Mysterious Rook Moves

In the fourth and final round I had black against Alex Jones, who is right around the same level that I am. I’m still trying to learn a new opening as black, and got myself into serious trouble right at the start of this one. Fortunately I was able to hang on, inflict some positional weaknesses in my opponents position, and work it back to a draw.

I probably should have had better….

From the final position in the game, with fresh eyes it now looks to me like I should have been able to win. My opponent offered the draw and my thought process was more or less as follows:
1. I’m lucky not to have lost this game
2. My chess has been pretty awful at times tonight
3. In this position, I’m certainly not worse, and maybe am slightly better, but I don’t see a clear path to victory
4. I’ve been playing chess for nearly 4 hours, I’m tired, I’m likely to blow this if I continue

So I took the draw. In hindsight, I think the thought process should have been:
1. The position is more or less safe, and by playing a few more moves I’m unlikely to be any worse off and maybe I’ll be able to see further or a plan will become clear
2. The top board in the section had already finished with a draw, so the leader of the section already had 3.5 points and I needed a win in this game to tie, so I should have pressed for a win even if it cost me and I ended up losing
3. I’ll never improve my endgame play without actually playing the endgames I reach, so I should probably play in general and only take a draw in a clearly drawn position. Why be afraid to lose?

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So, 3/4 points on two wins with white and two draws with black in my new opening….both of which easily could or should have been losses. Overall, a good tournament, and it pushed my rating back over 1500, which isn’t super important to me, but it’s nice anyway.

Metrowest Chess Club’s Thanksgiving Swiss starts this Tuesday night!

Round 3 was played last night and for the first time in a couple of months I was paired against someone rated over 200 points higher than I am. A detailed discussion of the USCF rating system (and my issues with it) is coming later, but for those of you who aren’t familiar with ELO systems, but for now just know that this implies that if the ratings system is well calibrated, this opponent should beat me about 76% of the time.

I had white, though, and that tends to be quite an advantage for me. I ended up winning the game, and I’m very happy about that, but this was one of those games where you win, go home and look over the game, and realize you ought to have lost. I never know what to make of that. Should I feel satisfied about the win? Should I be upset that I willingly played into lines that were completely losing without even knowing it? I’m really not sure how I feel about this. Many of the games I have won have contained a position where my opponent could have beaten me with reasonable play.

I guess this is just the nature of the chess beast, and I’m always going to make mistakes….as is often said of chess, and low level chess especially: the winner is usually the one who makes the second to last major mistake.

This game was no exception.

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So, 3 out of 4 rounds are in the bank and I’m sitting on 2.5 points. Next week I’m provisionally paired against another player with 2.5 points who is rated 1600. I’m scheduled to have white again, which will help. There’s 1 player with 3/3 and he’s paired against another player with 2.5, so if I win and the 3/3 draws or loses, I can tie for first in the group, which would be nice. I haven’t come in first in a tournament at the MCC since December of 2006 when I was beating up on 10 year olds in the under 1400 section…

The transition to wordpress is pretty much done and I finally had some time to sit down and annotate some recent games, so here we are. The October tournament at the Metrowest Chess Club is half way done, and so far I have a win and a draw. Also, a quick warning to anyone reading this via RSS in Google Reader, Google Reader won’t display the flash chessboards, so you won’t be able to see the games unless you click through to the actual blog.

In round 1 I had white against a player rated between 4 and 500 points lower than me. I got a win in reasonably clean fashion.

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In round 2 I had a black against a player of about the same rating as me. I’ve been really tired of the Scandinavian Defense, so this was my first use of the Modern Defense in a serious tournament game. It was a total mess, though not because of the opening. To be honest, we were both lucky to get a draw in this game, but I was luckier, as I gave him many more winning chances than he gave me.

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I’ve played 17 tournament games since coming back from my chess hiatus, and I’m finally getting back into it, but I’m missing way too many simple tactical ideas. I guess I need to do more tactics puzzles, but they’re just not as interesting as reading about strategic ideas. It’s a hobby and it’s supposed to be fun, but….is it more fun to read what I want to read and then have an unsatisfying performance, or do somewhat more boring preparation and play a better game when the time comes?