This is another around ten year old game but the analysis is done only recently. I wonder how good I would be in this game if I had analysed my games right after I had finished them or at least in the same week. Analyzing games only after a decade has gone by is maybe a bit too slow progress rate but there might still be something to learn from the old games. I have managed to decrease my game count from 290 to 277 so maybe I am not that hopeless case after all. That being said, I still have one tournament that has not started yet which will increase the amount of games I play a bit again. I have updated puzzles from mate in ones to mate in six moves today and all in between. I have also started typing about chess basics but it will take me a bit more time to get it in the shape I want to get it before I consider it something I want to publish. There will be quite a few games still from my Red Hot Pawn games that I will publish before going at least briefly back to my Chess.com games.
30 Nov 2014
A42 Modern Defence: Averbakh Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c4 d6 4.Nc3 g6 5.d4 exd4 6.Nxd4 Bg7 7.Be3 Nge7 8.Nxc6)
29 Nov 2014
D06 Queen's Gambit: Symmetrical and Baltic Defences (1.c4 d5 2.cxd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd8 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.d4 e6 6.e4 Bb4 7.Bd3 Nc6)
Yesterday I managed to get a very good draw in my correspondence chess game against a FM Juergen Kaufeld, his Online Chess rating at Chess.com is 2456 and mine is currently 1910. I will post that game analysed sometime in the future. This year has been the best year for me against titled players, never before have I managed to not only draw against a FIDE Master but also beat two International Masters, IM Aleksei Holmsten in an over the board blitz game and the young Polish IM Kacper Drozdowski in a Online Chess game at Chess.com!! Before this year, the highest titled player that I had beaten was a Finnish FM Tapio Salo and that was some years ago in a OTB blitz tournament. Both of those over the board victories came when I flagged my opponent but where I did manage to play quite well for the most part of the game. The game I am sharing with you now is from my early chess playing years. At the time when this game was played I had played my first tournament only a bit over three years ago. Well, I consider my so called chess career to have started around 2001 with my first tournament appearance albeit I had played chess before that to some extent but only some practice games. I have updated today mate in one, two, four and five pages.
28 Nov 2014
C20 1.e4 e5: Unusual White second moves (1.e4 e5 2.d3 Nc6 3.g3)
I have kept climbing back up to where I once was in Chess.com's Online Chess ratings. I think I am 75 points behind my peak rating at the moment so I still have work cut out for me in order to reach new heights but if the games keep ending the way they have it should be only a matter of time when I get back to 1974 or somewhere around there. I have only moved in a couple of my games today and after I made a huge blunder which might very well mean the first loss for me in a Chess960 game, I thought I should take a break from moving and update the blog again. I have concluded 9 Chess960 games in my life and from those games I have 8 wins and one draw. That does not tell all that much from my abilities as a Chess960 player as my opposition has been mainly lower rated people. The game I am sharing now is one that features another offbeat opening that you rarely see played anymore. In all my games over the years I have maybe faced this line 10-20 times out of several thousand games. I have added a few more puzzles also today to mate in one, two and three pages. The beginner stuff I typed about yesterday will start appearing this weekend or that is the plan anyway.
27 Nov 2014
A00 Irregular Openings (1.e3 e5 2.Nf3)
I was surpised to see how many named opening lines there were starting with the move 1.e3 when I looked this opening up. Well the move 1.e3 is better at least than the 1.Nh3 I covered yesterday but the e-pawn is still not living up to its full potential if you only move the pawn one square up, so if you grab the e-pawn and want to move it on move one, move it to e4. I am going to do some content about the basics in chess for the beginners in both English and in Finnish in the coming days and or weeks depending how fast I am able to produce the content. If you have any questions about my posts or about chess in general, please leave a comment and I will answer to your questions the best way I can. I have updated the mate in one, two and three sections of the blog again today by adding a few more puzzles there. So today there are 72 positions in mate in ones, mate in two moves has 81, mate in threes has 64, mate in four moves collection contains 35 puzzles, mate in 5 has 16, mate in six moves has 9, mate in seven has two and mate in eleven has one puzzle to solve. All this adds up to 280 different puzzles which you can only see in this blog!
26 Nov 2014
A00 Irregular Openings (1.Nh3 d5)
Todays post involves an opening that I would not recommend to anyone. That is if you are wanting to play to win the game, then something else should be considered on move one. If you want to move that same knight, then f3 is much better square to develop it. When you play chess, you want to control as many squares as possible and especially the central squares e4, e5, d4 and d5. If you control the center, you control the game usually. When you develop the knight to h3 it has much more reduced influence on the game as it only controls four squares and on f3 it would control eight squares. As I looked this up, there is actually some theory on this move but of course very limited as the move is not that good or worth spending all that much time studying that move. 1.Nh3 may not be the worst move that you can play on move one but it is quite far up the list. Tomorrow I will share another game with an offbeat opening that in some ways is better than this opening I share with you now. I updated the mate in one, two, three and four pages today.
