Don't be fooled by my opponent's low rating in this game. When I got the pgn for this game, I noticed that my adversary's rating was a lot lower than I remembered, so I went to look up at his rating profile which contained very interesting info. He had been over 2200 in 2009 but then his rating had gone down very steeply and dropped over 900 points in total until it raised around 400 points again. Well, after learning that he had been a lot higher rated at some point consistently, made me not feel so bad at losing this game as my opponent does seem to have potential for being a really good chess player. My ratings differ a lot too, depending on the time controls and place where the games are played. Maybe the place is not as important as the different players I am facing that makes my rating be really low in some places and rather high in some other places. I have added four mate in two and one mate in four puzzle today and also added something into Chess basics that I had forgotten to add there before. I had left the explanation of a stalemate out of there for some reason. This of course I remembered maybe last night when I was trying to sleep...
31 Jan 2015
B07 Pirc Defence: Miscellaneous Systems (1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bg5 c6 5.f3 Bg7 6.Qd2)
30 Jan 2015
C40 Latvian and Elephant Gambits (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f6)
Today I have maybe the shortest game I have ever posted here. This game is also the first one I played after I took a break of over a year from correspondence chess and from chess in general. After this game I have played correspondence chess without a break. I can only blame myself for that fact. It has been fun at times though to try different things out. The problem is that lately some of the openings have seemed to repeat a bit too much for my taste. I actually would like to change my game load more towards Chess960 as it does interest me a bit more now than standard chess. The added benefit at least for some time would be that the games would differ a lot from each other. Mate in two, seven and eight have been updated today.
29 Jan 2015
C80 Open Spanish Game: Sidelines and 9.Nbd2 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Nxe4 6.Re1 Nc5 7.Bxc6 dxc6 8.Nxe5 Be7 9.d4 Ne6 10.Be3 O-O 11.Nc3)
With this post I am at least for the time being going back to going through my Red Hot Pawn games. After this there are four games that I played there before 2014, so I am catching up a bit. Not sure what the reason might be but I just seem to get into really horrible positions quite quickly. It just seems that I am losing games under 20 moves left and right because I have started to blunder pieces away without any good reason. Maybe I am experiencing some sort of burnout, having used most of my awake time to do something chess related for the past six months or so. It is of course not likely to change in the upcoming months, so I have to somehow get the game load decreased a lot as soon as possible, in order to enable some much needed rest away from the game for some time. I have also thought of doing some other brain exercises in order to make it more efficient. The hope is that I could find the solutions to my chess problems faster and therefore have more time for other stuff. I have added some puzzles to mate in one, two, three and five pages.
28 Jan 2015
C13 French: Classical System: 4.Bg5 Be7, Alekhine-Chatard Attack (1.Nc3 d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.Bg5 e6 4.e4 dxe4 5.Bxf6 Qxf6 6.Nxe4)
The game you can see and replay below was played in a team match called VIP ChessQueen TM-2014-0018. It is still ongoing match between VIP CHESS and FC Tom (ФК Томь). I play board 6 for VIP CHESS though when this match started our team was not called that but I guess changes in the leadership of the team has changed the name of the team as well. It was previously known as VIP ChessQueen when this one lady was in charge but I noticed that her account had been closed. It is unfortunately common sight in the team matches that someone has had their account closed. There are of course many reasons why that happens, one thing that causes an account to be closed is just by typing too often in the forums, notes etc. Because I guess that can sometimes be called spamming. So being too social may sometimes be a bad thing... At the time I type this, we lead the match that is played on seven boards 9 - 4 and that means that regardless of what happens in the one remaining game, we have already won the match. Maybe not all that surprising that the one remaining game is my other game against BLUE-DRAGON. I am usually the last one to finish my games. I have added puzzles to mate in two, seven, eleven and twelve pages.
