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Showing posts with label chess goal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chess goal. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2009
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Amateur Team West 07
US Amateur Team West
What happened to Caltech this year? Caltech had been a perennial contender (winning 3 of the last 4 and going into the last round in clear first in the other one), but this year we were missing out top board Patrick Hummel which convinced us to name ourselves "No Patrick, No Problem".
Last year we were good and lucky enough to win the event clear, this year we were much weaker (2020 vs 2197) and our last year's 2nd and 4th boards (Yanayt and I) were playing 1st and 2nd boards respectively this year. We had a rough start with Yanayt blundering from a completley won position in round 1 to tie a match we should've probably won despite this result. In round 3 we played the famous Hoo's the Next American Idol and despite being outrated on 3/4 boards only lost 1.5-2.5 and actually our board 3 was better the whole game and then played consecutive blunders throwing away the win on move 40 and losing the game outright on move 41, but such things happen in chess. We beat up some weaker team in round 4 and had a nice upset in round 5 fueled by our very consistant 4th board Mike Kaye's victory over a stronger player and myself on board 2 defeating a master as black (more on this below). In round 6 we were paired against a disappointed San Diego team whose top boards decided to call it an event and headed for the long drive home while their bottom two boards still wanted to play. We bravely allowed our lower boards to play the games to try to keep things as interesting as possible and they valiantly scored 1.5/2 to give us a very impressive result of 4.5/6 despite the early mis-steps. We tied for 4th overall and took 5th place on tiebreaks and 1st place U2100, I can say we can be happy with our early "Swiss Gambit". So sure, it wasn't first place, but this was the lowest rated Caltech team in the past 5 years and we still had a very solid result. Had it not been for some bad luck on our part we might have even been in contention.
My own results were kind of strange. In round 1 I was on the black side of a Slav and my opponent played one lazy move and then needed to accept an inferior position, but instead blundered allowing a nice tactic to win a piece and resigned before making his 16th move. In round 2 I was paired against another weaker opponent, this time as white. It was my first game against the Gruenfeld so I was slightly uncomfortable playing this very technical line I had prepared in general. My opponent played a few inaccurate moves and I was clearly better, but then he blundered allowing me to win a pawn and the bishop pair to which he apparantly decided he would rather be mated in one instead so I played 20. Qh7# (yes, I know you don't see the position) and again was the first one done on the team in under an hour. In round 3 I played the highest rated board 2 in the event in Joel Banawa who was sitting at a rating of 2380+. I missed my chance to generate serious counterplay, but may have still had chances to survive, but I blundered allowing him to win the exchange which I might have had some minimal compensation for if it werent for my followup trying to win the exchange back which I was lazy about calculating and missed (from far) that he had a nice tactic at the end of this line winning a piece and not losing the exchange back so I decided to resign instead of playing on down a whole rook. In round 4 I was paired down again, not quite so far this time and I got to play my first real game against the King's Indian, my opponent played a dubious (but common) variation and I gave a little lesson in ripping the queenside apart and not getting mated and I won fairly smoothly. In round 5 I was paired up to a 2278 as black. My opponent played the Exchange French which is a line that has definitely more poison than its reputation. If black plays lazily he can end up with problems developing his "free" french bishop. My opponent played a move that looked inaccurate in the opening and I found my chance to equalize completely. I realized from looking at the boards that I would probably need to win to give my team a real chance so I wanted to keep my chances high. I was quite proud of the move I found in the following position:
White just played 17. Qf5
(image generated from http://www.eddins.net/steve/chess/chessimager)
I was black in this position against an opponent more than 150 points higher rated than me. I had forseen this position and felt I should be better, but I realized I was a little loose and if I wasn't careful my better minor pieces could become less of a factor than my loose queenside. However, I had prepared a shot in this position which I will post the result at the bottom of this post, so don't scroll down if you want to try to find the strongest move in the position on your own. By the way, this move only achieves a positional goal and clarifies the position, it does not win material or give some overwhelming advantage. I would say after this move the position is clearly =+.
