This game that you can view below was played in the first round of the third division, group 4 team match between SalSK 3 and ÅmSK over twelve years ago. I played on board 5 for SalSK 3 in this match. We started these division matches with a nice 3 - 1 win. These matches are played on five boards but as draws do not count for the score, the result in the game below is basically considered as 0-0 in the match score. Even though similar to short castles, I just meant that neither team gets any points for the draw. With our team winning the match and me being able to draw against a higher rated opponent and therefore increasing my rating again, this match went quite well for me. Sure me winning this game would have been excellent, but I am happy about the way things went regardless. Until Monday, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
30 Oct 2015
A34 Symmetrical English: 2.Nc3, lines with ...d5 (1.c4 c5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.Bg2 Nc7 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.O-O e5 8.d3 Be7 9.a3 O-O)
29 Oct 2015
D04 Colle System (1.d4 d5 2.e3 Nf6 3.Nf3 Bf5 4.Bd3)
Oops, this post was for a few minutes published when I was in the process of typing things for it. Maybe I am a bit sleepy because it took me awhile to see that I had accidently clicked the publish button. I just saw that this post had some views even though I thought I had not published it yet, then I realised my mistake. Oh well, no harm done, some of you might have seen some preview of the things to come but that is all.
The game below was played in the second round of third division, group 5 team match between ÅmSK and SalSK 3 over thirteen years ago. These matches are played with five player teams and I played on board 4 for SalSK 3. This was one of the two losses we suffered in this match and it was sufficient for our opponent to win the match because in the other three games, we won one and two were drawn. This meant that ÅmSK won the match 2-1 because draws are not counted in the score. In addition to all of the things I have updated today, I also finally found one game that featured a never before seen opening variation as far as this blog is concerned that is. It will be the 425th different variation to appear in this blog.
28 Oct 2015
B20 Sicilian: Unusual White 2nd moves (1.e4 c5 2.b4 cxb4 3.a3 e6 4.d4)
This week has been mostly about the over the board games I have played and it will continue to be like that also for the rest of the week. Game of today is from the last round of the tournament that was played at Vammala in 2002. Before this fifth round, I had lost the first three games and then on the fourth round I managed to finally win a game. The game below unfortunately brought me back to a normal result for me in those days, so I ended up only having 1 point out of the possible 5 points which was really disappointing at the time, despite of the fact that I was the lower rated player in all of these five games.
Today was a really chess filled day because in the morning I went to an elementary school to teach some chess or should I say tried to teach it, because it seemed that no one actually cared to learn the game and after that I went to a high school and had anyone interested shown up for the club, I would have taught some chess there too. Well, due to the way the elementary school chess club has been done this year, not all who participate in it are actually interested in the game. I think that the way it was done last year was much better because then only the children who were interested in chess, participated in it. Last year we also had this club at high school, then basically only one person showed up for it, but it was actually good in some ways because not only was that person interested in chess but also got personal training and because of that may have learned chess better than if on a group. I am far better at teaching chess one on one than for a group of people. I am not saying though that I would be that good in teaching and I actually do not like it all that much, but the way things are at the moment, I am partly forced to do that. In the evening I played on round three in our club tournament which did not go as well as I had thought. I did have some advantage in that game but I guess some less than accurate moves made by me enabled my opponent to get back into the game. I have not had the time to check the game with the computer to see if my position was as good as I thought during the game. I even ended up slightly worse side after a series of moves, but the game ended in a peaceful draw which I need to be happy about considering how the game went before my last move in the game that I think basically forced the draw.
27 Oct 2015
B20 Sicilian: Unusual White 2nd moves (1.e4 c5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.Be2)
This game was played in the third round of a tournament at Vammala in 2002. For some reason this was the only round where I had not marked the ratings of the players in the notation. I am not sure about the real reason behind this oddity, but it might be something to do with the fact that I had lost both of my previous games in this tournament.
