I'm Back ( for the most part)

(Post edit January 4th. adding game fragment in chess publisher)

I was going to enter a new video from the Fuzzy collection but then I saw how large I was back in October. My other quest is for a reduction I decided to stay more positive. The Band is getting back together next week and this year we will be doing more recording in my basement studio... so blues will follow...including my original chess blues " I opened with E4...(but then he threw me out of the book)"

So, Huzzah to all knights, Friends and fellow chess addicts. I was at the Metrowest Chess Club the other night and, to use the blog-names, Reassembler, Globular, Harvey and I ( not to forget Steve, who was TD adn doign the pairing in the background) were all around the same table chatting F2f prior to the round. Not one of us were making resolutions as to what we expected to accomplish this year in chess. Smart move.

I wanted to post the game I played. It was interesting... up until move 15 when it looks like a typo in my transcript made an illegal move... but I couldn't figure out if I actually made that move. If I did, my opponent didn't flag the error and the game continued. My daughter ran into a similar situation a year ago at one of the state events. Both her and her opponent had the board set up wrong with queens on opposite colors. Since the game continued beyond 3 moves without either of us recognizing the error, the result was still valid. It's quite possible I did make this odd knight move... and I could have since I was suffering from PTHD ( post Traumatic Holiday Disorder)... I feel a little remorse.
(EDIT: Here is hte game up until the notation gaff... it does have the nice combination mentioned as it was well after move 15)



LEP: I hope this helps the visualization.


I won the game... I had black against a 1700 player and played a Caro-Kan against a King's Indian attack. In the early part of the game I was able to establish a the thematic e5, d5 pawn pair unchallenged. After he fianchetto'd the king bishop, I locked it up with pawns on e5 and d4, and c5 against his at e4 and d3.

This played into his plan which I had no clue. I have, however, been reading Yasser Sierrawan's book on Openings. I was getting a nice expansion on the queenside when I was able to deliver a b5 with the central pawn mass. But I was concerned about the kingside and White's diagonal invasion. Long story short, I put the queenside on hold and played to challenge white's king bishop which he defended and put as much pressure on ripping open his kingside as much as possible. I manged to open the h-file and that's when the scribing error seemed to dominate. Sorry, I can't post this one due to its incompleteness. To make matters worse, as things were in a fragile positional balance on the kingside, I sprung into action on the queenside with a rook forking Knight sacrifice that he didn't accept. Because if he did... his house of cards on the kingside was about to tumble. Instead he attempted to pair down the complications.

The endgame had me with 2 rooks against a bishop and rook with a couple of extra pawns. I was able to exchange the extra rook for the bishop and another pawn leaving me with an easy 3 pawn up endgame with rooks.

Valid or not... It was a nice positional battle ... I hope the descriptive narrative of the melee will suffice in lieu of bad notation.

This year I am going to play more positional games as white. Dusting off the d4 games I used to play except not to be so reliant on the London system this time. The problem I have with e4 is i feel like a fish out of water. Gambits was a nice diversion ( when I could play them) but I found too easily neutralized by the stronger players. But the jury is still out... I have a few tricks ( books) up my sleeve and may pull out a closed positional Sicilian.

In any case, I am back... will probably update the blog on occasion... but the time for me is better spent on studying. I plan to update the blog with more of my learning experiences over the board.