Anyways, I went on to win this game (although even after the diagram my opponent had reasonable drawing chances) which had a nice finish for me as the game simplified to KNNB v K which I could have won faster, but decided to enjoy myself by winning with just KNB v K ignoring my other knight. In the last round I chose not to play a game (otherwise someone else on my team wouldn't have gotten a game) and decided to give the games to the teammates who would get the most interesting games. And our 3rd and 4th boards stepped up as I mentioned to net us the U2100 prize on tiebreaks.
My goals:
Well, I guess I had some miscalculations in game 3 which wasn't great, but it was a tough game and I can't be totally disappointed with it. I am not holding myself to a standard of never missing anything in my calculations as my current goal is still to break 2200 and I'm not insisting to be perfect as that would be unreasonable. I spotted some nice tactics in a few of my games and don't feel like I missed out on major opportunities for the most part due to lazy calculation.
Rating change: 2132 -> 2144 (2 points from my all-time high!)
Solution to diagram: 17... Qc8! White cannot play 18. Qxf6 because Be7 traps the queen so the white queen is excavated (he traded it off on c8).
What happened to Caltech this year? Caltech had been a perennial contender (winning 3 of the last 4 and going into the last round in clear first in the other one), but this year we were missing out top board Patrick Hummel which convinced us to name ourselves "No Patrick, No Problem".
Last year we were good and lucky enough to win the event clear, this year we were much weaker (2020 vs 2197) and our last year's 2nd and 4th boards (Yanayt and I) were playing 1st and 2nd boards respectively this year. We had a rough start with Yanayt blundering from a completley won position in round 1 to tie a match we should've probably won despite this result. In round 3 we played the famous Hoo's the Next American Idol and despite being outrated on 3/4 boards only lost 1.5-2.5 and actually our board 3 was better the whole game and then played consecutive blunders throwing away the win on move 40 and losing the game outright on move 41, but such things happen in chess. We beat up some weaker team in round 4 and had a nice upset in round 5 fueled by our very consistant 4th board Mike Kaye's victory over a stronger player and myself on board 2 defeating a master as black (more on this below). In round 6 we were paired against a disappointed San Diego team whose top boards decided to call it an event and headed for the long drive home while their bottom two boards still wanted to play. We bravely allowed our lower boards to play the games to try to keep things as interesting as possible and they valiantly scored 1.5/2 to give us a very impressive result of 4.5/6 despite the early mis-steps. We tied for 4th overall and took 5th place on tiebreaks and 1st place U2100, I can say we can be happy with our early "Swiss Gambit". So sure, it wasn't first place, but this was the lowest rated Caltech team in the past 5 years and we still had a very solid result. Had it not been for some bad luck on our part we might have even been in contention.
My own results were kind of strange. In round 1 I was on the black side of a Slav and my opponent played one lazy move and then needed to accept an inferior position, but instead blundered allowing a nice tactic to win a piece and resigned before making his 16th move. In round 2 I was paired against another weaker opponent, this time as white. It was my first game against the Gruenfeld so I was slightly uncomfortable playing this very technical line I had prepared in general. My opponent played a few inaccurate moves and I was clearly better, but then he blundered allowing me to win a pawn and the bishop pair to which he apparantly decided he would rather be mated in one instead so I played 20. Qh7# (yes, I know you don't see the position) and again was the first one done on the team in under an hour. In round 3 I played the highest rated board 2 in the event in Joel Banawa who was sitting at a rating of 2380+. I missed my chance to generate serious counterplay, but may have still had chances to survive, but I blundered allowing him to win the exchange which I might have had some minimal compensation for if it werent for my followup trying to win the exchange back which I was lazy about calculating and missed (from far) that he had a nice tactic at the end of this line winning a piece and not losing the exchange back so I decided to resign instead of playing on down a whole rook. In round 4 I was paired down again, not quite so far this time and I got to play my first real game against the King's Indian, my opponent played a dubious (but common) variation and I gave a little lesson in ripping the queenside apart and not getting mated and I won fairly smoothly. In round 5 I was paired up to a 2278 as black. My opponent played the Exchange French which is a line that has definitely more poison than its reputation. If black plays lazily he can end up with problems developing his "free" french bishop. My opponent played a move that looked inaccurate in the opening and I found my chance to equalize completely. I realized from looking at the boards that I would probably need to win to give my team a real chance so I wanted to keep my chances high. I was quite proud of the move I found in the following position:
White just played 17. Qf5
I was black in this position against an opponent more than 150 points higher rated than me. I had forseen this position and felt I should be better, but I realized I was a little loose and if I wasn't careful my better minor pieces could become less of a factor than my loose queenside. However, I had prepared a shot in this position which I will post the result at the bottom of this post, so don't scroll down if you want to try to find the strongest move in the position on your own. By the way, this move only achieves a positional goal and clarifies the position, it does not win material or give some overwhelming advantage. I would say after this move the position is clearly =+.
