Chess960 SP76

After today all my chess960 games that I have funtional pgn for, have been added to this blog. There might be one chess960 game that I have not shared, mainly because I would need to correct the pgn. The game below was played in a team match called IT'S A KNOCKOUT 960 R1 Team USA 960 vs Obsessive Chess Disorder!! It has a 48 hour time limit for your moves which I am not at all that keen on and I avoid it whenever I can. I am playing on board 5 for OCD in this match that is played on 18 boards. We are doing quite well at the moment because we lead the match 9 - 14. If I win my other game against SiregarGurda, I can be reasonably content with my performance in this match but of course if I lose, I will be really disappointed by the results I received. Because none of us have lost on time, I feel that the other members of the team have cared about the result of this match, our opponent on the other hand has lost three games on time. I am not saying that those people who have lost on time would not have cared about their games, because there might be some reason or the other that has made them unable to move, something that they have no control over.

In a completely unrelated topic, I managed to get back over 2200 at Queen Alice Internet Chess Club and now I am in my peak rating there 2203!! My previous peak rating there was 2201. On a sadder note, the site seems a bit too problem filled to keep me interested in playing there. If the only problem would be that the tournaments there can get to a standstill, I could just avoid tournaments and play challenge games, it would be a decent way still to keep playing there. Now, however, I am faced with another problem that is much more annoying and one that should not be happening, I get logged off from the site whenever I try to go to my games, my tournaments etc. It is just not acceptable behaviour in my opinion. I have no idea what is causing it to happen. It is pretty much the only site where I have had these kind of problems. I have added one more game to these two posts: Chess960 SP33 and Chess960 SP649. I have also added three mate in one, one mate in two and one mate in four puzzle today.

Game number two. This game was played in a team match called IT'S A KNOCKOUT 960 R1 Team USA 960 vs Obsessive Chess Disorder!! I played on board 5 for OCD and as you can see from the results in this post, I lost both of my games against SirerarGurda. I am still happy because the score in this match that is played on 18 boards is currently 13 - 19 in favor of Obsessive Chess Disorder!! Which of course means that the victory is firmly in our grasp. I did have chances to win the game below, but I just did not understand the requirements of all the positions and made some bad moves which my opponent was able to take advantage of.

Game number three. The game below was played in a team match called Club Random. It is played on 13 boards between CLUB 960 and Chess960 RandomChess. I play on board 4 for Chess960 RandomChess. The current score in the match is 13 - 5 in favor of CLUB 960. I am not sure why, but I have really struggled in this starting position, three games and three losses. It is at the moment the worst score I have had in any of the starting positions that I have encountered so far.

I start this game with pretty much the same idea I have had for awhile on how to develop my pieces. I start by planting my d-pawn to d4 in order to get a presence in the center of the board early on. Then I played the akward looking 2.a3 in order to get my bishop to a2. Like I have previously mentioned, when the bishops start from b1, b8, g1 and g8, I prefer to play a3, a6, h3 or h6 on the side I castle because I want to put bishop on that side to a2, a7, h2 or h7. While I understand that those squares might not be ideal for the bishop, I value pawn structure quite highly and I do not want to make moves like c4, c5, f4 or f5 on the side I want to castle, but there are some exceptions to this though. I may want to rethink the ways I handle this and similar starting positions because this is not the way I can be all that successful in these types of games. While I played my first blunder on move 18 with Na4, I had made some inaccuracies before that which gave my opponent a small advantage. After 18.Na4 I could have already been on losing position, had my opponent taken advantage of my blunder. The reply 18...Bc7 is not horrible, it still keeps the advantage on Vladakis70's side, but it is far from the strongest move that could have been played in that position. I manage to play a couple of moves before I make a horrible move again, but this time it was the game losing move. The move 23.c3 just is not able to do the job I intended it for, but instead it is the blunder that made sure that I was going to lose the game.

Game number four. Since there is not all that much opening theory about Chess960 out there, or at least not named opening variations like in chess, I would like to be one of those people that offer their opinions of different starting positions and maybe help in development of opening theory for this variant and all of its starting positions. For instance, in this particular starting position the two games I played against SiregarGurda had the same position after White's second move and my games against Vladakis featured the same position after Black's first move. I know that is not much, but since there are chess openings that have a name after the first move played in the game, I could name both ways to start the game already with some name. However, I could also decide to follow these games a bit further and name the openings used in them after the last good move played in the game. Then again, there are opening variations in chess opening theory that are quite bad to play.

Looking at the first game in this post, for example, I would end the theory after 1.e4 e5 2.Nab3, since my move 2...h6 already gives White a clear advantage. It is true that one could argue that 1...e5 is already a bad move since it allows White to win a pawn with 2.Qb5, but Black does get compensation for the pawn in view of better development. Whether or not the compensation is enough probably requires a lot more testing in practical games between two human players in order to know if this is a viable way to play between humans. Then again these days computers are very good learning tool, so some players would study this further with the assistance of a computer and have an advantage against those that do not do that. In the second game I would likely end the theory after the moves 1.Nab3 e5 2.e4 f6 3.h3 b6 4.Bh2, since 4...Bxb3 is the first clear mistake. Deciding what the theory might look like for the third game is something that is more difficult to do. I would probably end the theory after 1.d4 d5, since after 2.a3 the advantage goes for the one who controls the black pieces.

This game followed a line that I would maybe allow to be on theory up to the move 3.Nd3. The first blunder of the game came in the position below. It is taken after my 8th move Ndc4. Vladakis70 played 9.Qe2, which allowed me to respond with 9...Bxh2. It gave me a clear advantage according to Stockfish.

After my inaccurate moves 10...Qd6 and 11...O-O-O the game was fought evenly once again. It did not last long because my opponent's 12th move 12.O-O-O was another blunder. While at first I was able to reply correctly, when it came to the position below, I missed the best continuation and allowed my opponent to get back into the game again.

The best move in the position above is 13...Ncxb2 believe it or not. If 14.Nxb2 then 14...Nxc3 should be good for me. I played 13...Nxc5 instead and now we found ourselves in an equal position again. When we reached the position after 23.cxd4, it came my time to make a really horrible move. In the position you can see below I played 23...dxe4?? Had my opponent replied correctly with 24.Nxe4, I could have been on my way to fourth loss in this starting position.

Alas for my opponent, Vladakis70 played 24.Rxe4 instead, which threw the win away. The rest of the game was played without any real mistakes and we agreed to a draw after Vladakis70's 40th move Ne2.