Saturday, October 27, 2007

Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming....

Vacations are wonderful, but 12 days on the other coast with no chess can remind one's chess brain of an early morning in San Francisco. This is my brain two days after returning to my own time zone.

It always takes me awhile to get back in sync with east coast time. If you look at the time stamp from my previous post you can see that I had no clue about what time it was. I started writing at 12:50 am. 1:00 am? No problem, it's only 10:00 pm in San Francisco.

So I guess it should not have come as any great surprise that my analysis was a little off on Wednesday. I certainly could relate to Blue Devil Knight's lament of blowing a won ending. He had least salvaged a draw. This was one of those "What is the worst possible move for white?" positions. I'm up a pawn and I have the bishop pair. The most annoying thing was I saw the right move, but I tried to get cute. I clearly found one of the worst moves for white. Maybe 26. Be4 is worse then what I played.


Black just played 25...f5. I started drooling over all the the discovered check possibilities on the a2-g8 diagonal. Fritz gives White +- 2.78 after 26. Nf4 Nxf4 27. exf4 Qg6 28. Ra4+ Kh7 29. Rxa7 b6 30. Re6 Qf7.

I saw 26 Nf4, but I figured I'd play 26. Ra4 first, attacking his a pawn. My idea was after he defends the a pawn, then I'd play Nf4 attacking the pinned knight. Well, duh! Great plan except by moving the rook his knight can simply take on c5, forking my queen and rook. There goes the nifty discovered check and my overwhelming advantage. This was a clear example of not seeing what was there. Unfortunately for me, my opponent did see the hanging pawn and fork. After several minutes of thought he played 26...Nxc4. I did manage to get a pawn for the exchange, and kept it interesting for awhile. I played on for another 19 moves, but getting my queen trapped on move 45 was the last straw. A six minute time advantage was not enough compensation for the trapped queen. So much for going into round four with 2 1/2 points.


8 comments:

Unknown said...

i don't think you found the WORST move, maybe the next to worst, but had i played, i would have found the worst move. snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is my specialty. as far as your brain being non-chessy after a few days of no chess, i don't even know how the pieces move. it makes me feel a bit better that someone so much better as yourself has to deal with the same thing. rock on.

Unknown said...

wow, i dont' even know if i made any sense in my comment, or if it came out the right way. i just got back from a long road ride, my legs are still twitching, so anything i said up there was meant to be funny/complimenting/self deprecating. ok, i'll stop wasting space on your comment area now.

Polly said...

At least when I see comments I know someone is reading, so I never consider comments a waste unless they're spam.

From reading your blog I know you and I have a lot in common. We both find very creative ways to lose, but we can have fun at our own expense as we pick apart our games.

After a long walk or bike ride my legs and mund turn to mush too!

Glenn Wilson said...

I feel the same way about comments, it is nice to know someone is reading.

Robert Pearson said...

I'm reading, too!

Basically, I just follow around the awsomeness that is chessloser, and add my own lame "me too' to whatever he says. Being cl's sidekick is a lot more fun than being Robin, however.

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Polly said...

I added you to my list. Thanks for doing the same.