Anyways, I went on to win this game (although even after the diagram my opponent had reasonable drawing chances) which had a nice finish for me as the game simplified to KNNB v K which I could have won faster, but decided to enjoy myself by winning with just KNB v K ignoring my other knight. In the last round I chose not to play a game (otherwise someone else on my team wouldn't have gotten a game) and decided to give the games to the teammates who would get the most interesting games. And our 3rd and 4th boards stepped up as I mentioned to net us the U2100 prize on tiebreaks.
My goals:
Well, I guess I had some miscalculations in game 3 which wasn't great, but it was a tough game and I can't be totally disappointed with it. I am not holding myself to a standard of never missing anything in my calculations as my current goal is still to break 2200 and I'm not insisting to be perfect as that would be unreasonable. I spotted some nice tactics in a few of my games and don't feel like I missed out on major opportunities for the most part due to lazy calculation.
Rating change: 2132 -> 2144 (2 points from my all-time high!)
Solution to diagram: 17... Qc8! White cannot play 18. Qxf6 because Be7 traps the queen so the white queen is excavated (he traded it off on c8).
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Western Class Championship Results
Western Class Championship Results
The tournament got a decent turnout, GMs Yermolinsky and Khachiyan both played along with IMs Sevillano, Matikoziyan, Pruess, Mezentsev, and Stein. I started out playing okay. I had an interesting game against Robby Adamson in my first game, I had a strong advantage, but made a couple of obviously bad decisions which allowed him to complicate the position with an unclear sacrifice that was much easier to play for him regardless of the true assessment. In my second game a strong expert from Arizona in what was a complicated positional struggle where an early decision to leave the king in the center was later a deciding factor after I defended for quite a while. In the third game I faced IM Mezentsev and I unfortunately walked into a little trap in the opening that left him (with the black pieces) with a better position and me with little active play, I tried to stir things up, but the position was already too bad and I lost in short order. In my 4th game I achieved a position with an extra pawn and a better position straight from the opening, but after one missed move and a couple of serious miscalculations I achieved a position where my opponent had a lot of counterplay despite being a pawn down, in this game I was particularly upset at the various missed tactics even though I saw some reasonably tricky ideas that were necessary to keep the game in control, but ultimately I was only able to draw. In the next game I was paired down and I made several bad decisions missing my chance to get the better of the position, but fortunately my opponent missed his opportunity to put me into serious danger and then in what was at best a slightly better position for me he actively blundered a piece to give me the game. This guy says he's a reader of my blog so I give him the utmost respect. In the last round I was paired agianst a slightly higher rated expert who I've played before, this game was flawed in many ways, I "tactically" won a pawn from the opening, but it turns out the tactic was flawed in a few fairly obvious ways that we both completely missed. After a few more moves I was essentially just a pawn up, but there were aggressive possibilities for both sides. I made a bad practical decision right before the time control (which I could have delayed until after the time control by repeating moves one more time) and then quickly blundered into mate. Overall I feel like I played well, unfortunately my struggles as white continued, it's arguable that I played my toughest opposition as white, but I got good positions in two of the games and then mishandled the positions completely so I think it's fair to say I need more practice both playing an analyzing these types of positions.
