Mysterious Rook Moves

Two rounds of the MCC Thanksgiving Swiss have come and gone. Before playing my second round game last night I was wondering if I should have played in the next section up, but I think my play in that game answered that question for me.

I’m getting ahead of myself though.

First, the games so far:
http://www.njord.org/~steve/mychess/mcc1106.htm

Ok, in round 1 I had black against young Jack Hulton. I’m not good at figuring the ages of small children, but I’d guess he’s sub 10. He’s rated somewhere in the 400 to 500 range, and the outcome of the game was about what you might expect. I wasted some moves with my bishop in the late middle game, but I wasn’t thinking as hard as I would have been in a tighter game.

Round 2 had me paired against Dan Callahan, 1180 (and top seed in the U1350 section for this tournament). I’d been looking forward to the game all day, and felt pretty confident that, as long as I was careful, I had a good chance to win. Imagine my shock, sadness and disgust when I got my queen and rook forked on move 9. If I’m going to keep playing the bishop’s opening with an early f4, I’m going to have to get a little better at protecting my kingside….

I did my best not to get despondent, but for a few minutes I sort of sat there and told myself that maybe I’m not as much better than the 871 that sits by my name as I’d like to think. I pulled it together and set about trying to make sure that my opponent’s knight (now sitting at h1) wouldn’t get away, and telling myself that being down the exchange means almost nothing in a game between class E players.

10 moves after I dropped my rook, my opponent dropped his to discovered check after playing an ill advised f6. Still, I wasn’t on my game, as I should have taken his bishop at b6 rather than the pawn at c7 when discovering the attack on the king, but I was so full of thanks for whatever power caused black to find nearly the worst move on the board that I didn’t think for very long about how I was going to exploit it.

For my opponent, having a won game fall back to something more even was clearly a psychological blow. His body language definitely looked bad at that point. We exchanged a ton of material off and ended up in a fairly locked up endgame that was, I think, better for white, though black still had some chances. He spent a lot of time harassing my king and rook with his nearly-trapped knight, giving me plenty of chances to get forked again, but as so often happens my senses were much sharper after having been down for a while. I kept his threats in mind and played along with the rook-king-knight dance until it was exhausted and set about trying to think about promoting some pawns. That turned out not to be necessary as black played the losing Nh3 and saved me the trouble.

This is definitely a game that I didn’t deserve to win, but he deserved to win less. I’m not sure now which section I belong in….when I don’t drop pieces I think I’m not out of place in the 1300-1600 section, but when I can’t see 1 move tactics I play like an 800 or worse. Still, I stand to learn more if I play against higher rated players and avoid the kids down in the 500 range.

I have to take a bye next week (wife’s birthday) so I’ll be off until the final round of this tournament on the 28th. At that point I should get paired against the winner of the top matchup this week, and play for a share of first place. Maybe that game will help me figure out where I belong.

Until then, I clearly need to get back to the tactics. I really haven’t been making progress with CTB lately. Life keeps getting in the way. I can find time to play chess, but have a hard time finding the time to really study, and if I don’t actually work at it I’m not going to improve. Games are important, but don’t seem to be helping me train out my bad habits.

First, the games:
http://www.njord.org/~steve/mychess/bu2006.htm

Second, a warning:
Only game 2 is really worth looking at.

I played in the U1600 section, which is really where I belong at this point, but since it was the bottom section for the tournament there were a ton of small children who were at their first tournaments. I played first timers in rounds 1 and 3 and destroyed them. I didn’t really learn much from these games and both ended with my having used between 5 and 10 minutes of clock time.

In round 4 I took a bye as my wife and I had a dinner party to attend, but in round 2 I played Nicholas Lesieur. Nicholas is rated 1440 or so. I didn’t play badly, but I didn’t play interestingly either. Ultimately I lost a piece to a pin I didn’t see coming, but I think I was strategically worse for most of the game. This was my first use of the Scandinavian in a serious game. I want to learn it because I’m tired of trying to be ready for all the different white tries after 1 … e5. I really want to be driving the direction of the game, and e5 doesn’t let me do that. I also think that the Nf6 Scandinavian is likely to be something that my opponents aren’t particularly ready to face. Clearly, though, I need to spend more time figuring out how to see tactics coming my direction than I need to spend booking up on e4 d5.

Anyone have a clue on what the performance rating is for 2/3 vs unr-unr-1440? [Edit: it turns out to be something like 1000, and I actually lost ground with my +1 score here!]

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Making the switch from the Boylston Chess Club to the MetroWest Chess Club caused a two week layoff because November started on a Wednesday.

Also, I’ve been busy.

Last night I played in round 2 of the MCC Thanksgiving Swiss tournament, and last weekend I played in the BU Open. I’ll give each of these events their own post, I think, to keep this one from getting too long.

The cutoff for the December USCF ratings supplement was before either of these events started, however, so I now know that my next official rating will be 1120. Much more respectable than the 871 I’ve been playing with for the past few months, but I’ll be sorry to lose some of the element of surprise when playing 11 and 1200 players.