27 Jan 2015
C78 Spanish Game: Archangelsk and Möller Defences (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 b5 5.Bb3 Nf6 6.O-O Bb7 7.Re1 Bc5 8.c3 d6 9.d4 Bb6 10.Bg5 h6 11.Bh4 O-O 12.a4 g5 13.Bg3)
The game I am sharing with you today, was played in a team match called Northeast9. The match is played between BRAZIL - NORDESTE and Finno-Ugric Chess Players. I am playing board two for Finno-Ugric Chess Players. There are still two games to play in the match, my other game against rabirabbit and one game on board three. We lead the match 4 - 6, so even a draw from the last two remaining games would suffice to ensure our win in the match. In this game, I had very little chances because my opponent played well. I have updated some of the old analysis in my earliest posts. All of the updates have kept my quite busy today but I did also add three mate in ones, one mate in four and also added a new page for mate in 16.
26 Jan 2015
C18 French: 3.Nc3 Bb4: Main line: 7.h4 and 7.Qg4 (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 cxd4 6.axb4 dxc3 7.bxc3)
I have noticed that when I play these team matches no matter if they are on the internet or over the board, I do get the extra push to try and win the game. Sure it does not always equal to victory but the need to fight for the team is stronger than if I would play just a random game. Sadly this does not always even add up to great moves by me which might be partially due to the large amount of games I play at the same time. One part is of course that I may not be all that good to begin with but I certainly have my moments... This game was played in a team match called The Castle of Chenonceau - super semi-open match La Belle France. The match is still ongoing between La Belle France and CALABARZON CHESS TEAM. And yes the latter team name is all in caps. I played board four for the home team that was in this match La Belle France. I won both my games on time. The match is played on seven boards and we currently lead the match 11,5 - 0,5 so we have secured the victory some time ago. There are still two games left in the match and both of them are played on board one. I have added one mate in one and four mate in three puzzles today. Unlike maybe other places on the internet, the puzzles I have shared here have sometimes more than one solution. I do not feel that it is a bad thing, it may sometimes make the puzzles harder or easier depending on the situation and it might be better training for chess as usually there are more than one way to play the position.
25 Jan 2015
A80 Dutch Defence: Unusual White second moves (1.d4 f5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bg5 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7)
This game was played in the first round of the Maximum ! tournament. There were at the start of the tournament 96 players that were divided in to 12 player groups. From each group three of the best players will advance to the next round. At the moment I have only finished 4 of 22 games in round one and in all likelihood they will take a lot longer to finish than the first four. Despite the long thinking times, 14 days per move, my moves have not been all that good or so it seems to me. I have been updating the analysis on my earliest posts and today I had to delete one of them as it turned out when I looked the old analysis closer that the opening variation was not the right one. This concerns the post C37 King's Gambit: Accepted. Muzio Gambit. It has been deleted due to the fact that it was actually just another Fischer Defense. When a very long time ago I had analysed it, the program I used to analyse it recognized as Muzio Gambit and in the analysis it said it was theory up to move 9. When I published the game, I assumed it is the right opening but only now after analyzing it again and looking the opening theory did I realize that I was wrong with my assumption. Well, lesson is learned, I guess. I doubt that there are other miss labeled posts but I will change them if I come across them. I am trying to work hard to make this as good of a blog I can get it. I still need to improve on some things but I do get better over time. If you have any questions or other things to discuss, please leave a comment and I will answer them as well as I can. I have added one mate in one, three mate in twos and one mate in 12 today.
Game number two. This was played on the first round of the 1800+ 7 Days tournament. I have been playing in group #5 and I am currently on 6th place and I have scored 5 points out of the 12 possible points so far. I still have two games in progress in this tournament and if I win both of them I have a small chance to tie points with cingoz who is currently on fourth place. It is a small chance because cingoz still has four games to finish. One of those four games is against me. Three of the best players of each group will advance to the next round and because the player who is currently second has his account closed for cheating, I think if he will finish in the top three, it is ignored and the next one on the standings will advance to the second round instead. Therefore I might have still very small chances to advance to the next round.