How I did at my goals?
Well, I didn't finish +1, in fact I finished -1, but I was within range. I was very good at spending 10-20 seconds on early moves making sure I didn't have two positions confused, thinking about what other options I had, I think this worked quite well as I felt like I didn't catch myself not thinking on any moves, now as to the quality of my thought that was a little lower than I was hoping for. I did miss a few of my opponents moves, but it was at least a rare occurrance. This doesn't sound like a complete success, but I am pretty satisfied and if I can continue this positive trend I will have good results in the future.
The tournament got a decent turnout, GMs Yermolinsky and Khachiyan both played along with IMs Sevillano, Matikoziyan, Pruess, Mezentsev, and Stein. I started out playing okay. I had an interesting game against Robby Adamson in my first game, I had a strong advantage, but made a couple of obviously bad decisions which allowed him to complicate the position with an unclear sacrifice that was much easier to play for him regardless of the true assessment. In my second game a strong expert from Arizona in what was a complicated positional struggle where an early decision to leave the king in the center was later a deciding factor after I defended for quite a while. In the third game I faced IM Mezentsev and I unfortunately walked into a little trap in the opening that left him (with the black pieces) with a better position and me with little active play, I tried to stir things up, but the position was already too bad and I lost in short order. In my 4th game I achieved a position with an extra pawn and a better position straight from the opening, but after one missed move and a couple of serious miscalculations I achieved a position where my opponent had a lot of counterplay despite being a pawn down, in this game I was particularly upset at the various missed tactics even though I saw some reasonably tricky ideas that were necessary to keep the game in control, but ultimately I was only able to draw. In the next game I was paired down and I made several bad decisions missing my chance to get the better of the position, but fortunately my opponent missed his opportunity to put me into serious danger and then in what was at best a slightly better position for me he actively blundered a piece to give me the game. This guy says he's a reader of my blog so I give him the utmost respect. In the last round I was paired agianst a slightly higher rated expert who I've played before, this game was flawed in many ways, I "tactically" won a pawn from the opening, but it turns out the tactic was flawed in a few fairly obvious ways that we both completely missed. After a few more moves I was essentially just a pawn up, but there were aggressive possibilities for both sides. I made a bad practical decision right before the time control (which I could have delayed until after the time control by repeating moves one more time) and then quickly blundered into mate. Overall I feel like I played well, unfortunately my struggles as white continued, it's arguable that I played my toughest opposition as white, but I got good positions in two of the games and then mishandled the positions completely so I think it's fair to say I need more practice both playing an analyzing these types of positions.
How I did at my goals?
Well, I didn't finish +1, in fact I finished -1, but I was within range. I was very good at spending 10-20 seconds on early moves making sure I didn't have two positions confused, thinking about what other options I had, I think this worked quite well as I felt like I didn't catch myself not thinking on any moves, now as to the quality of my thought that was a little lower than I was hoping for. I did miss a few of my opponents moves, but it was at least a rare occurrance. This doesn't sound like a complete success, but I am pretty satisfied and if I can continue this positive trend I will have good results in the future.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
2006 Review / Goals for 2007
2006 Review / Goals for 2007:
The year 2006 was a good year overall for me. Chess did not go as well as I had hoped. I figured I should reflect on my goals from last year, see where I hit and where I missed and make some new goals for 2007.
My goals last year were to:
1) Break 2200 USCF, preferably by the end of National Open
2) Reduce the frequency of offering/taking draws from superior positions.
