Lessons From A Fellow Blogger

I am so happy to see Blue Devil Knight back from his extended hiatus. I know most of my regular readers follow his blog too. If you haven't read any of his stuff, I highly recommend you do so. In his post of 9/24/08 he shows a position from a recent game where he missed a simple combination, but still won. The discussion that followed in the comments was more interesting then the post itself. In the comments he referred to two posts that he made last year on "Blunderstanding" and "Things to remember before I play". I had read both posts last year. At the time I'm sure I said to myself "those are really good things to apply to my own games."

Almost a year has passed since those posts were made. Have I applied what I learned from them? Errr, umm, well..... Rereading them today it was like I was reading them for the first time. Probably intuitively I know this stuff, but rereading them gave me a fresh perspective on trying to analyse my games. I've printed them out, and will look at them more and see if I can think about this stuff when I'm playing. Too bad I didn't click on those links Saturday when I read the post. Maybe my last round game on Sunday wouldn't have ended the way it did.

There are three crucial positions in the game.

Position #1 after 19. Nd6 Nxg2. I've forked the rook and the bishop, and Black has just sac-ed his knight on g2. I'm not sure why I was afraid to take the knight right away. Instead I debated about winning the full piece (20. Nxb7) or the exchange (20. Nxf7, Kxf7). Both moves threaten the queen. What I wasn't looking at with either move is where is the queen going? This is where #9 Reason we blunder comes into play. I'm ahead in material (after the capture on b7), but I'm not looking close enough at Black's threats.

I opted to win the full piece with 20. Nxb7. Better is winning the exchange 20. Nxf7 Kxf7 21. Kxg2 Ne5+ 22. Kg3Nxg4 23. Kxg4 Kg8 24. Qf4.

The game continued 20... Qh4 21. h3 h5 22. Kxg2 hxg4 reaching this next position.

Here I have to be very careful. If I play 23. hxg4?? That loses horribly with black getting mate in 3. Answer in the brackets. [ 23... Qxg4+ 24. Kh2 Rh7+ 25. Qh6 Rxh6# ] I found what I felt was the best defense in 23. Rh1. Also I have attacking possibilities on the h file once the h pawn is traded off. After 23...Ne5 I have to worry about Reason #10 Knights in enemy territory.

Technically the knight is not in my territory but it is controlling 4 squares in my territory. I should have challenged the knight by attacking the knight with my queen. 24. Qd4, 24. Qe3, or 24. Qc3. Any one of those moves puts black on the defensive by having to protect his knight. I was too anxious to open up the h file and try to get play there. I played 24. hxg4 Qxg4+ 25. Kf1. This where I really needed Blue Devil Knight's "Thing to remember list." These things come to mind:

"9. When ahead in material, keep your cool. It is easy to get overexcited, start moving quickly when you are ahead. Your opponent is doing everything possible to make sure you don't get the full point. You still need to think. You still need to use the time on your clock."

Too anxious to trade pawns and open the h file.

"14. Defend with threats. You will need to defend against attacks and other threats in many of your chess games. Often there are multiple moves that meet the same defensive goal. Try to take back the initiative by playing the defense that generate the biggest threats against the opponent. Sometimes it is even possible to ignore a threat by making an even bigger threat that your opponent must deal with."

Attack the knight with the queen. Make him deal with the threat.

"16. Play the board, not the rating. If he is rated higher than you, play the board in front of you. If he is rated lower than you, play the board in front of you. You can win this game if you just slow down and think."

I tried to ignore the fact that his rating was 1173, especially since he had beaten two 1600s in the first two rounds before losing to a 1750. However some of his earlier moves didn't impress me, so perhaps I took him a little lightly at this point.

Now we arrive at crucial position #3 where Black has just played 25...d6?

Here's where reason #7 on blunder list comes into play. "When I'm thinking about potential complicated tactics I often miss simple captures I can make." DUH! 26. Nxd6 covers some key light squares. Light squares are black's only entry points into my king.