24 Jan 2015
D53 Queen's Gambit Declined: 4.Bg5 Be7: Early deviations (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.c4 c6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 dxc4 6.e4 Be7 7.Bxc4 O-O)
The game below is taken from the team match called A new Era. It is a four board match between In Service of The Master and Himgouree's club. The only remaining game is the board one match between joysaha and me. I am playing for the Himgouree's club. The match has already been decided in favor of In Service of The Master because they lead the match 6 - 1. This is one of the rare positive matches though because there has been no timeouts on either side. This match started November 5th 2014. I have added one mate in one, two mate in two, one mate in three and one mate in four puzzle today.
23 Jan 2015
C90 Closed Spanish Game with 7...d6: Early deviations (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O b5 6.Bb3 d6 7.Re1 Be7 8.c3 Na5 9.Bc2 c5 10.d4 cxd4 11.cxd4)
Before I looked at this game again after a few years break, I would have said if asked that I have only recently started experimenting with 3...a6 in the Spanish game instead of my more common reply 3...Bc5. Of course the amount of information that is coming my way these days is so vast that I can't remember these kind of things all that clearly anymore. I can only hope that information that I do remember is useful in some way. This game was played in early 2011 when my rating at Red Hot Pawn was probably over two hundred points lower than it is now. My rating there now is at its peak 1885. When I started to play actively at RHP again and even became subscriber there my rating was below 1700, so it has increased quite nicely over a few months time. Unfortunately as the game load has increased my move speed has become extremely slow.
This and the following paragraphs have been added November 19th, 2016. Only small mistakes were made by both players for the first 30 moves, but when adding the mistakes of the moves 29.Nh4 and 30.Nhf5, my advantage was for the first time clear according to Stockfish 7 64 POPCNT. The position in which my opponent played 30.Nhf5 can be seen below.
The downhill that started for my opponent with the move 30.Nhf5 continued to the end of the game and rienaperdre resigned after 49...d1Q+, when my opponent was facing a forced mate.
22 Jan 2015
A23 English Opening: 1...e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 c6 (1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 c6 4.Bg2 Bb4)
The game below was played in a team match called Open Challenge Blake's7. It is played on six boards between Blake's7 and Baker Street Irregulars. I played board one for the Baker Street Irregulars in this match and I won both my games on time. With three games still left to be played in the match, the score is 5,5 - 3,5 in favor of our opponent. If we can somehow win the remaining games, we will win the match but it does require everything to go without a hitch. Today I updated the page Shakin alkeita and I also added the page Chess basics to the blog, which is basically the English version of the page I published yesterday in Finnish. I have also added puzzles to mate in one, two and ten. I have also one other idea to improve this blog but I will type more about it when I am close to or finished it. I can only say at this point that it is a bit time consuming project but I think it will be helpful not only to me but more importantly people who come to see this blog.
21 Jan 2015
C18 French: 3.Nc3 Bb4: Main line: 7.h4 and 7.Qg4 (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4 Qa5)
The game below is one of the ten games I played in the first round of the 28th Chess.com Tournament (1601-1800). Only the winner of the group advances to the next round and I was fortunate enough to win my group so I have advanced to the next round and only waiting it to start. 41 games are still in progress on round one while I type this, so it might take awhile before the second round starts. This tournament started in September 1st 2014, so this will take a long time to complete it seems. There were 212 5 to 6 player groups in this rating category and as only the winners advance to the next round there will be 212 players divided in to 5 to 6 player groups again on round two. This will continue until the winner is decided, so I think that it might take several more months to complete. This tournament started in a time where I started to raise my rating more rapidly so I would not be all that surprised if I would be one of the highest rated people in round two. I think I played this quite well albeit improvements can always be made. I think I am also ready to share with you a project that took quite awhile to finish. It is of course the Finnish version of chess basics called Shakin alkeita. I hope that some of the beginners can use that to maybe understand chess and perhaps this blog a bit better. I will add the English version of that later. It will take some time to translate but tomorrow I should be able to add that one as well. I have also added mate in one, two, seven and nine puzzles today. If some of you that understand Finnish find something that you think should be added to Shakin alkeita, please let me know in the comments. As I have done that page over some months every now and then, I may have missed something. I did publish it earlier today and later noticed that I missed something that I should have included so I made a quick update on that. Thank you all who have come to see this blog and please tell your friends about it, it will be much appreciated!
