4. Only decent move for me would have been 15...Nbd7. Rudobrody played a good move, 16.Rc1, in response to 15...exd4. With my 16th move Bb7 I went to a position that could not be salvaged anymore. I struggled on for a few moves, but when it came time to make my 20th move, I understood the futility of continuing my struggle and I resigned.
21 Mar 2015
C02 French: Advance Variation (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.a3 Bd7 7.b4 cxd4 8.cxd4 Nge7 9.Bb2 Nf5 10.Be2)
The game you are about to see now is from the second round of French 2014 tournament. In the first round of this tournament I was in a group where there were two titled players, one FIDE Master and one International Master. From that group I was able to advance to the second group where there is only one titled player, a National Master. In this second round I am in a group that has five players in it. Each round top three players will advance to the next round and others are eliminated from the tournament. Even though I am currently in third place, I doubt that it continues to be so, long enough that I would be able to go the third round that is. I have also added three mate in ones, one mate in two and one mate in six puzzle today.
20 Mar 2015
C96 Closed Spanish Game: Chigorin Defence: 11.d4, replies other than 11...Qc7 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.d3 Be7 6.O-O b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 Na5 9.Bc2 c5 10.h3 O-O 11.Re1)
The game below is the second game I have played at FIDE Online Arena. My first game might have been a good game from me but this second game started to feature more mistakes. Thinking time in this game was 15 minutes. The thing I have learned in these 15 minute games that I have played at FIDE Online Arena is that I may have problems in the time usage. I either start to use too much of it or too little. In the first six games there I think that my head was in the right place and I could use the time properly. Yesterday I was able to play three more games towards the title requirement, which was nice but I also lost over 50 rating points and that is starting to be a near catastrophe. In the tournament yesterday I faced a player whose monitored elo was a bit over 1300. If that would have been her true rating, it would not have mattered that much but her unmonitored elo was above 2200... I of course lost and lost a lot of rating points because it was the monitored elo that was used in the game. If this would be something that rarely happens, it would not be so annoying but it seems to happen almost every tournament there. Well, in the couple of tournaments I have played there so far that is. All my opponents who have won a game against me, have deserved to win the games as they have played better than I have, I am not questioning that. It is just that the way I lose rating points that annoys me. Oh yeah, before I forget, yesterday when I posted C20 English Opening: The Whale, it was 500th game to be seen in this blog!! I noticed it only today hence the late announcement. After today there are 493 analysed chess games here and 9 analysed chess960 games. It is likely that by the end of the year, there will be at least 1000 games here. I have added one mate in three, one mate in four, one mate in five, one mate in seven and one mate in eight puzzle today.
19 Mar 2015
C20 1.e4 e5: Unusual White second moves (1.e4 e5 2.c4 Nf6 3.d3)
The game below was played in a team match called PFCC YEAR END CHALLENGE-December 14. It was a 27 board match between PHILIPPINES' FINEST Chess Club and The Toon Gang. I played board ten in this match for the The Toon Gang. Our opponent won the match with a score of 28 - 26. As the other game that I played in this match I have already shared previously, you might have seen the same information there. This match started December 11th 2014 and concluded March 12th 2015. Thinking time was 3 days for each move. This match was quite fruitful to me as it brought two opening variations that were previously unseen in this blog, so I can only thank my opponent for his choice of opening play.
I previously thought that it would be easy enough for me to maintain a rating over 1700 at FIDE Online Arena but as there are some people who are clearly lower rated than they should be, it might be more difficult task than I first thought. Not only that but as I have played mainly rapid tournaments there, I might get only two official games played per day and I can't be sure on which round those games will come. Well, it is not always sure that I even get one official game played in a tournament. Official games I call the games that affect my monitored elo that is. Only those monitored elo games increase the game requirement for the title. If I had more free time to play, I might get these games faster but it is not a likely thing to happen in the near future. I have added one mate in two, one mate in three, two mate in four and one mate in five puzzle today. Until tomorrow, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
Game number two. This was played in the second round of an over the board tournament that was held at Turku between December 7th 2001 and December 9th 2001. It is sometimes rather painful to look at my earliest recorded games because they were really bad. I may find solace on the fact that I have improved my game quite a lot over the years. In order to complete my chess legacy in this blog, I have to include all my games whether they are good or not. After I had played two games in this tournament, I still had not gathered any points. It was an uphill battle for the most part back then and I ended up losing most of my games. I am happy that those days are long gone and I have become a winning player, well for the most part that is.