Instead of the simple capture on d6 I go for the mate threat of 27. Qh8# with 26. Qh6?? The problem with my plan is I've taken my queen away from the defense of my exposed king. Now he has perpetual check on the light squares c4 and g4 with 26...Qc4+ I had totally missed the check on the diagonal. This could be added to the blunder list as 5a. Queen moves sideways but attacks on the diagonal. This is why it's so easy to miss queen forks since the forked pieces may be on the same diagonal and rank (file) as the queen.

If I had tried to avoid the perpetual I would find myself losing. 27. Ke1 Nf3+ 28. Kd1 Qd3+ 29. Kc1 Qc4+ 30. Kb1 Nd2+ 31. Qxd2 Qe4+ 32. Kc1 Qxh1+ 33. Kc2.

The game ended with 27. Kg2 Qe4+ 28. Kf1 Qc4+ 1/2 - 1/2

Thanks BDK for such wise advice. Next time I'll read it before I play.

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

Chess Survival

I'm reading an interesting book right now called Deep Survival (Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why) by Laurence Gonzales.

It's been really interesting reading about different incidents and how people manage to survive or end out dying. Some of the stuff he writes about in the first chapter is really interesting. I could see some correlations between what happens in dangerous situations and what happens in some of the more tense moments in a chess game. He writes about how the brain functions. He writes about the difference between cognition and emotion. "Cognition means reason and conscious thought, mediated by language images and logical processes. Emotion refers to specific set of bodily changes in reaction to the environment, the body or to images produced by memory. Cognition is capable of making fine calculations and abstract distinctions. Emotion is capable of producing powerful physical actions."

Later in the chapter he writes about the chemistry of stress, and how the entire memory system, both input and output are affected. "As a result, most people are incapable of performing any but the simplest tasks under stress. They can't remember the most basic things. In addition stress (or any strong emotion) erodes the ability to perceive. Cortisol and other hormones released under stress interfere with the working of the prefrontal cortex. That is where perceptions are processed and decisions are made. You see less, you hear less, miss more cues from the environment, and make mistakes. Under extreme stress, the visual field actual narrows. .....Stress causes most people to focus narrowly on the one thing that they consider most important, and it may be the wrong thing."

The book is referring to how people react in extreme situations that are possibly life threatening. He gives examples of experienced climbers, snowmobilers, and river rafters who despite all their knowledge and experience, end out doing something that gets them killed. One example he gave was a river rafter who fell out of his boat. An experienced rafter knows not to try to stand up, but to ride the current to a safer spot where he can be helped out of the water. Standing up can cause the person to slip and perhaps get caught in between rocks and get sucked under. The victim stood up, stumbled and got caught in the rocks and drowned. His cognition would tell him to ride the current to safer ground, but his emotions said "I need to get out of the water as soon as possible."

Another example he gave was about Navy pilots landing on an aircraft carrier. As they say in the field, taking off is optional, landing is mandatory. Many crashes on landings occur because despite all the warnings that are telling the pilot he's coming in at the wrong angle, he's so fixated on the deck, that he blocks out the warnings and ends out overshooting the deck instead of pulling up and going around for another try. If he's lucky he might end out only trashing a very expensive airplane. The unlucky don't live to tell about it.

Reading this got me thinking about how different players react to different tension filled moments in a chess game. Why do some players get easily rattled by time pressure, whether it's their time that is short or the opponent's time? Why do some players handle the "money round" so well, and others choke? Why are some players so calm in the face of vicious attack on their king, and other freak out even though the attack may not be as strong as it looks?

It also got me thinking about how I react during chess games. Sometimes I'm Ms. Cool in time pressure, and pull rabbits out of my hat. Other times I implode and create a total disaster area on the board in a game that I was winning. There are games where I have all the time in the world, and there is no clock induced stress, yet I find the worse possible move on the board. Why does this happen, and what can I do about it?

So do these types of situations in chess cause the type of stress related chemical reaction discussed in Gonzales' book on a smaller scale? Is chess blindness caused by the stress hormones that interfere with the functions of the prefrontal cortex? Is our field of vision really narrowing when we're in a tense situation such as time pressure? Thinking about myself, am I overly sensative to those triggers? (Maybe that's why I have no desire to climb Mount Everest, or go white river rafting. I know myself too well.)

