January--the busiest chess month!

Lots of activity over the last few weeks. I have played 4 games in the GCC Swiss, 4 games (and a bye) in the Austin Chess Club Championship (Jan 7-9), 3 games at the Austin Kids tourney (Jan 15), and 3 games at the Temple Open (Jan 22). End result was a rating swing of a whopping 8 points starting the month at 1741 and ending at 1749.

I finished the December issue of Chess Life back in December and starting Jacob Aagaard's "Excelling at Chess" the ChessCafe.com 2002 book of the year. I had recently covered John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy and loved the interplay involving GM Aagaard taking issue with some of the premises of Mr. Watson. I also enjoyed the general writing style, and while there were a lot of games to go through, there was also plenty of text to read through. I believe the reviews at Amazon cover it well but I would add that for strong club players between 1600-1900 this is an outstanding book.

Since the Temple Open was the newest tourney venue I've played at I thought I would cover it in some detail. A short 45 minute drive from Georgetown straight north on I35 made the travel easy and the venue easy to find. The Holiday Inn looked relatively new and the facilities were excellent. The tournament was held the same weekend as the Texas Team event up in Dallas but they still had a good turnout of 27 players. I hope they continue as planned with quarterly events as I plan to be a regular participant.

I caught the difficult end of the "Swiss" break getting paired up the first round against Matthew Liu who was rated 2055. I took a real hammering as black in a Caro Kann advance being dead lost after about 12 moves before going on a king walk and resigning on move 24 (9 of black's last 12 moves were with the king). Using very little of the Game\90 time control left me with about 2 1/2 hours till the next round. Matthew was kind enough to go over the game with me in the lobby. I feel I learned at least three good lessons from this debacle.

Matthew playing black in round two

The next round saw me paired down against John De Vries rated 1411 who perplexed me with the seldom seen (for me) Albin counter gambit. Even though I played right into the Albin player's dream trap with the move 4. e3 I was able to pull out win down the road. John and I were able to review this game and consider other options in the post mortem analysis.

Jonathan v. Khoa

The event certainly drew a lot of familiar players from the GCC with the Nguyen family there in force along with the Manions, Vincent, Jonathan, Nate, and myself all having played at the GCC in the past. Twelve of the 27 players had attended a GCC event in the past.

Vince playing white

Steve (upper right) and Dang (lower left)

Nam had a nice tournament picking up 76 rating points in the process.

Jonathan v. Nam

The last round ended with a draw between myself and Chris Chen rated 1690. Chris played 4. Qc2 in the Slav and I was quickly out of book and on my own. However after several exchanges the position was quiet and at the end of a long day we split the point.

Duy v Chris (foregound) Emily v. Nate (background)

Let me express my thanks to the sponsors Forrest Marler and Wayne Sampson for hosting such a wonderful event. I would love to see more players take advantage of playing in a Grand Prix event at such a nice site.

Magazine Month

November was a catch-up month for me and my last few issues of Chess Life. I played through every game and quiz in the July, August, September, October and November issues. It took about 5-6 days per issue and as usual I was able to make a little more progress on weekends than during the workweek. I eagerly await the Decmber issue and I'll try to tackle and finish that prior to mid-month.

I also managed to get through the roughly 268 pgaes of "How to Think Ahead in Chess" by Horowitz and Reinfeld. I bought it off a clearance rack in half price books for a buck and never really thought I'd actually read it. At heart it's a basic repetoire book based on the Stonewall Attack, the Sicilian Dragon and the Lasker variation of the QGD. For a book originally published 59 years ago in 1951, the surprise is that the Lasker is relatively the same. The Sicilian Dragon is somewhat recognizable. I hadn't seen anything on the Stonewall Attack since high school but I've been dabbling with the Dutch Stonewall with roughly identical themes. Under the eveything old is new again theory, I rolled out my attempt at the Stonewall Attack in my first game at the Austin Kids tourney today and managed to win in spite of it. I won my first two games against a 1365 and 1799 before losing in the final round to a 1950 player.