18 Mar 2015
Chess960 SP869
This game was played in a team match called Chess 960: Russia Central Federal District vs Fair tournament players. I played board 12 in this match for Fair tournament players. We did all we could in this match but our opponent ended up winning it with a score of 17,5 - 14,5. We lost both games on board 9 due to timeouts so that was a pity but otherwise well fought match. The match was played on 16 boards. This was a Chess960 major update day compared to my previous posts about it. In addition to these two games I have added three more games to my post Chess960 SP50 and one more game to my post Chess960 SP71. While I added those games I noticed something interesting and that is the fact that even though the pgn4web board generator says the game is too long, still the automatically generated HTML code seems to contain all the necessary info I need in the game. This means that I might change my Chess960 games that do not have analysed versions in this blog into analysed versions because it seems to work at least for now. That I might do later today or tomorrow, depending on how much time I have after the tournament I am going to participate in later today.
This second game is from the same match as the game above. Hmm, when I tried to use the pgn4web board generator for this game, it said I went over the allowed character limit but as it still seemed like it had all the necessary info in the game I tried to put it here and still seems to work... So I placed the analysed version in this blog. Maybe I should retry with the other games aswell.
17 Mar 2015
C10 French with 3.Nc3: Unusual Black 3rd moves and 3...dxe4 (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 c5)
The game below was played in the 2014 August Grand Seven Fourteen III tournament. As all my hopes of winning this tournament have gone away long ago, I now try to get only a decent score from my remaining games and improve my rating. I remember vaguely that this game was quite difficult for me to play for some reason, especially around move 39 or thereabouts. I was not sure at all of the correct plan that I should follow. I made some really bad moves few moves later but luckily for me, they were not bad enough to lose the game. I have added one mate in three, five, seven, eight and ten puzzle today.
16 Mar 2015
B40 Sicilian: 2...e6, Unusual lines (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.b3 d5 4.exd5 exd5)
The game I am sharing now is one that was played last year at Red Hot Pawn in a tournament called 2014 September Grand Seven Fourteen III. The games I still have left in this tournament might very easily become the longest that I have ever played. So far the games have lasted a bit over six months and my longest game ever was a bit over 11 months so still a few months to go for that but they seem to progress relaxed enough fashion that they might still be ongoing several months from now. Not all of them but some might be in progress 11 months after they have started. I am not going to intentionally prolong them obviously and my move speed at Red Hot Pawn has maybe increased a bit since my busiest times. I have not started any games or tournaments there for some months I think so my game load should ease a bit eventually. As I still have 259 games in progress, this is still quite a busy time for me.
I have now played two tournaments at FIDE Online Arena and both were WORLD OPEN RAPID tournaments, the first one was a four round Swiss tournament and the second a five round Swiss. The first one went better than I would have dreamed of as I got 3,5 out of 4 and won the first tournament with a performance rating of 2069. The second one that I played I managed to be quite the opposite from the first one. I lost on the first round to a player who was rated 1607 or somewhere around that rating and then on the second round I lost to a player who was rated 1400... In my defense though he might have been quite good since he had a winning position against a player who was rated almost 2200. That game ended in a draw as the higher rated player was a bit lucky in the end. The next three rounds went down the drain for me as well because all my remaining opponents had logged off for some reason. I did get 3 out of 5 but not because of my ability to play chess. Due to the horrible first two rounds my performance rating was in the second tournament only 704... Quite a large drop from the previous day. Admittedly I was able to concentrate on the games better in the first tournament but still no excuses for the disaster that happened yesterday, the two opponents that I faced just were playing better chess than I was then, simple as that. I have not checked if there is another tournament scheduled for today around the same time if there is, I might need to take yet another try of getting the required games played. The games that are required for the title that is. I will start posting those FIDE Online Arena games sometime this week. I have added two mate in twos, one mate in nine and two mate in eleven puzzles today. This post was renamed June 5th 2015 because I noticed that it had the wrong name.
Game number two. This was played in the first round of the 2014 September Glacial Super Casual I tournament at Red Hot Pawn. This tournament started September 13th 2014 and the first round is still going June 5th 2015 and there is no sign of it ending anytime soon. I am currently leading my group but all eight players in the group have theoretical chances of winning the tournament, or at least sharing the win. The slow progress can be explained by the really long thinking times that this tournament has. Timeout is 21 days and you also have 21 days in your timebank. The game below ended in a nice tactical blow.