As any of you who read this post knows, the last few weeks have not been so easy for me. Some of the games I lost during that period seemed to come down to chess blindness (narrowing vision), "I probably shouldn't make this move, but what the hell" (emotion), and "That could be a threat later, but isn't right now so I'll worry about it later" (focusing on the wrong thing.)

Perhaps this game from the organized bedlam round robin set the tone for what has been a rough couple of weeks. I'm White against the number two seed rated 1753. This was only the second time I've played him. He won the first game. We had reached this position after his move 22...Rhd8.
Somehow in the course of the first 12 moves I had won three pawns. With my rook and bishop undeveloped on the king side he was getting some play for his pawns. However one would think that I could come up with a reasonable plan such as 23. Rxd4 Rxd4 24. Rh2, but noooo I got overly excited and decided to be bold, daring and creative by trading my queen for the two rooks. I played 23. Qxd8?? overlooking the fact that his queen now has an entry on g3. He played 23...Rxd8, 24. Rxd8 Qg3+. A few moves later he won my rook on h1. On move 37 I resigned.

There were no clock issues to deal with. The time limit was Game/75 with a 5 second delay. It was simply a matter of getting overly excited and trying to simplify by get rid of two of his pieces for one of mine. I looked at the straight math 5+ 5 > 9 and didn't take into consideration my undeveloped king side. My gut was telling me that Qxd8 was not sound. "Your other rook is out of play, you still need to develop the bishop, and your king is in the center of the board." However my opponent has his moment of chess blindness in the position too. The difference was his only prolonged the game longer then necessary. Do you see how he could have forced mate in 4 after 23. Qxd8? Answer in the brackets [ 23...Qg3+ 24. Ke2 Re4+ 25. Kd2 Qe3+ 26. Kc2 Rxc4# ]

This position arose last Thursday against Larry Tamarkin. He was serving as the house player to spare me from the all annoying round three bye. Larry and I always have totally bizarre games with one or both of us in time pressure. This game was no different.


He had sacrificed a knight for a pawn and an attack. I had managed to beat back the attack, and we reached this position after White played 23. Bg6. My emotions are running amok as time is ticking away and somewhere in the back of my mind I'm thinking that just maybe I could put an end to my 0-fer (0-14) against him. Here came my first bout of chess blindness in this game. My position is cramped, and I was concerned about White's passed pawn. (focusing on wrong thing) I attempted to resolve the passed pawn issue by playing 23...Qxd5? I had spent a few minutes on the move, and had considered the possibility that he could play 24. Bxf6, but wasn't concerned since I could play 24...Qxd1. I was blind to the in between move of 25. Bxe7+, Rxe7 followed by 26. Rfxd1, and now he's gotten his piece back.

I'd like to say that I hung on and got a draw, but 5 moves later with only seconds left I walked into a fork and lost my bishop. Again I wasn't looking at the entire board so I missed the forking move. A few minutes later the clock put me out of my misery.

On Friday I reached this position against Eric. He's a middle school kid rated 1530. I had gotten a big edge on the clock early in the game, but as we approached the middle game I had given back the time advantage I had earlier in the game.

This position came up after Black played 25...Raf8. My position was cramped and I really wanted to get rid of the knight on d4. Given that we were both short on time I should have played something along the lines of 26. Qd2 followed by 27. Qe3 and 28. Rc3. Black does have a space advantage, but it's unclear how he's going to break through. Instead of choosing a safe plan I tried to free myself by encouraging the trade of the Knight. I played 26. e3?!, knowing full well that he'd play 26...Nf3+ forcing 27. Bxf3 Rxf3. This was a case of focusing on the wrong thing. Yes the knight is a nuisance and is tying my queen down to e2, but I created more problems for myself by allowing his rook to come to f3. Th game continued 28. Kg2 Qf7 29. Rc2 Qf6 30. Rd2 Qf7 31. b3 h532. Qe1 Qe6 33. Rg1 hxg4 34. hxg4 Qxg4+ 35. Kf1 Qh3+ 36. Ke2 Qh5 37. Kf1 Qh3+38. Ke2 Qh2? He missed 38... Rxe3+ 39. Kd1 Rxe1+ 40. Rxe1 Qg4+ 41. Kc2. Time was clearly on his side at this point. The game continued 39. Kd1 Rxf2 40.Rxf2 Whites loses on time. 0-1.