20 Jan 2015
A06 Réti Opening: 1.Nf3 d5 (1.Nf3 d5 2.h3)
This game was played in round one of Sarah's Mini Cooper Tournament (No 52). In the first round I won my group with a score of 7/8 and advanced to the second round as did the player who finished second in the group and actually the player who also advanced was Kisscool, the opponent I faced in this game. He was second with a score of 6/8 and clear second as the third player in the group only got 4 points. The games still in progress on round one is still ten, so no update there from yesterday. I have added two mate in ones, two mate in twos and one mate in five puzzle today.
Game number two. The game below is my latest correspondence chess game from Chess.com. It was played in a team match called Open Challenge CHOCOLATE II and it is played between CHOCOLATE II and Spartanii. The match is played on 20 boards and I play on board 2 for CHOCOLATE II. This match has been quite even if you look at the score at the moment 18,5 - 20,5 in favor of Spartanii, which means they will win this match after the last game ends, it is once again my game of course that finishes the last one in the match. Our team suffered eight timeout losses in this match but our opponent suffered twelve timeout losses and still they managed to win the match. One of the timeout wins our team received in this match is the game below. The position at the end should be roughly even.
19 Jan 2015
D08 Albin Counter Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 d4 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.e3 Bb4+ 6.Bd2 dxe3 7.fxe3)
This game was played in the first round of the Sarah's Mini Cooper Tournament (No 52). Trophies that are awarded to the top three players of the tournament are custom made pictures of Mini Coopers. I did advance to the second round so I still have a chance on one of those Mini Coopers. Ten games remain to be played on round one still so I need to wait for those to end before round two can begin. I am in no rush to increase my game load so I do hope that those games keep going until I have cut my game load by a lot of games. I may have given some chances to my opponent in this game but luckily he was not able to take advantage of his opportunities. I managed to get to my highest rating yet at Red Hot Pawn, my new peak rating is now 1879 there. I have added one more puzzle today to mate in one, three, four, five and seven pages.
18 Jan 2015
C45 Scotch Game (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 d6)
This game was played in mike5972p's mini-tournament VII. It is going quite well for me at the moment anyway as four games have finished I have equal amount of wins. There are still eleven games to play so plenty of time to mess things up. Always look on the bright side of life... The tournament started with eleven players but one has dropped out from the tournament, ten remain still active. Thinking time in the games is 3 days as the starting time and there is two day increment each move. I am currently sixth in the tournament but also the only player that has no point losses yet. The maximum thinking time is limited to 5 days so that the increment will not go out of control. I have added one puzzle today to the following: mate in one, two, three, five and nine.
17 Jan 2015
E01 Catalan: Early deviations (1.c4 c6 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 d5 4.Nf3 e6 5.O-O Bd6 6.b3 O-O 7.Bb2 Nbd7 8.d4 b6 9.Nbd2 Bb7)
This was played on the fifth round of a tournament that was played at Salo in November, 2006. On the first three rounds of this tournament I lost all my games. On my fourth round game I was able to break my losing streak finally, but sadly this was only a short anomaly, because on this fifth round I suffered another loss. Having scored only one point in five games, I ended up on last place in the final standings of group D. This disastrous tournament meant that my rating dropped 78 points because of these five games. My opponent ended up being third last in the group due to this win. He managed to get 2 wins in 5 games and lost 3 games. I have added one more puzzle to mate in two, three, nine, ten and twelve pages.