15 Mar 2015
B44 Sicilian: Taimanov: 5.Nb5 (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e6 5.c3)
Yesterday I got a bit excited of the fact that I can now get a FIDE title quite easily. Well, actually most people can get a some kind of title without that much effort. As the new FIDE titles address players in the 1100-2000 rating range it should not be all that difficult to get a title if you happen to want one. I am one those who really want one, so I started playing yesterday the game requirement for the title. In order to get the titles you need to play 50 rapid games or 100 blitz games or 150 bullet games. If you want to get a certain title, for example, Arena International Master, you need to maintain a rating of 1700 or above for the amount of games that are required for the game speed. All the games are to be played at FIDE Online Arena in order to qualify for that title. I started to get the rapid games going yesterday but out of the six games I played, only two were classified as proper elo games. I think this might have something to do with my opponents not having an official elo rating yet, not sure but two of the tournament games were counted for the 50 games and two were not. I am trying to get the Arena Grandmaster title later but as my rating at the moment only qualifies for Arena International master title, I might get that when those 50 games are completed, provided of course that I will keep my rating high enough. I think there should not be any reason why I would not be able to do that unless I started blundering many games in a row. My current rapid rating is 1839 and just need to try and climb up the ratings toward 2000 and once there keep it there for 50 games.
The game I am sharing with you today is one that was played at Red Hot Pawn in a tournament called 2014 August Grand Seven Fourteen II. I am currently second in the tournament, seven points behind the current leader but I can still overtake him if everything goes well in the remaining games. There are 21 players in this tournament and the rating range is 922-1840, so a lot of difference there, maybe a bit too much to my liking. One of the reasons I might only start in the future tournaments with some rating restrictions on them. I have added one mate in three, two mate in five, one mate in six and one mate in nine puzzle today.
14 Mar 2015
B73 Sicilian Dragon: Classical System without 9.Nb3 (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be2 Bg7 7.Be3 Nf6 8.O-O O-O 9.h3 Bd7 10.Qd2)
This is a game that was played in the 2014 August Grand Seven Fourteen III tournament at Red Hot Pawn. I am currently the third highest rated player in that tournament, with a rating of 1827. I do hold still some chances for second place but it does not need much for those dreams to be crushed as my main rival for that place only requires two points from his remaining games to go out my reach. After that happens, third place is my next goal, though in worst case even that can slip away from my grasp. Well maybe that is not the worst case actually because unless I get four more points at least, then I drop to fifth place but at least that should be the lowest I can go anymore in the standings. Agreeably there is a quite huge difference in ratings in this game but sometimes even that does not guarantee the win for the stronger player as I will be able show that in one of my most embarrassing losses sometime in the future. I have added one mate in one, two, five, six and seven puzzle today. Thank you all who have spent some of their time visiting my blog, it is much appreciated!
13 Mar 2015
D55 Queen's Gambit Declined: 4.Bg5 Be7: Lines without ...h6 and 6...h6 7.Bxf6 (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.Nc3 O-O 6.e3 b6 7.cxd5 exd5 8.Bd3 Bb7 9.O-O Nbd7 10.Rc1 c5 11.Bb1)
Once again I go back to one of my earliest over the board games and this was played in the same tournament as the previous over the board games I have shared. This is from round four and and my fourth loss in the tournament, it was quite hard for me to get any points in my earliest games. Luckily it has changed a bit over the years. Still I reckon that I have lost more than won in over the board games as even though I can't really remember exact statistics from the games, I do remember that I have only rarely scored more than 50% in the tournaments that I have played. I have, however, managed to get 4,5 out of 5 points two times if my memory serves me right and a few times I have got 4 out of 5. Whenever I have had chances for getting the maximum score in a tournament, the last round game has always been too tough to win for me.
I am surprised to see how well I played back then as I look at the game now, I mean I might have lost the game but it did show some promise of something better in the future. I did manage to get my rating up 283 points in one year or something like that after my climb from 1300 or so started. It has been up to this day the biggest rating climb I have had and most likely the biggest I will ever have again. I have added one mate in one, one mate in three, one mate in four, one mate in six and one mate in seven puzzle today to the exercises section of the blog.