One can easily write off these three positions as "she needs to work on her tactics", but I think it goes beyond that. I'm trying trying to figure out how I can be more aware of what is going on inside my brain, and use some of the survivor patterns and mindsets that Gonzales discussing in his book. IN a future post I will discuss some of things I have gleaned from later chapters.

Note: I started the post last Saturday, and it has taken me almost a week to gather my thoughts and examples. I should note that despite going 0-4 last Thursday, and 1-2 on Friday, that I have bounced back this week with a solid 2-2 result in this week's "4 Rated Games Tonight!" I lost two games against 2100s and beat a 1900 and an 1800. The two wins featured my nerves of steel time pressure technique. I wish I had one of those sensory boards so I could have the game score to the end. The fun stuff started and we stop keeping score.

Friday Follies: Vista Rant - Part 2

Virtually Impossible System To Access.



So it was another exciting night of how many tournament directors does it take to submit a rating reporting on a Vista based machine? Once again three tournament directors couldn't make it work. Vista seems to be the OS version of Where's Waldo? Except here it's where are my tournament files, and where are the export files for the rating report? I know they're out there somewhere. Reminds me of this Moody Blues song. If you too young to recognize it in this video pick one of the concert videos instead.



Instead of making ourselves crazy this week Mike decided he would take the computer home, and try to figure the damn thing out. The back up plan was I had the hard copy of all the quad charts and could recreate the tournament at home like I did last week. Though I would not have to do at midnight or some ungodly hour. Mike was going to sleep on it, and give it a try in the morning.

I left a message on Mike's cell phone saying something to the affect of "This is Polly from the tournament director's help desk. Do you need assistance submitting your tournament for rating?"

The answer to the question ended out being no, though he did admit it took him almost two hours to figure out where the files end out. It seems like everything ends out in the "Mike Folder". He finally got the files uploaded to the USCF website only to have the tournament kicked back with an expired membership error. We had that same problem last week. That's what happens when a kid doesn't play chess all summer, and his membership has expired in the meantime. Mike wasn't quite sure how he had arrived where he had, and was too afraid to even open another window to submit the membership. He ended out calling the family, and walking them through how to renew a membership online. After that was done, he was able to submit the tournament and it got rated this afternoon.

Next week's challenge will be, "Can he remember what he did in order to find the files and upload them to USCF?" I suggested that he might want to get "Vista for Dummies". I wasn't trying to be a smart ass with that comment. I find the "For Dummies" books an excellent starting point for learning a new computer application. Skip the techno mumbo-jumbo and tell me how to do x in the simplest language possible.

Next week challenge for me is "Can I trade off my opponents' knights before one of them get permanently lodged on c4 or e4?" My two losses had a lot to do with annoying knights lodging themselves in my territory with no good way to make them disappear. Maybe I need a book called "Knight Trading for Dummies".

In the last round I'm facing Joshua again. Just like two weeks ago, he wins the coin toss and takes Black. A win will give me a piece of first place at worse. It would also help recover from my rocky first round. A draw or loss gives me nada. Maybe I should play a different opening the next time I'm White against him.

Polly-Joshua091908.pgn


Joshua's game has become more well rounded. He can beat you with a blistering attack, or he can grind you down in an ending. It seems no matter how he does it against me, he takes advantage of the edge he gains on the clock. Maybe he's got me figured out to the point that he doesn't need to spend a lot time. He used about 20 minutes for the 53 moves. I used all 30 of my minutes.

Wrandom Writing Wrants - Edited

For the last couple of weeks I've been angry, frustrated and afraid. Some of these emotions are generated by what is going on in the world, and others are from things I'm trying to sort out in my own life. What is happening these days effects each of us in different ways. Whether it's the stock market falling apart, Hurricane X wiping out a town or who's going to be the next President we're all impacted in one way or another. I've always been a bit of a free spirit, and often have had a bit of "What the heck, I'll manage somehow" attitude. Now I don't feel that way. There are times I just want to rip the newspaper into a million little pieces or throw the radio out the window. Sometimes my husband may start reading part of a newspaper article out loud, and I just have say "Shut up! I've heard enough bad news today."

