Saturday, September 27, 2008

Friday Follies!: It's Deja Vu All Over Again



This cartoon should have been in the original Vista rant post, but I just came across it today. Better late, then never. On a positive note it only took two tries to actually find the rating report files, and only one minor error on the rating report before successfully submitting it by 10:35 PM Friday night. Personally I would have liked the results to have disappeared into the great abyss, never to be seen again.

The alternate title to this post could have been "Two Kwongs Make a Wright". Last week I played Eric Kwong in the first round and lost. This week I played little brother Robbie in the first round and lost again. The second round I had a different opponent then last week, but once again in round three I played Joshua. Once again, he won the toss and chose Black. Since this post was named Deja Vu All Over Again, I don't need to tell you how the last round went. He's becoming my new King Kong. I've lost 9 out of my last 10 games with him. This coming after I had started off with 8 wins, 1 loss and 5 draws in our first 14 games. The difference between us now, he's rapidly improving and I'm not. If I am improving it's certainly not at the same rate as a very bright 10 year old.

Sometimes after a big rating gain I get all uptight about playing in another tournament and giving it all back. That was not an issue for me. I'm not sure what was going through my mind during my first round game. There were some similarities to the game I played last week against his brother. Same opening and same responses at the beginning. Unlike last week when I got impatient with Eric's knight and encouraged a bad trade on my part, this week I fiddled around on the queen side instead of being more aggressive on king side. Once he sacrificed his bishop for two pawns I think I got psyched out by the attack. I kept seeing things that weren't as bad as I thought, and missed things that were more dangerous. My mind was playing tricks on me again.

Here's the game.

Polly-Robbie092608.pgn

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Difficult game especially since black had such an enormous attack on your kingside with his heavy pieces.

Polly said...

Tiger: I knew the sac was coming, but just didn't come up with the best moves to make it less effective. Even though g5 looks dangerrous, I think I should have fought back on the king side. I'm prone to sitting back at times and saying "Come and get me!"

likesforests said...

That combination of your destroyed kingside shelter and the open f-file was lethal. 10.Bh4!? is interesting. If 10...g5? 11.Nxg5 hxg5 12.Bxg5 you have great compensation due to the dual threats of Bxb7 and Ne4. :)

Polly said...

Like: I think I may have considered that possibility, but didn't think I was getting enough compensation. It's fuuny that later on with he made the same type of sac on g4, I thought he was getting more then enough play.