In yesterday's post I wrote about my first tournament back after my trip. As I mentioned the first two games were exciting, and overall I played well despite losing both of them. Both those games had down to the bitter end time wise. The two games combined had a total of 13 seconds left at the end of them. When both players are using all their time, it doesn't give much time to recover for the next round.
In round three I played Shernaz Kennedy. We went through a spell last summer where we played each other four times in six weeks including three weeks in a row. I was white in every single one of those games. I also lost all four of those games. This was the first time we had played since last September. Once again I had White against her. I got a good game out of the opening with some attacking chances, but I gambled by pressing on instead of taking a move to castle. That got me in trouble when I misplayed a series of trades allowing her to put her bishop on c5.
PW-SKennedy090309.pgn
This was clearly a case of over focusing in one part of the board without considering how the changed position affects what is happening on the other side of the board. It's funny how many games of kids I've observed where there is mate on f2 or f7 against an uncastled king. It's a pattern that I've seen a million times and have shown my students over the years. In this game I just totally forgot about it. When I saw Shernaz pick up her queen and put it on f2, I was in utter shock. All I could do was laugh over the total stupidity of allowing that to occur.
A few days later I would get my rematch at the NY State Championship. We traveled all the way to Albany to have to play each other again. I'm getting ahead of myself. That is another story. Stay tuned for my NY State Championship report. Murphy stayed home this year.
5 comments:
I laughed out loud when i saw that you played b2-b4. Its so funny to see a player being occupied with his/her own plan that he/she forgets to check all checks, captures and threats the opponent has before and after the intended move.
I hope it was a good wake up call!
I wasn't quite so keen on winning the h-pawn, would have castled almost immediately by that point (Black plays e5 possibly, not so great for Black, or h6, and you still have that nice long dark-diagonal open, with no lost initiative). Move 20, NxN on c5 (BxN looked obvious) instead of castling seems mind-boggling because the position is so simple to notice.
I mean, you were playing so well, it just seemed like you didn't know when to switch off the "attack-mode" button. On the last move, Kd2 (rather than b4) seems forced.
Fun game to observe, in any case. You are putting a lot into these games, I can tell.
I meant to say Ke2.
I was hoping it would be a wake up call, then last night I made another really dopey move that got a response that I should have seen. Different pattern though. Chess can be really aggravating at times.
I think that the dopey moves, as you say, are induced by time-trouble.
You are playing a great game for 40/2 SD/1, but it is at G/30, then you are in time-pressure overload and look for the most aggressive moves because you know you can't finish out a nice 70 move game at that time-control.
Then, you may have opponents that are also taking their time, so you are both going too slow, but they know to stay a few minutes ahead of you. I would see this all the time on FICS. At max tournament time-controls, this form of gamesmanship doesn't need to exist so much.
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