I've always used my hobbies, particularly my sports as an outlet for my feelings and emotions. When I got laid off in 1992 my self esteem took a real beating. One of the things that helped me when I would get angry and frustrated with myself or the job market was going out and riding my bike for 30 to 50 miles with friends. Since I rode mostly with younger or stronger guys I'd have to work hard to stay with the group. Often on a hill I'd get dusted and be by myself. Those times alone I'd be thinking about the things I'd like to say if I wanted to tell somebody off. The more pissed I get, the harder I rode. It was a good way to vent without taking it out on other people.

I'm not riding much these days. I've been absorbed by my pursuit of rank in Tae Kwon Do, and trying to make up the walk training that got side tracked by all my travels. I walked 13 miles on Saturday. I started out with a couple of women who are about 5 to 6 inches taller then me. At times like this it sucks to be short. When I got tired of trying to match their strides and keep up I finally told them to go ahead. It's at that time I pull out the ipod, put on some good music and allow myself to vent about world and national affairs and how they impact me.

When I got tired of being depressed over that. I mulled over things I wanted to write here. I debated with myself about whether I wanted go on a rant about cranky old men who insist on playing down to mate when I'm up a rook and a bunch of pawns, and aren't very gracious when they lose. Nope, why bother? Then there was Wednesday night's game where I had an irrational fit of stupidity and managed to throw away a game that I was up 3 pawns in. Do my readers want see another one of my "I can't believe how stupid I am" posts? Probably not. That game still may make an appearance, but in a different context.

What came out of my walk was my Friday Follies Vista Rant. Just for the heck of it as I was writing this, I Googled "vista rant" to see where it came up. #20 of 1,430,000 hits on that topic. I guess a lot of people like to complain about Vista. We'll see how this Friday's tournament goes in terms of how much the TD has learned about Vista in a week, and whether we can manage to submit the rating report without me taking it home to do.

This post started out as an introduction to what I was going to write regarding a tournament I played in on Sunday. However I still haven't quite figured out what I want to say about what occurred. There are a lot of things bouncing around inside my head. I just have to figure out how sort it all out. In the mean time thanks for letting me vent a bit. I debated between saving as draft, deleting or publishing. For better or worse I decided to publish.

Edit: I think what all of this rambling was about was how external forces such as personal life issues, world issues, and all the other stuff that can stress us out can seriously impact those things we do for pleasure. Most of us play chess because we enjoy the challenges associated with and take pleasure in well played games, and meeting interesting people. When we're not overly stressed little pet peeves just get brushed aside. However when one is feeling like the weight of the world is crushing him then those little pet peeves that might bug us to a small degree like missing a combination, the twitchy opponent who drums their fingers on the table on your move, or the spectator who hovers too close get magnified.

The question is how do we balance our emotions and anxieties so that we can maintain control over the pleasure we derive from chess without losing it? Lately that's been difficult for me. Perhaps some of that is tied into the fact that my hobby is also a part time profession.

Let's hear it! This inquiring mind wants to know.

Friday Follies! (Vista Rant!)

How many tournament directors does it take to submit a rating report online using a Vista based laptop? Zero. Because three certified TDs could not figure out where the hell Vista was hiding the DBF files needed for the upload to USCF. How many tournament directors does it take to submit the same rating report using XP? Two. One to provide the wall charts of the tournament and one to recreate the tournament at home on her Mac using Parallels and Windows XP.

Blunderprone is right. I think Bill Gates may be the Antichrist. I am not a totally converted Mac-head quite yet. Unfortunately my pairing software and Chess Base does not run on Mac, so I have to contaminate my Mac with software that allows me to run Windows on it. However there is no way I'm ever replacing my XP with Vista. I don't know why Microsoft felt the need to totally change their operating system and make so difficult for a long time computer user to figure out where stuff is being saved. Many of the mouse short cuts have completely changed so when I do a left mouse click and don't get the choices that I'm used to. What was wrong with the old ones?

I've been helping Mike and Rusa at the Westchester Chess Academy with their computer stuff for over a year now. I helped them install Swiss-Sys and trained them on how to use the pairing software, submit memberships and rating reports online, and upload ratings. When they have the tournaments on Friday night I always hang out at the end to help them submit the rating report in case they have a problem. We have a barter arrangement so it works well for all of us.