25 Nov 2014
E21 Nimzo-Indian: 4.Nf3 (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Nf3 O-O 5.Bg5)
This game was played in a team match called Open Challenge Magnus Carlsen Group. It is played between Magnus Carlsen Group and DORU-66 & HIS BEST FRIENDS. I will never understand the fixation of all caps in a team name but then again it does not bother me as much as it does some people. This match is played on 21 boards and I played board 4 for Magnus Carlsen Group. I won both my games in the match, this game with resignation and the other on time. Even though there are still games left to play, DORU-66 & HIS BEST FRIENDS have already won the match as the score is at the moment I type this 12,5 - 24,5 in favor of our opponent. I have updated the mate in ones, twos, threes and fours today, so have a look there if you want to do some training. All puzzles you will find in this blog are taken from my games, the positions are either the actual game continuations or taken from the analysis of that game. The positions I have lately put there are all happened in the actual game the puzzle text refers to. The ones that have been taken from analysis continuations have no game comment on the puzzle text. I still have most of my moves to make in my correspondence chess games and I am going to make moves on them after I have made this post.
24 Nov 2014
A36 Symmetrical English vs ...g6: 4.Bg2 Bg7 (1.c4 c5 2.Nc3 g6 3.g3 Bg7 4.Bg2 Nc6 5.a3 b6 6.b4)
I guess this game falls into category weird time losses but maybe not as much the one game I am posting tomorrow. Well apparently white is clearly better according to Stockfish but maybe not winning and I would not resign in this position as black if I ever got to this position again. I was able to move in almost all of my Chess.com Online Chess games today which is a rare feat these days and I am happy that I managed to do that. Tomorrow I am hoping to go through all or at least most of my Red Hot Pawn games. It is around a hundred or more games I need to make a move in there. Almost every day it is the same with my Chess.com games or rather that is the amount of games where it is my move. Mate in one, two, three and four puzzles have been updated today so please take a look in there as well.
23 Nov 2014
E07 Closed Catalan: Main Line (5.Nf3 0-0 6.0-0 Nbd7) (1.c4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nbd2 e6 5.g3 Be7 6.Bg2 Nbd7 7.O-O O-O 8.b3 a5)
I guess as I still managed to find a "new" opening, I am still continuing the same path I started in July this year. Despite August being a bit off in all accounts as I had some technical problems, I still have been able to post more than one post per day on average. If I do not fell in to a coma or worse or something major wrong with the computer I will keep a daily update schedule running. I hope I lost the game below on time because if I resigned in an even position, I would be really ashamed of myself... Or rather I would be if I were younger and cared about that more. I have also added more puzzles in the mate in one, two and three puzzle pages.
22 Nov 2014
B10 Caro-Kann: 2.d3 and 2.c4 (1.e4 c6 2.c4 e5)
I have come up with something special to share when I do not have anymore different openings to go through but I am not going to spoil the surprise yet. I have not experimented with the idea yet to test if it works but I am quite confident about it at the moment. Only time will tell what my brilliant idea is. Safe to say though that it will bring even more diversity to this blog and that is all I am going to say about it. For the time being I hope you enjoy the posts I have made and if you do, please tell your friends about it. I have updated more puzzles today as well in the mate in ones, twos and threes. I did manage to go through one of my databases and went on to the next one, where I can pull even more puzzles for you all to solve. Until next time, my fellow chess enthusiasts.
21 Nov 2014
B45 Sicilian Four Knights (1.Nf3 c5 2.e4 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Be2)
Today I finally ended my winning streak at Chess.com, it had become pretty ridiculous to be honest, I had won 19 games in a row there. It may be actually the longest streak I have had at any site ever before. The longest winning streak I remember having was many, many years ago when I still played chess at Yahoo, I think I got to 17 then. My longest losing streak is, well I do not even know how long that is, somehow that has never been something I want to acknowledge... The first sign of trouble for jonax12 was the first move that was considered as a novelty when I analysed this game. That move is 7...b6.
I did not find the strongest move, which according to Stockfish 8 64 POPCNT is 8.Bf4 at depth 33. I moved the right piece, but I chose the much more defensive square of e3 for the bishop. I am still on a bit better side of the board in the game continuation, but with accurate play the game would likely end in a draw. The next clear blunder was played by my opponent on move 9. Jonax12 pushed the pawn one square too far when my opponent played 9...d5.