I'm making my New Year's plan for chess in 2011 and hope to finish roughly 18 books along with the 12 monthly issues of Chess Life next year. Right now I'm prepping for the Austin Club Championship on Jan 7-9th and the Temple Tourney on Jan 22nd. Happy Holidays to all!

US Game/60 Tournament

I had a little success this weekend in the US Game/60 Tourney scoring 3/4 to tie for third in the Reserve section (U1800). It's always nice to get a check at the end of a tournament. I went up to Illinois to visit the family and decided to spend a day playing. As a bonus I ran into a group of guys my age who spent some time reminiscing about all the old clubs and chess haunts of our youth. The tourney facilities were okay. I'm at that age where good lighting is getting more important. Right after the start of the 2nd round the folks in the banquet room next door to the tournament room started their "Tribute to Barry White" with a booming bass line. Perhaps the hotel personnel need a future reminder that chess tournaments and music festivals don't mix well. Best of all I picked up just enough rating points to sneak back over 1700 to 1701.

The Saturday before last I had played in the Austin Kids Tourney and flamed out badly. I dropped almost 40 points to 1690. Hopefully just an off day but they seem to be occurring more frequently as of late. Last year around this time I had just punched through the 1800 barrier and was sitting on 1803. My goal for 2011 is to play much more often, preferably in slower time control events and regain the 1800+ level.

I'm back to skipping between about half a dozen books and magazines instead of concentrating on my list. Time to buckle down and prepare for 2011.

Book Review: "Studying Chess Made Easy"

I finished "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Andrew Soltis covering the last 70 pages over the last four-five days. I really like the ideas communicated to the reader in this book. For the most part I had heard the advice on improving before in many different sources and many different forms. Here it was especially digestable.

• Chapter 1: Chess Isn't School
• Chapter 2: Cultivating Your Chess Sense
• Chapter 3: The biggest Study myth
• Chapter 4: The Right Way to Study Openings
• Chapter 5: Two-an-a-half-move Chess
• Chapter 6: Overcoming Endgame Phobia
• Chapter 7: Learning to Live with TMI
• Chapter 8: How to Learn More from a Master Game

The last chapter on "How to learn more from a master game" took advice I had heard--play over the game at least three times--and broke it down into the whys and wherefores. Play through the first time quickly (just the raw game score) to get a feel for the game (ebb and flow, crucial points, themes). Play through the second time looking at note commentary for ideas, look for points where you would have chosen a different move or didn't understand why a move was chosen. Play through the third time for detailed examination of the analysis notes and variations, do your own analysis sans computer to gain further understanding.

Soltis is also a believer of the every diagram is a lesson program. He talks about good authors of chess material choosing to use diagrams at critical/interesting/learning opportunity moments of the games they annotate. He expresses that improving players should have fun while studying. Although he knows that some areas of study will be hard and brutal work for the player that really wishes to achieve a high level he notes that choosing exciting games, practicing and analyzing with friends, and learning openings/endgames in  increments can be done without draining all the fun out of chess.

I really like several of the reviews on Amazon regarding this book and feel those reviewers are spot on with their key points. This is a strong candidate for "Book of the Year."

In addition, the working through the book, since my last  post I have finished the May and June issues of Chess Life leaving me July, August and September to work through. I have been playing on-line with some success and reviewing tactics diagrams daily. I just seem to lack the time for slow chess tournaments and weekend events. I will try to focus more on that over the next six months.

Mounting a Comeback

Last night I finished the book "Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions" by Yasser Seirawan. I bought and started the book over the Memorial Day weekend and now 2 1/2 months later I have digested its 432 pages (414 prior to index). It is a tremedous book for any chess lover and highly recommended! Yasser takes you through some wonderful chess adventures both in the games and in the stories about the players and the chess world in general. This book has received some wonderful accolades in the reviews on Amazon I agree with the bulk of them. I have seen Yasser Seirawan twice in person, most recently at a National Open in Vegas about 10 years back where he was giving a lecture and almost 30 years ago in the '80-'81 time frame when I played in a local tournament in California. The details are fuzzy due to the time lapsed but I believe it was somewhere in or near Van Nuys. Yasser was already a chess celebrity having won the World Junior Championship in 1979. I believe there was one master at the tourney and a bunch of class players. In between rounds I walked out of the high school where this tourney was being held and playing basketball on the outdoor courts was Yasser. I had the impression he was "beyond" playing in a local tourney but loved to be around the game and chess players.

