Well, the best laid plans ….

For those of you following with abated breath my last post, first, I didn’t lose last night. I just didn’t get to play the one I prepared for. As stated earlier, the pairing post was only preliminary at our club. We had one person in my section with the same points to call in for a bye. I played a 1400 player instead of Mr. 1900 who I had prepared for.

Now, since my latest chess improvement plan is to blunder less, I played cautiously against an odd French variation with 1.e4 e5 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 g6? I’d never seen that one before and decided to make normal developing moves. I have the game posted below.

I suckered my opponent into a tasty poisoned b2 pawn and he got even greedier with the c-pawn. This allowed for a discovered attack on the unprotected queen. A point is a point and I marked it on the score sheet. Poor kid.

White to move




24. Rb1 Qxc2 25 Bxh6+ ( 24... Qa3 still looses to Bb4).

So Mr.1900 has the same score as I going into the last round as does one other player who’s rated between us. Looking at the preliminary pairing for next week. I still won’t get to play him. I am paired with an 1800 player as black. I have a little history on this one and he plays 1.d4. I have been playing the Slav against 1.d4 and I need to revamp this. I have been looking at the Meran version in the starting out series:

But I may pull a surprise out of my hat and actually attempt a completely different defense called the Baltic ( 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Bf5!) which ends up more like a London reversed. So it would be an easy one for me. I played it last year at during a speed tournament at the World open and had some good luck with it.

This Sunday, I am playing in a 1 day G60 event. I am preparing for this mostly by doing as many tactical problems as possible since a lot of these games tend to be won in the final minutes.


1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.e5 h6 6.Bd3 b6 7.0–0 c5 8.dxc5 bxc5 9.Nb5 Bf8 10.Bf4 c4 11.Be2 Qb6 12.Nd6+ Bxd6 13.exd6 Nc6 14.Ne5 Nxe5 15.Bxe5 f6 16.Bc3 Qxd6 17.Bxc4 Qb6 18.Bd3 Kf7 19.Qg4 Ne7 20.Rfe1 e5 21.Qe2 d4 22.Bc4+ Kg7 23.Bd2 Qxb2 24.Rab1 Qxc2 25.Bxh6+ Rxh6 26.Qxc2 Bf5 27.Bd3 Rc8 28.Qb3 Rc3 29.Qb7 Kf7 30.Bxf5 gxf5 31.Rec1 Rxc1+ 32.Rxc1 Rh8 33.Rc7 Re8 34.Qd5+ Kf8 35.Qe6 1–0