It was a blunder that could have been the losing move, but I did mess up big time when I played 26.Qb7. It threw all my advantage away with the move, but at least I did not end up on the worse side of the board. Jonax12 had then two good options, which would have lead to an even position, 26...Rxd1 and 26...Nd3, neither of which my opponent played in the game.
Unfortunately jonax12 played 26...f4 and my opponent's downfall started again. My opponent did get a chance to get a draw from the game later in the game, maybe a couple of times, but the best chance was also the last chance that jonax12 got. When I moved my pawn to a3 on move 44, it was so bad of a move that my chances to win the game could have evaporated.
Luckily for me, my opponent then made the game losing blunder 44...a5. I replied with 45.Rd6+, of course, and the rest of the game was smooth sailing for me.
20 Nov 2014
B12 Caro-Kann: Advance Variation (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.g4 Bg6)
I have tried to significantly decrease the amount of correspondence games I play for awhile now but the amount of games in my case is more likely to increase than to decrease. I am going over 300 games any time now. The time needed for moving in all of the games takes as it is too long as I am not able to move in all of the games everyday, actually only at small part of the games I can actually make a move in any given day. I have not lost a single game on time in years, counting only corr games of course because blitz games I do lose on time every now and again. I like to play as well as I can possibly play which means that I may only make moves on games that have less than two days until I time out, there just does not seem to be enough time for other games. I have updated mate in ones, twos and threes with few more puzzles today. The game below is one of the rare examples when I have played the Caro-Kann with the black pieces and even rarer example of me actually winning a game with it.
19 Nov 2014
D95 Grünfeld: 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.e3 0-0 6.Qb3 (1.Nf3 Nf6 2.d4 g6 3.c4 Bg7 4.Nc3 d5 5.e3 O-O 6.Qb3 e6 7.Bd3)
Today the amount of puzzles featured in this blog went over 200, the current amount is at 203. With this post the amount of different openings featured in this blog goes to 125 and the amount of analysed games is now 194. I will do my very best to offer you more content each day and I am hoping to add from now on more puzzles every day as well as these new games to look at and new opening variations in them as long as there are different ones to go through. I am still playing too many correspondence games and there is little hope of that changing in the near future. The pressure to make moves is always present but so far I have managed not to lose on time. The game below is against the same opponent that I shared a game with you all yesterday, this time I lost in a game where I did a couple of really bad moves.
18 Nov 2014
E12 Queen's Indian: Unusual White 4th moves, 4.a3, 4.Nc3 Bb7 5.a3 and 4.Nc3 Bb7 (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.a3 Bb7 5.Nc3 Be7 6.g3 O-O 7.d5 d6)
The game you see below is a recent one and like most cases in my games, the opening variation played comes from unusual move order. The usual move order for this opening variation is otherwise the same as the order in the game, except for white's fourth and fifth moves should be other way around. As I typed about the weird time control numbers yesterday this one is also the amount of seconds players had at their disposal for each move. 604800 seconds equals to 7 days. If you find something that is wrong or bizarre in this blog, please let me know in the comments and I try answer as well as I can to what is maybe the reason why something is the way it is. The comments may contain questions about the puzzles or maybe some of my posts that did not make sense if there are any that is that were hard to understand. I do try to do things as simply as I can while maintaining a certain level of quality. I have added more puzzles to mate in ones, twos and threes.
16 Nov 2014
C11 French: Classical System: 4.e5 and 4.Bg5 dxe4 (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Qg4)
As I keep getting my Chess.com rating higher and higher back to its old glory, I keep wondering when my eventual downfall starts. There has been some games where I know that my survival in them is not a long one. I hope to be mainly improving my rating though and maybe I can once more get to my peak rating there. It still needs around hundred points more to get there but maybe with precise play and minimizing my losses it will someday get there again. The game I am sharing with you now was played not that long ago at GameKnot and this particular variation of the French I think I have only played this one time. My loss of course was not due to the opening but my inability to play good moves later on in the game. Maybe if I remember these moves, I could try this opening again as it may need a second try or maybe even more tries than that. I have updated today mate in one, two and three sections. Not with that many additions but some.
15 Nov 2014
A01 Nimzowitsch-Larsen Opening (1.b3 e5 2.Bb2 Nc6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 Nf6)
Despite the odds being against I was able to yet again do a normal post even though I was sure yesterday that I would need to take this day off due to stuff I needed to do and which took quite a huge part of the day. I did also update the mate in two and mate in three sections with one more puzzle each. I was today at a team match witch required me to drive an hour or so with my team mates to reach the place where we played. We managed to win our match 3-0 which meant the second victory for us this season in the second match, so we have started this season really well. The first one we won 2-0 so we are in quite a good shape. We play a series with each team having five players but draws do not count for the end result. I do hope we can continue our good results in the last two matches. Until tomorrow, my fellow chess enthusiasts.
