MCC Thanksgiving Swiss (halftime)

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.