It's been awhile since I last posted, time flys, life goes on, and blogs always seem like we'll get to it someday soon. I finished DCS on April 23rd and I finished SOMCS on June 6th. I haven't been playing as much as I would like, often giving up my spot in the club tourney if there is a odd number of entrants. Therefore my rating has been somewhat steady in the 1725-1750 range. I have managed to add a number of books to the chess library, way more than I can possibly get to this year but nice for the collection. During the trip to Chicago over Memorial Day I also picked up several volumes of the Yuri Averbach endgame series in hardcover at half price books. I have acquired several other bargains at half price books during trips to Dallas and just recently placed an Amazon order for "Mastering the Chess Openings, Volume 4" to complete that set, along with "Play the Caro Kann" and "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Soltis. The book currently on the side of the chess table is "Starting Out: The Scandanavian" and I've been focusing on the 3.... Qd6 chapters.

Still playing some on-line blitz at playchess.com but not as much as I once was. I haven't been keeping up with games in Chess Life currently being about four issues behind. I'll try to rectify that the remainder of this month. I feel that if I could just improve a couple of hundred points to the high "A" low expert range my enjoyment of playing through the chess library would be greatly enhanced but I can't seem to spend the time I know is necessary to study tactics, tactics, and more tactics nor focus sufficiently at the board when wearing the dual player/TD hats.

For the immediate future I'll set the smaller goal of just trying to update this blog more frequently. To any and all readers out there play well and enjoy the game.

Plodding Along

Life does get in the way of chess study. But overall things are progressing abet slowly. I've moved the bookmark in DCS up to page 116 for a gain of 24 pages over the last month. In SOMCS I've advanced to page 118 for an additional 42 pages covered. I've progressed through several games in the April issue of Chess Life. I have played in the March Club Swiss finishing tied for first with a score of 3.5/4.0 including a .5 bye. Boosted my regular rating from 1718 to 1754 and QC rating from 1732 to 1760. Then played in the March 31 Quick Chess Quads and finished 1st with a 3.0/3.0 and added 25 more points to 1785 Quick. The Club Swiss for April is off and running but due to an odd number of entrants I took a 1st round .5 point bye. I turned 50 on April 3rd and my presents included "Knight Endings" by Averbach, GrandMaster Repertoire 1. d4 by Boris Avrukh, and an Amazon order including "The Improving Chess Thinker" by Heisman, "Forcing Chess Moves" by Hertan and "Starting Out: The Scandinavian" by Houska. My cup runneth over! I have played some on-line blitz over the last 30 days but less frequently than the prior month. I'll really have to work at carving out study blocks for chess in the future.

Depressing Update

The improvement program would be rated highly successful by government standards. My rating has fallen from 1806 on 11/4 to 1795 on 12/16 to 1714 today. The government official explaining this rating drop would say that by increasing my knowledge in a wider varitey of chess positions than I am normally accustomed to playing I'm increasing my overall chess knowledge and in the future this should begin to show a steady increase in rating which always lags the accumulation of knowledge. In addition, once I become acclimated to the wider variety of chess positions my intrinsic value as a chess player shall increase.

In reality, I have meandered through a few more pages in DCS up to page 82 and SOMCS up to page 76 which represents about 24 total pages in 8 days since the last update. I did play in one 3-SS Game/45 tournament on Saturday winning two games but losing to a 1672 player. The areas of book study included the discussion of playing Isolated Queen Pawn (IQP) positions which I normally don't get in my opening systems. However, after reviewing that section I had the chance to enter one in the tournament and didn't shy away from it. It's interesting to sit at the board thinking "The book says this is how I should play the position and that is how my opponent should play the position" and then watch somewhat helplessly as he achieves his aims while I barely hang on and eventually slip off.

Much less time for on-line blitz in this time period although I played a few sessions. My goal for the next week is to average at least 6 pages a day, spent less time on the computer and more time studying and, perhaps, not just playing through the moves.