Restlessness

Volcano in Eyjafjallajokul - what I saw in my dream

I was talking to my older brother.  He had some disease that made his fingertips look like they had leprosy.  His breath smelt badly too.  I felt so bad for him - but he was taking medication.  We were standing outside with hundreds of other people in the town.  This huge storm with really dark clouds was moving in.  Then there was an explosion in the clouds and lightening - red, firey lightening.  The clouds were moving more quickly - like they were going to collapse on us.  We all started running - the earth was quaking - then my alarm turned on.  I was in a sweat.  It was 4:30am.  The lengths I go to get in a good chess game online.

I walk to the guest bathroom, grabbing the eye drops on the way.  I turn on the light, put a few drops in my dry eyes and then I walk into the office.  He's not online.  I check my email - he's going to be 15 minutes late.  We finally play - and we're playing like it's a blitz game.  The game is 45 45, but we both end the game with more than 45 minutes on each of our clocks!  Of course I lost the game.  No surprise there.  But why is the question.

Like usual, I blunder in the opening moves.  After doing some post-game checking, I see I went out of book on move 5.  I lose a pawn.  I know it's over.  This guy is too good.

But why didn't I take time to think a bit more?  Sometimes I can get in the groove and really enjoy the thinking and analyzing.  Other times, like this morning, I am just restless and want to be moving - not thinking.  How do I combat this?  I need to find a solution to combat this anxiety when it occurs.  Deep breathing?  A bit of jogging in place or some exercise before or during the game?  Meditation?  I'll have to think of this a bit more.  I know in the past, I have gotten up and walked around a bit - not because of restlessness, but because I needed a drink or to go to the restroom.  When I did that, I became more settled.  Maybe I need to incorporate this into my start-of-the-game routine - force myself to walk around a bit - think about a move a bit longer.

With the loss, my rating dropped below 1600 for the first time since - I don't know - maybe 2004?  I ended up playing a couple of 15 0 games with a 1584 player (I was 1590ish).  I won both of them easily and my rating bumped up above 1640.  I don't even know why I care about the rating - consistency is what I desire.  And to know what the hell I should do in the opening so I can give myself a chance.

image source: The Big Picture

I just want to puke ...

Our team is playing a warm-up tournament before T44 starts.  I played the first game yesterday.  I got off to a fantastic start - found a really nifty tactic, won a bishop, made it to the end game and then ...

Well - let me put it this way - what would happen if Lance Armstrong decided to quit the last 100 miles of the 2000 mile race?  How would the world react if Federer threw in the towel in the last set at Wimbledon?  Or if you were running a marathon and collapsed with 1/2 a mile to go?  Truly frustrating and agonizing - it has taken me a full day to even talk about it.

So here is the justification - I had about 10 minutes on my clock and I needed to go pick up my kid from the bus stop.  Under that pressure, I simply dropped my rook.  I was truly blind and not thinking - the only thing I remember was the need to defend that pawn and that the rook would be defended by the king - which obviously he was not.  It's like my brain short-circuited - there is something fundamentally un-nerving about that game that makes me wonder if I really have brain-function issues.  Even under those pressures, I should not have dropped that rook.

... and the rook of all pieces!  My flippin handle is the rook - holy hell.

One of the biggest things I learned and liked from the game was the 'whisper' command.  I've never used the whipser command before in a game I was playing.  So I used it quite a bit and it helped me a lot - helped me see variations, avoid traps and what not.  I think I'll be using that feature again.

And with that - here is the game.

image source: bildungblog

I should have castled earlier

Here's my first draw at Red Hot Pawn. Interestingly enough, when I started this game, my opponent was rated 921. By the time we finished he was 1459.

I haven't fully examined the game, but all I have to say right now is I should have castled earlier.

Losing Streak Over

The last time I played a longish game was April 10 and I won that game ... it was my one win in the LEPers tournament. I've not played much at FICS since then. I've been focusing on my chess correspondance play at Red Hot Pawn as well as spending a lot of time at chesstempo. I just lost my 2nd game at RHP, by the way.

Tonight I logged into FICS and dinked around. I finally found a 20 5 game. My opponent kept making these annotation type comments. I usually ignore chat messages during a game. But some of his comments sounded like smack. If I remember correctly, his first comment was something like "Black up in material, White up in space and tempo" or something like that (I was playing Black). I wasn't too distracted, other than a passing thought in my head ... "wait until I shove your king into your blowhole after I deliver checkmate ya frickin' idiot!" I didn't let his smack bother me.

