Friday, April 28, 2006

TrooperScoop Vs Sciurus

A game I played recently via correspondence chess is featured on Getting Into Chess... where I was able to take advantage of a position on the board for checkmate even though I was down material.

Click here to see Sciurus' article and a link to the annotated game.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Greedy Queen

Ran into a situation in a recent game where the Queen could get a little greedy and take a pawn. The warning bells were ringing in my head but I ignored it and snatched it up. You can see the position here:


Bad move. The following sequence ensued:

6. ... Qxg2 7. Rg1 Bb4+ 8. Ke2 Qh3 9. Bxf7 Kd8 10. Bxg7 1-0


Ouch. Look at the Queen, she's totally paralysed. The King is trying to hide in a little cubbyhole, and the Rook is about to be captured.

The lesson learned is, it's not worth picking up material if it traps your Queen. I've had the same problem when capturing the Rook in the corner with the Queen. It can easily be trapped or captured, or take so many moves to get out that you are way behind.

Friday, April 21, 2006

ChessWorld: First Impression

I recently came across a blog that had mention of a correspondence Chess site, ChessWorld. I clicked through, checked it out, and have been playing a few games there. It's really great because it's easy to use, and requires no Java or anything else. The nice thing about correspondence Chess is that you can log in from anywhere to make a few moves when you have time, but don't have to sit there and wait for a reply. Just go back to doing whatever else you were doing and check back within the time limit (possibly days) for your next move.

Check it out: Let's Play Chess!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Chess Simultaneous Match

I played in a Chess Simultaneous Match at work last month. Len, our resident Chess expert (ranked in the top group in BC) and tournament advisor/referee agreed to play against the top four players in the tournament at the same time.

The top four players, shown below are (left to right) Allan, Joel, Scott, and Andrew. There's another Andrew between the two tables who is just observing. Len, of course, is the one standing... there's no time for sitting when you're playing four people at the same time!


The game progressed well, with a few blunders here and there (can't help it when playing fast games I guess). I tried to watch the other games at the same time but it proved impossible once the board got complicated. Since I was playing, I couldn't take photos. Thanks to Tony, our other resident photographer for taking pictures of this event!


Here's me, concentrating on the board. I didn't want to lose quickly, so I couldn't afford to make any big mistakes.

In the end, however, I was the only one of the four to win my game! I'm far from being as good as Len, but I played as well as I could, and in the end, he made a mistake which gave me the winning advantage.

Len and Brent (from the Port Coquitlam Chess Club who came to watch the match) reconstructed the game and recorded the move list, which is as follows:

Len (w)
Andrew (b)
2006-03-10

1.e4 g6 2.Nc3 Bg7 3.Bc4 e6 4.d3 Nc6 5.f4 Nge7 6.Nf3 0-0 7.0-0 d6 8.Qe1 Nd4 9.Nxd4 Bxd4+ 10.Kh1 c6 11.Ne2 b5 12.Nxd4 bxc4 13.dxc4 Bb7 14.Qh4 e5 15.fxe5 dxe5 16.Nf3 h5 17.Bg5 Re8 18.Nxe5 Qd4 19.Bxe7 Qxe5 20.Bf6 Qxe4 21.Qg5 Qe3 22.Qxe3 Rxe3 23.Rae1 Rae8 24.Bc3 c5 25.Kg1 f5 26.Kf2 f4 27.Bd2 Rxe1 28.Rxe1 Rxe1 29.Bxe1 Kg7 30.Bd2 g5 31.h4 f3 32.g3 g4 33.Be3 Be4 34.Bxc5 Bxc2 35.Bxa7 Bb1 36.a3 Kf7 37.Ke3 Ke6 38.Kf4 Kf6 39.b4 Bd3 40.c5 f2 41.c6 f1Q+ 42.Ke3 Qg1+ 43.Kxd3 Qxa7 44.Kc4 Qxa3 45.Kb5 Qa7 46.Kc4 Qb6 47.b5 0-1
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