It was quite an uphill battle for me to make any progress at all in chess in the early stages of my tournament playing career. Career might not be a suitable word to use in this situation because I have never played chess professionally, but I am not sure what other word would have the intended meaning. I think I played around 100 games in tournaments before I started to get my rating to a significantly higher level and also be able to keep it there with ease. The amount of games it actually took is not known for me because I did not really make a note of it at the time. I guess it would have been interesting for me to know now, but I did not regard it as being all that important to me at the time, I was only happy about the fact that my rating started to make its unstoppable climb, well for awhile anyway. I am not even sure about the details anymore, I think when I started that big climb, I was able to increase my rating 283 or 383 points in a year. There is a hundred point difference there, but I can't honestly remember anymore which one of those is the correct amount. As my over the board rating in standard is concerned, it is the biggest climb I have ever been able to do in a year. There have been a couple of times when I was able to increase my rating about a hundred points in a tournament, but sadly I have done the exact opposite as well and plummeted my rating around a hundred points, though that rating drop I think has only happened once.
26 Oct 2015
C77 Spanish Game: 3...a6 4.Ba4 Nf6, unusual lines (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.Bxc6 dxc6 6.d3 Bd6)
This game was played in the first round of the 2014 October Glacial Super Casual Banded I 1650+ tournament that is still in progress at Red Hot Pawn. For me this game did not mean all that much anymore as far as the tournament is concerned because I have not been fighting for the win of the group in a long time, but the result of this game did have an affect on the struggle for the win because with this win takinitez007 (1856) made sure that he will advance to the second round. There is also one other player, caissad4 (1914), who can share the win of the group and also advance to the second round, but in order to do so, caissad4 needs to win all of his remaining games and takinitez007 can't gain any more points in his remaining two games. I am currently in shared fifth place and it is still uncertain where I will be in the final standings. In theory I still can fight for a second place finish, but it does require the help of other players.
23 Oct 2015
B19 Classical Caro-Kann: 4...Bf5 main line (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Ng3 Bg6 6.h4 h6 7.Nf3 e6 8.h5 Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 Nf6 11.Bd2 Be7 12.O-O-O Nbd7)
This is one of those games where the move order in the opening is different than the theoretical one. The moves played in the game below follow theory up to my move 7.Nf3, after that the move order in theory is 7...Nd7 8.h5 Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 e6 11.Bd2 Ngf6 12.O-O-O Be7. This was played in a team match called Battle in the Wolves' Den. It was played between The 13th Legion and TROY on 18 boards. I played on board 1 for TROY in this match, but I think the name of our team changed during this match. I am not sure, but I think I have never before had such a great success while playing on board 1, I think I have not been able to win both of my games when I have played on this board. This match was surprisingly close despite the fact that we had a lot of timeout losses. We ended up losing the match with a score of 20 - 16, so if we had not lost ten games on time, the result could have been quite different. Our opponent only lost three games on time. This match started on March 30th 2015 and finished on October 20th 2015. Until Monday, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
22 Oct 2015
B45 Sicilian Four Knights (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e6 5.Nc3 Bc5 6.Nb3 Bb6 7.Be2)
The game below was played in the first round of a tournament that was held at Vammala in 2002. Back then, the most common result for me in over the board games was a loss and this tournament was no exception, I lost four of the five games I played. Well, to be fair to my old self, most of the opponents I faced in this tournament were clearly higher rated than me at the time. Only one opponent was quite close to my rating and that game I was able to win.
Tomorrow I will post some of my correspondence games again, both chess and chess960 games will be featured. I previously thought that I would post those chess960 games today, but then I experienced the lack of productivity and inspiration, so it will be something I do tomorrow instead. Speaking of correspondence games, I only have 72 in progress at the moment, so things are definitely looking brighter on that area. I should have increasingly more time to play the remaining games for the title at the FIDE Online Arena and maybe even have time to read some books I have bought but not read yet. I have around 20 books that are in my reading schedule that I have not even opened yet. Then at some point I should start doing tactics training again and do that regularly, I would also like to go through my chess books that have been collecting dust for years. But I think that I will start going through those chess books only after I have read those books unrelated to chess first.
21 Oct 2015
B23 Closed Sicilian: Lines without g3 (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.d3 g6 4.Be3)
I am starting to go through my over the board games again after a long break. When I published them on the blog, I did not post all that many of them. That will most likely change in the near future, or so it would seem at this time anyway. I will go through the database starting from the earliest examples and at some point I will be able to get to my most recent OTB games. It will take some time because there are around 500 of them. I do not even have all of them in my database just yet because in the past few years, I have not been bothered to put them in any database. Even after starting to do this blog I have rarely put any of my OTB games into a database, mainly because I have preferred the games that I have played in the different correspondence chess sites as a content provider for the blog. Now though it seems like a suitable time to do this change as my correspondence games are not ending fast enough to provide enough content and also because I have, at least for the moment, gone through all the games that I have played at the FIDE Online Arena.