16 Jan 2015
B50 Sicilian: 2...d6, Miscellaneous (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.c3 Nf6 4.h3)
This game is just one more addition to the countless games I have played where I give the advantage to my opponent and then at some point they are kind enough to give the advantage back. Of course they are not doing that on purpose and this does happen the other way around as well. I lost games last year that I should have won but did not because I could not see some one move threat that my opponents made against me. This year has not started mistake free either and already I have made idiotic blunders that I really should not make anymore. I have added 3 mate in two puzzles, one mate in 8 and one mate in three puzzle.
15 Jan 2015
B17 Caro-Kann: Modern Line (4...Nd7) (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Nf3 Ngf6 6.Ng3 e6 7.Bd3)
This was the game that raised me to my peak rating of 2197 at Queen Alice Internet Chess Club. It is the highest rating that I have ever had anywhere. It did not last a long time there as I drew the next game only some moments later after this game had finished. I have added one more puzzle to the following pages: mate in one, two, four, five and six. I had 300 games in progress for a few hours on January 12th 2015 but now I only have 288 games in progress so maybe my game load will start to ease up with a nice pace. I hope this will continue in the following days and weeks. Especially if the results keep going as well in the last 12 games, I got 11 wins and one draw out of them. I know there are a few games that I am quite likely losing, so there will be some dives at some point. Today my rating at Red Hot Pawn climbed to its peak and now the rating there is 1873.
14 Jan 2015
E12 Queen's Indian: Unusual White 4th moves, 4.a3, 4.Nc3 Bb7 5.a3 and 4.Nc3 Bb7 (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 Be7 4.e3 b6 5.c4 Bb7 6.Nc3 O-O 7.Bd3 d5 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.Bxe7 Qxe7 10.O-O Nd7 11.Nxd5 Bxd5)
My peak rating of 2197 did not stay for long as I had to draw one game at Queen Alice Internet Chess Club. Now I am at 2195, so the decrease was quite minimal. Today I hit my highest rating yet at Red Hot Pawn also and the new peak is at 1863. It is interesting how much the ratings differ from each other. They are maybe slowly getting closer but I doubt that I would be able to hit even 2000 anytime soon at RHP. At Queen Alice Internet Chess Club I get higher rated people to play against constantly than I do at RHP which does have a clear relation to the rating situation of course. Winning percentage is quite close on both sites, at RHP it is 76% and at QAICC it is around 74%. This tells me that it does not matter what the rating of my opponents are, I roughly get the same overall result. The game below that I am sharing with you now was played a bit over four years ago at Red Hot Pawn. When I went through this game, I noticed that the way I play has not really changed all that much since those days. I have added one more puzzle to the following pages, mate in two, three, four, seven and I also added a new page called Mate in 12.
13 Jan 2015
C24 Bishop's Opening 2...Nf6 (1.e4 e5 2.Qf3 Nf6 3.Bc4)
This is one of those openings that I would not recommend for anyone to play. I put other silly opening variations in the notation. I have to admit it is a surprise to me see that this has been played by rather good players in 2008 as you can see in the notation. The whole game is not shown in the notation only the first 19 moves. The opening variation called King Pawn Game: Wayward Queen Attack. Mellon Gambit that you can see in the notation made me immediately think The Lord of the Rings and the part where they had to say the Sindarin word for friend "mellon" in order to enter the Doors of Durin. It did made me grin a bit when I saw the name of this variation. I think I will continue posting my Red Hot Pawn games for some time more at least. I did get a nice birthday present today from one of my opponents when he resigned in our game at Queen Alice Internet Chess Club which increased my rating to a new peak rating of 2197!! Well, he probably was unaware of this course and only due to his blunder on previous move did he need to resign. It does seem that if I would post more of my Chess960 games, I will not be able to share them here... I may need to switch that part to my other blog. There does not seem to be a free replayer that I could be able to implement in this blog that would be easy to use. Making one myself would be too much work and I doubt I would have good enough skill to do that. I have updated both the mate in two and four puzzle pages today.