Pretty soon I had pretty good spacing and felt really confident. That's when he made another comment ... something like "e5 is a weak spot in the Sicilian." I probably should have paid more attention to his subtle hints. He wacked my e5 pawn and my d6 pawn could not recapture else his rook would capture my queen. Pretty soon, his white-squared bishop was hounding my king and his knight was forking my queen and rook. By this time, all dreams, hopes and aspirations of kicking this cocky SOB to Australia were dashed. I simply resigned. I had no gumption to finish it. His last comment was something to the effect that the score is now 1-1. I didn't understand at first, but then I issued a "hstat rockyrook [opponent]" and found that I had beat this fellow before. Either he issues the same command during most of his games or he must have remembered the last time I beat him (probably very soundly). That was my first longish game in a month.

Here's the game in all it's bloody glory.




The other three I played tonight were against a decent chap. The first game was kind of close until the end game. His queen and rooks really put the pressure on me. I gave it one last effort, sacrificing my rook to let my other rook and queen try to finish him off, but he defended well and I lost on time.

The 2nd game was quick and very painful. I blundered in under 7 or 8 moves. I let his queen and bishop zoom in on the f7 pawn and I could not defend it. I resigned.

The last game was a battle to the finish. I only won because I gobbled up a couple of his pawns during the course of the game. Otherwise it was pretty even. Because of the pawn advantage, I was able to trade pieces and let my pawns do the walking. He resigned. And thus the pitiful losing streak ended. My ego was almost crushed in a night of defeats, but I managed to salvage some respect before heading to bed.

LEP Round 5 and "Thanks!"

Again, no big suprise or upset. Polly ate me like a cracker. It was more of a blitz than a rapid game.

I also wanted to thank DK and Chess Teacher for the helpful suggestions. I've increased the number of posts displayed on the main page and I fixed the height of the chesspublisher so that you don't have the scroll bar to the right.

Not much chess for me this past week or this week ... the kids are on Spring Break and I'm working the night shift, so I'm spending lots of time at Chess Tempo.

LEPers Round 4: Another Loss

No suprise here. Kevin TCB and trashed me. I personally was impressed I lasted as long as I did. The game wasn't really special, so I won't bother posting it.

RockyRook v. ChristofRomyuod

So I got a 60 5 game in this week. My opponent was about 150 rating points higher than me. It was a close game. He had a chance to close the game early at with 31 ... Qxc3 but he let me off the hook. I rallied back and made it interesting, but his advanced pawns were too much for me to manage in the end.

This is my first time using chesspublisher. I hope it works.

Three Rounds, Three Loses

OK. The bright side of this predicament is that things can only go up from here. If I lose, then my streak continues (which is fine ... I like streaks). If I win, then it will be the biggest upset of the tournament. I mean if you can't beat me, then you must really suck! :-)

I played really fast in the last two games. In the last game against LEP, I think I had over 21 minutes on my clock when he check-mated me. I should probably work on time management a bit. But what's even more frustrating is taking all that time, thinking deliberately, being careful and having my clock drip down to a minute, and then I make a mistake ... it floors me every time. But if I treat it like a blitz game, then I can always fall back to the excuse, "well, I was playing fast. No big deal." And if I take that approach, the frustration of losing is much, much less.

Bottom line: I'm a slow thinker and learner. I have to take my time every move or else I will foul it up. And even if I take lots of time, I'm still known to make critical mistakes ... all the more reason for me to play longer games (and why I like correspondance chess so much).

But to all the LEPers ... don't take this the wrong way. If this tourny were a 45 45 or G90, chances are I'd still be 0-3.

Round 2 LEPers - RR v RLP

I really think I'm over-rated for this tournament. I knew I was going into it and now at 0-2, I've got proof.

This game was a quick game. Going into it, I had to battle an inferiority complex against the famous Wahrheit. I played him in my very first correspondance game at RedHotPawn. He pwned me big time. Since that loss, I've won every single CC game. Plus, he is a very, very smart and intelligent human being ... just read his blog.

So I tried to play aggressive. It obviously didn't work. He sliced and diced me like a chef making a salad. I was a head of lettuce going into the game and came out stuffed in a bag ready to be made into cole slaw.

Here is where it all came unraveled.

Oh well. There's always next week.

Round 1: LEPers - TheDarkKnightTwo v. RockyRook

The first round of the tournament of LEPers is on. TheDarkKnightTwo and I played. Both our clocks dripped down to a minute. For a few moves towards the end, at least one of our clocks dipped below a minute. I tend to get nervous as it is, but to add time pressure was worse.


In the end, TheDarkKnightTwo won when he pretty much guaranteed either a pawn promotion or by capturing my hanging rook. After Na6, I resigned.

I had my chance when I missed a hanging pawn. Last night was so long ago, but I seem to recall seeing this move. But I didn't realize I missed it until Herr Fritz subtly pointed it out this morning. I exchanged queens, but missed the hanging knight. Of course had I seen the proper move, I was still fighting a formidable opponent who would not go down easy.