The notation below is the only notation I have from this rapid chess tournament that was played at Salo over thirteen years ago. I do not remember much from those games, but I do remember the place where this tournament was held back then. I have fond memories of playing there even though my results were never all that great. It somehow had this old time feel to it, which I really like. These days the tournaments that I have participated in have this modern feel to them and they can't in my opinion bring the same kind of atmosphere to the tournaments that I experienced while playing in this old place so many years ago and in one other place where tournaments where used to being held. I kind of miss those times and tournaments being held in those places, even if the places that tournaments are held now are more spacious and in other ways much better than the old places. If I remember correctly, the copy of the notation was given to me by my opponent, I did not mark my moves in these rapid chess tournaments back then and after all these years have passed, I am quite sad that I did not do that. It would have been nice to look at those games after all this time.
20 Oct 2015
B83 Sicilian Scheveningen: 6.Be2, lines without ...a6 (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Be2 Be7 7.O-O O-O)
This was played in a team match called Chess mates 97th match. The match is played between ♕♖ChEsS MaTeS♕♖ and Unikat - Automat Team on 20 boards. I play on board 4 for ♕♖ChEsS MaTeS♕♖ in this match where, unfortunately for us, the winner has already been decided. The score is 11.5 - 22.5 in favor of Unikat - Automat Team at the moment I type this. I won the game below on time, but the position on the board was also quite hopeless for my opponent and I am fairly confident that had the game continued, I would have won the game anyway.
My correspondence games are finishing in a fairly reasonable pace again and at the moment I only have 74 of them in progress. Having been accustomed to 270+ games for several months, this amount of games is quite relaxing for me. I am still not able to get into a position where I would not be in move in any of my games, which is something I would like to change in the near future. As the amount of games in progress drops, this obviously becomes easier and easier to achieve.
19 Oct 2015
A38 Symmetrical English vs ...g6: 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.Nf3 Nf6 (1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 c5 3.g3 Nc6 4.Bg2 g6 5.Nf3 Bg7 6.O-O O-O 7.b3 Ne4 8.Bb2 d6)
This game is the first game of the second half of the 100 game rapid chess match between these two friends. This was already the fifth game in a row where Tomi did not lose. He started to be in a very decent shape to make a much needed comeback in the match. This is also the latest game from the match, so we have finally reached the current situation in the match. It seems we have taken over a months hiatus from playing these games. For the record, it was not my choice to take the break. I am not sure which one of us has benefitted from the break, but I guess we will find an aswer to that as soon as we continue with the match. Based on the recent results that we both got from the over the board tournament last weekend, I would continue my downhill in this match if we would start playing again soon. My performance in that tournament was really disappointing while my friend played very well and won his group.
Because of that tournament last weekend, I have not been able to search my various databases for new openings to cover for the rest of the week, so we shall see what I come up with in the much reduced time than usual. I will post my latest Chess.com games and the remainder of the FOA games and after that it might be time to go through my OTB games database. I will post some of my chess960 games also later this week.