Last night took the cake for utter frustration in terms of submitting the tournaments results online. I've submitted tournaments with 700+ players and had less problems then I had with this 22 player multi-section event. All of this because Microsoft decided to "improve" Windows. I guess it was only fitting that in the second round I blundered horribly in this position against a high school kid whose last name is Gates. He had just played 37...Nc7.

I'm not where my brain was at when I came up with the plan to get my knight to f3 followed by Ne5 to grab the outpost square. It seemed like a good idea at the time so I played 38. Ne1? totally over looking 38... Re3 . Far better for me would have been to play 38. Re1 Rxe1 39. Qxe1. I'd have a slight edge and Black really has no way of penetrating. I guess his rook move totally unnerved me, and I proceeded to make things even worse. Instead of playing 39. g4 and living with being down a pawn after 39...fxg4 40. Qc5 Nd5 I played 39. Qd2?? Did I really think I was going to get out alive after 39...Qxg3+? The end came swiftly after that. 40. Kh1 Qxf4 41. Qd1 Qxf1+ 0-1

After all the sections finished up Mike goes to submit the rating report. He's got a brand new laptop because he also had a hard disk crash. Bad month for hard drives! New computer, new operating system. This is his first time running a tournament on Vista. Everything looked like it was going smoothly. He runs the rating report utility on Swiss-Sys and it's time to save the upload files somewhere. I usually like saving them directly to the C drive because sometimes the USCF site gets flaky when you have the files in a folder. I guess Vista doesn't allow you to save stuff directly to C because we kept getting an error message about not being able to open tdexport.dbf.

I saved the files to a folder. No problem! I didn't get any error messages. I figure we're in business now. I go to the USCF website and go to upload the files. Click on "browse" bring up the folder where I saved the files, and no files are showing. Just other folders within that folder. WTF? Where are the damn files? Maybe Vista didn't like where I tried to save them to. So tried a few other folders, but still no files showing. I'm sure there is some way of displaying files in the folder window, but I'll be damned if I could figure it out. I went from DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, 98, 2000, Millenium and XP. I never had problems figuring out how to do simple stuff like saving and retrieving files. What the hell was Billy Gates thinking when he and his merry men developed this piece of crap?

It was getting late and we're all tired. My quad had been the first one done. (Grand master draw on board 1 between the 2-0 players, grand patzer draw on board 2 between the 0-2 players. I guess you know which draw I was a part of.) I finally said to Mike, "Email me the tournament files and I'll run the rating report from home." Good idea, except we couldn't find the tournament files in Swiss-Sys or the folder that he had put them in. Argh!!!!

At this point it's screw it all. Gimme the damn wall charts! I can recreate the entire tournament from home in less time then it will take me to figure out FUBAR, I mean Vista. So help me God, I better be dead or have Chessbase and Swiss-Sys for Mac when the Evil Empire makes it so Windows XP stops running on anything.

I went home and recreated the tournament and would have had rated that night except in the Vista chaos a couple of USCF memberships didn't get renewed until today. So the tournament got submitted 18 hours later then normal. All the ratings junkies were probably going crazy wondering why the tournament wasn't on the USCF website this morning. Players get really spoiled by tournament directors who have submitted the event for rating within 15 minutes of the conclusion of said events. There has been a few times that by the time I get off the train at 1:10 AM and back home that the new ratings from "Four Rated Games Tonight!" are on the USCF website. There are times I'd rather not see the damage.

9-11-01

Last night I lost a game of chess that so pissed me off. I worked on the analysis, and I was going to post it today with my comments. Then I remembered that today is Septemeber 11th. Why should I spend this day writing about a meaningless game of chess that I played yesterday. In the big scheme of things it doesn't really matter. Did I learn anything? Yes. Will my readers learn something from it? Maybe. Can it wait for another day? Yes. Let's think about how lives were changed in such a dramatic fashion 7 years ago today.

Last year I wrote this post on my thoughts and memories of that day. I don't think I can add anything more to what I wrote last year.

See you tomorrow.