Well on #1 I would say I failed, but I don't think I appreciated the difficulty I would face in trying to break this mark. So after the last tournament of 2005 (North American Open 2005) my rating was 2094 coming off of 2 strong results. This year started with some solid showings. I failed to show good form in a couple of rounds in last year's Western Class Championship, but then followed it with a strong 5.5/6 (4.5/5 played) at Amateur Team West to help my team win and with the 4th board prize. I followed that up with some reasonable results including a tournament I was quite happy with at Western Pacific Open where I think I showed some good chess, but had one game which I lost a totally dominating position due to missing the critical moment in the game. Probably due to a lack of confidence I had some bad results following that and lost most of my progress.
Then came my move to San Francisco which I started with a particularly lucky result to get a 4.5/5 in a g/45 tournament up here which was immediately followed with a heartbreaking Southern California state championships candidate tournament which went beautifully with a draw against my friends (as solid master) as black round 2 and a win over a strong expert in round 3 just to carelessly blunder a piece in round 4 and barely miss qualification. Again I saw a some mixed results in g/45 tournaments which doesn't particularly bother me so much as the results in such quick time controls can be somewhat random, but I had very bad showings in both the Northern California State Championships and the Western States Open in Reno while simultaneously having an amazing result in the Tuesday night marathon which I spoiled when I blundered execessively to get miniatured in the last round as white. Still though even through these bad results I luckily managed not to lose FIDE rating points in any of them while my USCF rating did a little very temporary dip below 2100. Lately I feel like I've been playing quite solidly with real chances to have breakthrough results, but I've kept coming short. American Open I managed to show a very sad quality of poor technique in winning my won positions which I was very disappointed with. I played the strong East Bay FIDE Swiss and had a solid performance there, but again missed some key opportunities in some of my games both where I could have failed to win a won game and where I failed to be as resourceful as I could in some of the other games. Then recently in Las Vegas I saw laziness in quite a few of my moves. I'm hoping this was just due to fatigue after just having finished a long tournament, but I will be very aware when I play in my upcoming event in 2 weeks.
Why didn't I break 2200?
I don't think I was working as hard and specifically on the right areas as I should have been. I've been making a serious effort to improve my calculation lately, I still feel like this is one area I'm significantly lacking in and I will continue to work on. Right now I have two problems in that I'm both a lazy calculator (I miss opportunities for both sides) and my calculations are a little slow, but there are instances where I've seen some improvement lately. I also think I underestimated the difficulty of this goal, but I feel confident that I'm closing in on this barrier.
What about the other goal?
I think I did a better job of declining draws in positions where I felt I was the one with more to play for, possibly a few slips from this, but for the most part I showed a good killer instinct in this respect. On the other hand I saw that I was having a lot of trouble winning won positions which I feel I should be able to win a very high proportion of the time.
Goals for 2007:
1) Break 2200 USCF (currently ~2128): I'm hoping this won't be as hard as it's seemed lately, I need to continue to work on my calculation.
2) Break 2200 FIDE (as it stands approximately 85 points to go): This will have the nice benefit of enabling me to play in such events as the Las Vegas Masters more easily, I think I need to fix some of the problems I have where I make bad decisions to lose the games in simple situations. This is particularly bad against lower rated players where I should win more often than not.
3) IM or GM scalp. I had more than a few good shots in 2006, the older and wiser me should be better at carrying through.
If anybody thinks of some more good ones that I should have I'd be more than willing to consider them.
The year 2006 was a good year overall for me. Chess did not go as well as I had hoped. I figured I should reflect on my goals from last year, see where I hit and where I missed and make some new goals for 2007.
My goals last year were to:
1) Break 2200 USCF, preferably by the end of National Open
2) Reduce the frequency of offering/taking draws from superior positions.