16 Oct 2015
D55 Queen's Gambit Declined: 4.Bg5 Be7: Lines without ...h6 and 6...h6 7.Bxf6 (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.Nf3 O-O 6.e3 b6 7.Be2 Bb7 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.Bxe7 Qxe7 10.O-O Nd7 11.a3 c5 12.Rc1)
This was played in the second round of the 28th Chess.com Tournament (1601-1800). I am currently fifth in group #18 and only if I win my last game in this round which is also the last game I have left in the tournament, I will be able to finish fourth or basically be in shared third place. That last game is against fliubo, who can take the lead in the group in case he wins that game. The current leader of the group is Kounle (1860), who has only game left to finish this round and the result of that game will pretty much decide if Kounle or fliubo will advance to the third round. It is nice to see that the win of the group will be decided in the last game, so that the interest for the remaining games is still there. Had the group been decided earlier, the rest of the games would have been just something that you are forced to play and they would not have had been that exciting anymore. It only took one ill-adviced move from me to lose this game. My move 27...exd4?? was the game losing mistake after which I could not bring the game to a balanced state anymore. Admittedly the position was not pleasent for me to play at that point anyway. Until Monday, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
15 Oct 2015
E06 Closed Catalan: Early deviations (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Bb7 5.Bg2 Be7 6.O-O O-O 7.Nc3 d5 8.Ne5 c6 9.cxd5 cxd5)
After a quite lot of rapid chess games, it is time once again to look at one of my recently finished correspondence games. It was played at Red Hot Pawn, in a tournament called 2014 September Grand Seven Fourteen III. This tournament started September 11th 2014, so the game below is one of the longest games I have ever played. I actually still have two games left to finish from those games that started with this tournament over a year ago. One of those games is against the opponent I had in this game, caissad4. Both players are partly responsible for the slow pace. When these games started, I had already taken maybe a bit too many games to play and at the start my moving pace was quite slow. It may have improved a bit now that I have maybe 200 games less to play than I did back then. My opponent on the other hand I think has played insane amount of games at the same time, I think he has kept his games in progress around 1000... The most I had in progress at the same time was 300 and that actually lasted only a few hours because the games ended in a suitable time.
This tournament was decided some time ago already but there are still games left to play. The tournament winner is a player called kopsov (1866). Kopsov has one game left to finish, but it does not really matter anymore as the tournament is concerned that is. The player who finishes second is still unclear, it can go to either Luft (1971) or to Reverb (1728). It will depend on what happens in Reverb's last game. If Reverb wins that last game, he will be second, but in all other results, he will be on third place. In case of a loss, he might be in a shared third place though with me, in case I manage to win both of my remaining games. If I can't win both of them, I will finish fourth.
14 Oct 2015
C41 Philidor Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bc4 Be7 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Nf6 6.Nc3 O-O 7.O-O)
The games from the 100 game match have been very good at offering new opening variations to show in this blog and I think it will be the case for the rest of this week, though there will be other games to look at aswell. I continued taking even more considerable lead in the match as this win brought me a seven point lead. The score after this was 23.5 - 16.5. Was this the most crusial part of the match or will the score be turned the other way around, only time will tell. This 40th game was not the last one before we paused the match, I think we finished the 51st game before the match was paused. Not sure when we are going to continue playing the match but maybe next week would be a good time for that again.
I might start playing games at the FIDE Online Arena again today, but first I need to find something to post on Friday and maybe even start looking for something to post next week. Until tomorrow, my fellow chess enthusiasts!
13 Oct 2015
B15 Caro-Kann: 3.Nc3: 3...g6 and 3...dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ exf6 (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Be2 dxe4 6.Nxe4 Nf6 7.Ng3)
The game below was played at the FIDE Online Arena and it is part of the 100 game match between these two players. This is game number 39 and the draw meant that my six point lead would continue to be an issue to my opponent that he should solve as soon as possible in order to get back into the fight for the win of the match. The score after this game was 22.5 - 16.5. There were still more than enough games left to change the leader in the match which is still paused and is unlikely to continue this week either. I should start playing at FOA this week though and work on getting the games I am missing for the requirement of Arena International Master. I just have not been able to play there lately which I am trying to change as soon as possible.
I played a team match game last Saturday which could have gone either way, but our top two boards were not able to win their games even though they had a few chances to convert their advantage into wins. It certainly was not the only reason we lost the match, but in the order that the games ended, those two games were the last ones to finish and therefore very important for the end result. It was a match that was played on five boards. The time controls were 1 h 30 min as the basic time, and on move 40, 30 minutes were added to the clock, also there was a 30 second increment that lasted the whole game. The match started with a loss for us on board five, which actually was an expected result as we did not get the best possible team composition. Then I tied the match by winning on board four. Then we lost on board three, which was the deciding point unfortunately as the draws obviously did not help. I was the team captain and while I am happy about the way my game went, I am not happy about the team performance. I knew we had a tough task ahead of us before the match, but because we certainly had chances to win despite the odds, the final score is disappointing. This was the second round match in the group our team plays and had we won this match, we would still be able to win the group but now it seems very unlikely thing to happen.