14 Nov 2014
B00 Queen's Fianchetto Defence, Nimzowitsch Defence (1.Nf3 b6 2.e4 Bb7 3.Nc3)
I still seem to have some luck in me as I managed to find a suitable game for the daily update. It was basically the last game I had analysed today. Tomorrow I may be too busy to update this blog but I try my best. If nothing else, I can update the puzzles section a bit tomorrow.
13 Nov 2014
D01 Veresov Opening (1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 c6 4.Bg5)
The game I am sharing today was played nearly four years ago at GameKnot. The deciding moment of the game was seen after 11...Rfe8 when my opponent played 12.g4. Moving the pawn to g4 was a horrible idea that should be the losing move. While the king is still in the center, it may not be a good idea to start attacking. Sure the king was able to castle to queenside, but since the intention behind 12.g4 was to open lines in front of my king and it completely failing in view of my reply 12...f4, it was a waste of a move in my opinion.
After my reply 12...f4, it seemed obvious that I was on the better side of the board, my king was safe, I had some play against the central pawns and my opponent did not have any counterplay. My opponent then castled to the queenside and I replied with the sloppy 13...a5. A much stronger move for me would have been 13...fxe3. Had adamscheeks then taken back the pawn with its counterpart, I could have won a pawn with 14...Rxe3, the point is that Qxe3 would be horrible in view of Bf4. The rest of the game went downhill for adamscheeks and eventually I was able to end the game with a checkmate.
12 Nov 2014
D35 Queen's Gambit Declined: Exchange Variation (1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.d4 Be7 6.e3 O-O)
Maybe I am starting to learn not to start anymore games as I am down to 290 games now, it was a couple of more than that awhile ago but to my knowledge it has not gone over 300 at any point. Typing this has been a bit of a long process as I have started it many times and then went and moved in couple more of my games. Despite the quite a big load of games I still manage to do something else as well with my time luckily. If I were constantly trying to be in a state where it was not my move in any of my games, I would probably need to make moves 24/7... But as I do try always also win my games that slows my moving considerably down. Which might at times be irritating to my opponents as it takes sometimes really long time for me to reply for their move. I have added a bit more puzzles today into mate in ones and twos.
11 Nov 2014
B41 Sicilian: Kan Variation: 5.c4 (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.Nc3 cxd4 5.Nxd4 a6 6.e4 d6 7.Be2 Be7 8.O-O O-O)
For a long while now I have thought that I have no more different openings to share with the readers but I somehow always seem to get something. There are I believe 117 different opening variations now featured here which might seem a lot but actually it is quite a small group of all the named openings out there. There is according to site called Master Chess Openings more than 3600 openings out there and they feature all of them in their site. In that regard I have a long, long way to go still. I have added a few more puzzles today in the mate in ones, twos and threes if I remember correctly. As I have updated those in parts I don't really remember exactly what I have updated and when. This might be the last game from Queen Alice Internet Chess Club I will share for now and I may turn my attention to the games I have played at GameKnot and after that I will probably start sharing my Red Hot Pawn games. Until next time, my fellow chess enthusiasts.
10 Nov 2014
D43 Semi-Slav: 5.Bg5 h6 (1.c4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.d4 dxc4 4.Qa4+ c6 5.Qxc4 Nf6 6.Nc3 b5 7.Qd3 Be7)
Another short game and one that I lost on time albeit the time control was 7 days per move. Maybe it was during a time I rapidly lost interest on chess. I can't remember the exact reason for that time loss as it was years ago but it might be very well the reason. There has been couple of longish breaks I have taken from chess but eventually came back again to try it that one more time... I don't think there will be those long breaks anymore from playing chess but who knows what the future might bring. I have updated some more puzzles in the mate in one, two and three sections.
9 Nov 2014
B27 Sicilian: 2.Nf3, unusual Black 2nd moves (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 b6 3.d4)
At this moment is uncertain what I am posting tomorrow so it will be a surprise to everyone, even me. With 293 games in progress and high chance of going over 300 soon, I am really hopeless... But at least there is quite a nice pool of new game examples coming some day that I will of course post here. The game featured below is a really short one but maybe some instructive moments at least to lower rated players. After this post I need to start going through my games again and maybe find a new and exciting opening variation to post here tomorrow. Might take a while for me to get back on posting more puzzles but there will be more next week albeit I will remain quite busy for the next week or two I think. Until next time, my fellow chess enthusiasts.