Well on #1 I would say I failed, but I don't think I appreciated the difficulty I would face in trying to break this mark. So after the last tournament of 2005 (North American Open 2005) my rating was 2094 coming off of 2 strong results. This year started with some solid showings. I failed to show good form in a couple of rounds in last year's Western Class Championship, but then followed it with a strong 5.5/6 (4.5/5 played) at Amateur Team West to help my team win and with the 4th board prize. I followed that up with some reasonable results including a tournament I was quite happy with at Western Pacific Open where I think I showed some good chess, but had one game which I lost a totally dominating position due to missing the critical moment in the game. Probably due to a lack of confidence I had some bad results following that and lost most of my progress.
Then came my move to San Francisco which I started with a particularly lucky result to get a 4.5/5 in a g/45 tournament up here which was immediately followed with a heartbreaking Southern California state championships candidate tournament which went beautifully with a draw against my friends (as solid master) as black round 2 and a win over a strong expert in round 3 just to carelessly blunder a piece in round 4 and barely miss qualification. Again I saw a some mixed results in g/45 tournaments which doesn't particularly bother me so much as the results in such quick time controls can be somewhat random, but I had very bad showings in both the Northern California State Championships and the Western States Open in Reno while simultaneously having an amazing result in the Tuesday night marathon which I spoiled when I blundered execessively to get miniatured in the last round as white. Still though even through these bad results I luckily managed not to lose FIDE rating points in any of them while my USCF rating did a little very temporary dip below 2100. Lately I feel like I've been playing quite solidly with real chances to have breakthrough results, but I've kept coming short. American Open I managed to show a very sad quality of poor technique in winning my won positions which I was very disappointed with. I played the strong East Bay FIDE Swiss and had a solid performance there, but again missed some key opportunities in some of my games both where I could have failed to win a won game and where I failed to be as resourceful as I could in some of the other games. Then recently in Las Vegas I saw laziness in quite a few of my moves. I'm hoping this was just due to fatigue after just having finished a long tournament, but I will be very aware when I play in my upcoming event in 2 weeks.
Why didn't I break 2200?
I don't think I was working as hard and specifically on the right areas as I should have been. I've been making a serious effort to improve my calculation lately, I still feel like this is one area I'm significantly lacking in and I will continue to work on. Right now I have two problems in that I'm both a lazy calculator (I miss opportunities for both sides) and my calculations are a little slow, but there are instances where I've seen some improvement lately. I also think I underestimated the difficulty of this goal, but I feel confident that I'm closing in on this barrier.
What about the other goal?
I think I did a better job of declining draws in positions where I felt I was the one with more to play for, possibly a few slips from this, but for the most part I showed a good killer instinct in this respect. On the other hand I saw that I was having a lot of trouble winning won positions which I feel I should be able to win a very high proportion of the time.
Goals for 2007:
1) Break 2200 USCF (currently ~2128): I'm hoping this won't be as hard as it's seemed lately, I need to continue to work on my calculation.
2) Break 2200 FIDE (as it stands approximately 85 points to go): This will have the nice benefit of enabling me to play in such events as the Las Vegas Masters more easily, I think I need to fix some of the problems I have where I make bad decisions to lose the games in simple situations. This is particularly bad against lower rated players where I should win more often than not.
3) IM or GM scalp. I had more than a few good shots in 2006, the older and wiser me should be better at carrying through.
If anybody thinks of some more good ones that I should have I'd be more than willing to consider them.
Monday, January 01, 2007
North American Open Result / New Year's Resolution
I'm pretty tired right now and I have work tomorrow, but I figured I'd post some brief results. I went 4/4 with black and 0.5/3 with white, this could be considered coincidental, but I think in all 3 games as white I had real opening problems in some sense. In my last 9 games as black I'm 6.5/9 with the only 2 losses coming against GMs. This is a solid result. I'd like to make my white results equally as good.
Chess New Year's Resolutions:
1) Improve my calculation and try to play fewer superficial moves at the board.
2) Improve my calculation.
3) Improve my calculation.
Chess New Year's Resolutions:
1) Improve my calculation and try to play fewer superficial moves at the board.
2) Improve my calculation.
3) Improve my calculation.
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