12 Oct 2015
D79 Fianchetto Grünfeld: Symmetrical Variation (6.O-O c6 7.cxd5 cxd5) (1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.O-O O-O 5.d4 c5 6.c3 cxd4 7.cxd4 d5 8.Nc3 Nc6 9.Bf4)
The game below is the 1000th analysed chess game to appear in this blog!! It has taken me a bit over a year to reach this milestone but it might very well be that the 2000th game will be added less than a year from now. I think it is at the moment realistic assumption because even though I do not make post everyday anymore, the amount of games that I do post per day is very likely to increase the longer this blog exists. Of those 1000 games I have won 630 (63%), drawn 87 (8.7%) and lost 283 (28.3 %). Those games have featured 411 different opening variations and there are still more to go. The variation that has the most games is still A20 English Opening: King's English Variation. General (30 games 3%) and it may be like that for quite some time, though other variations are catching up a bit. The reason why it has the most games is that when those games were played, I knew almost nothing of opening theory and playing 1.c4 in my first move with White was my favorite for several years. These days I do not play it all that often, there are some opponents however, against whom I have still occasionally played it. Second and third most common openings are C45 Scotch Game: Schmidt Variation (23 games 2.3%) and C64 Spanish Game: Classical Variation (22 games 2.2%). So learning one particular line of theory would not help me all that much because I face the same openings so rarely. Then again I rarely face the same opponents which might contribute to the diversity of the openings. There are still maybe ten people who I have played hundreds of games against, but only three of those I have several hundred recorded games as well.
The game below is the 37th game in the 100 game match between me and a friend of mine, against whom I have played most over the board and online games or that is my assumption anyway because I do not have exact statistics of all the games I have ever played. With this win, Tomi was able to decrease my lead in the match to five points and the score after these 37 games was 21 - 16.
9 Oct 2015
B08 Pirc Defence: Classical System (1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.h3 Nf6 5.Be3 O-O 6.Nf3 b6)
The last post of the week will feature a game played at the FIDE Online Arena on August 10th 2015. This is the 34th game played in the 100 game game match that is currently paused again for some time. At this point in the match I started to get a comfortable lead and after this game the score was 19 - 15 in my favor. It is true that the match was far from over at that point in time and the match could still be won by either player. Being in the lead does mean though that I can accept draws more easily because I am no longer forced to increase the amount of wins I have. It also means that my opponent in this match does need to play for the win and in some cases it can play to my advantage if my opponent tries too hard to win positions that should be drawn.
8 Oct 2015
C54 Giuoco Piano: 4.c3 Nf6, main lines with 5.d4 and 5.d3 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4 exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Nc3 Nxe4)
This game was played in the first round of the 2014 October Glacial Super Casual Banded I 1650+ tournament that is held at Red Hot Pawn. Today I lost one of the games in this first round and it meant that I can no longer win group 1 and therefore I also can't advance to the second round. It is still very unclear on what place I will end up in the final standings because I still have six games left to finish. I am currently on fifth place but theoretically I can finish on second place if all goes well for me in the remaining games. Takinitez007 (1875) is the current leader of group 1 with 50 points and he has also the highest maximum possible score so things are looking good for him. A player called jankrb (2152) is currently on second place with 40 points and third place belongs to caissad4 (1793) who has 38 points at the moment I type this.
7 Oct 2015
C41 Philidor Defense: Philidor Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Bd7)
The game I am sharing today was played in a team match called Royal > 1799. It was played between The Not Wanteds and ☼ The Farm ☼ on three boards. I played on board 2 for The Not Wanteds in this small team match and I was only able to get a draw in my other game against T48 in addition to the loss below. We lost this match with a score of 1.5 - 4.5. My Online Chess rating at Chess.com continues to decline almost everyday, in a month it has dropped about 100 points. Before that I was able to maintain my rating with relative ease above 1900. During about the same time period my rating at Red Hot Pawn has gone up again, though not as much as my rating has dropped at Chess.com. Well, at least the amount of games I have in progress has also declined despite the fact that more games have started again recently. The increase is partly due to the fact that next round started in one of the tournaments where I was able to advance to the next round. And partly because I joined a few more team matches. I have currently 79 games in progress. I might get the game load down to around 50 by the end of next month or that is the plan anyway. It all depends on the willingness of the players to continue some games. I think I have three games in progress at Red Hot Pawn that are continuing on even though the result of the games should be clear to both players.
6 Oct 2015
C54 Giuoco Piano: 4.c3 Nf6, main lines with 5.d4 and 5.d3 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4 exd4 6.e5 d5)
This is from a team match called Magnificent Obsessives Ride. It was played on 40 boards between Obsessive Chess Disorder!! and Team Australia. I played on board 7 for OCD and managed to help the team with two wins. This was a very close match as the score 42 - 38 suggests. The match ended in our victory! It was very disappointing to see some players in both teams having cheater badges next to their handle. If the score of the match would be corrected so that the points that the cheaters got would go to their opponents who did not cheat, the final score would be 41,5 - 38,5 in our favor, so the result would not change that much. Timeouts were a decisive factor in this match though, we lost five games on time, but our opponent lost eleven games on time. The final score might have been quite different if those timeouts would not have happened. This post was previously named as C53 Italian Game: Classical Variation, Greco Gambit, which is how the opening is categorized at lichess.org, for instance. The new name comes from the Fritz 16 opening classification, but both share the same exact moves.
5 Oct 2015
B16 Caro-Kann: Bronstein-Larsen Variation (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ gxf6 6.Bc4 Bf5 7.Nf3 e6 8.Bf4)
The 33rd game in the 100 game match between me and my friend was played on August 10th 2015. This is by far the longest lasting match I have ever played because this started in 2013 if I recall correctly. For reasons I can't remember all that well anymore, after 20 games had been played, this match paused for two years. And the way things are progressing at the moment, this match will continue to next year, unless we activate the match again. We have not played for a month or so now. We have still 49 games to play, so it has taken about three years to play 51 games... We do not even use that long time controls, both players have 15 minutes on their clocks. After the game below ended my lead in the match continued to grow and the score was then 18 - 15 in my favor.
The next couple of days I will post some of my correspondence chess games again for a change. I was able to find new things to post for this week a lot easier than last week at least for the most part, I still do not know what I will post Friday. Chances are that it will be a day when another major update will see the light of day. Until then, thank you all who have come here to view my blog! A big thank you also to all who have shared my posts and of course to all who have followed me on Google+, it is much appreciated!
2 Oct 2015
C62 Spanish Game: Steinitz Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Bb5 Bd7 6.Bxc6 Bxc6 7.Nc3 Qf6)
Today was a really busy day with all the updates to the blog, but I was able to post all the games that I wanted to post today. I did some of the work yesterday after the post I published because I knew I could not do all the updates today. The game below is the 30th game in the 100 game match I have against a friend of mine. This draw meant that I remained in the lead of the match. The score in the match after this game was 15.5 - 14.5 in my favor. I have played two, maybe three 100 game matches against Tomi before, but those were with time controls where we both had 5 minutes on the clock. This match we play with time controls where both players have 15 minutes at the start of the game. Those matches started quite evenly at first, but at some point I was able to get a clear lead in the match that I was able to hold until the end. All these matches have been played online and I think I have positive score against him in online games, but I am not so sure about the over the board games, I think he has an upper hand in those games. I do not have the exact statistics of either of the online or the games I have played over the board against him, but I think that I am correct in my assumption.
1 Oct 2015
A53 Old Indian Defence without Nf3 (1.e4 d6 2.d4 c6 3.c4 Qc7 4.Nc3 e5 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.Be2 Be7 7.O-O Nf6 8.Be3 Nbd7)
The game below was played in the fifth and final round of the WORLD OPEN RAPID tournament that was held at the FIDE Online Arena on April 13th 2015. This is also the last tournament game that I have played at FOA. Maybe I will start playing tournament games there again at some point, but for now I do not have the time to do that. I would like to activate myself there again but at the moment it would seem that I have too many other things to do, but maybe I can get a game or two played next week. I finished this tournament with three wins and two losses, so this was yet again only a mediocre performance from me. This game featured many mistakes and both players had couple of opportunities to win. The move I like the most is 37.Bxg7! because I was able to play that nice move in a difficult position.