Marshall's Lonely Hearts Chess Club

I had wanted to title this post the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but in light of the tragic events in Illinois yesterday I thought better of it. My heart and prayers go out to the students and families. Such a senseless thing to happen.

What do chess loving women do on Valentine's Day? I guess not many of them chose to be playing chess. I was the only woman in "Four Heartfelt and Many Splendid Games Tonight!" That was Steve's holiday name for his weekly "Four Rated games Tonight!" In 2004 when the tournament fell on April 1st he titled the event "Four Foolish Games Tonight!" I think that title applied more to how my Valentine's night went. My heart was in every game I played, but there was nothing splendid about any of them.

The tournament started out with 14 players, and I was #14. That was going to make it hard to avoid the dreaded "please wait" in future rounds unless somehow I could win round one, or that the number of players stayed even through out the entire tournament. What were the odds of either of those things happening? I have no control over how many players enter for the second round, so all I could try to control was my first round result. Unfortunately Mr. Polyakin did not cooperate in my quest to win the first round and avoid the bye issue all together. This was game #21 between us, and like 18 out of the first 20 encounters I found myself looking at a butt ugly position with no redeeming features whatsoever. I was down the exchange, and after his 30th move I had the following choices:

a. Move my queen and lose a bishop.
b. Take the rook and give up my queen.
c. Capture the rook after it takes my bishop, and get back rank mated.
d. Stare at the position until my time runs out.
e. Resign.

I opted for e. This gave me time to plot my bye stratagy. One needs to commit to requested byes by round two. I asked Steve whether we got an odd or even number of late entries. He told me we were up to 17. I told him if that did not change I would take a 1/2 point bye for round 4. That's what I call the pre-emptive bye. Take a 1/2 pointer later to avoid the 1 pointer earlier. I didn't want to sit around for an hour. Despite some bad luck I've had requesting a 4th round bye, I decided I would resort to that tactic for this tournament. I would get to make the 11:14 train, hubby would wait up for me, and we'd open up the Rose wine that we received Thursday from the wine club we joined when we were in California.

At least this time when I wiggled out the second round bye, I didn't get paired down. However I did get paired against another one of the usual suspects, Moshe Uminer. This would be our 14th encounter. The first time I had played him he was unrated, and I lost. He was one of those strong unrateds, not a chess newbie. We always have interesting games with somebody having clock issues. This game was no different.

Moshe-Polly 021408.pgn


In round three I get paired against the player who got the bye because of my pre-emptive strike. Steve had found a house player for Andre to play. I think Andre suffered from a case of Polly's House Player Syndrome. He hung a piece on the 13th move against him. It figures that the night I opt not to take my chances on getting a decent house player, the house player is rated around 2000. Usually when I need the house player he's rated 1100-1300.

This is the first time I've played Andre. (Are rare occurance on Thursday! Playing somebody for the very first time.) He has just started playing again, but I've known him from directing together at the NYC scholastics. Andre is also Steve's substitute TD when Steve's out of town or when he's putting in 800 kids' names into his computer.

I had a funny moment in the game. In the previous round Andre had hung his knight by pushing the b pawn that was guarding it. On the 14th move I my game I also pushed my b pawn leaving my knight on c6 unguarded by the b pawn. It was guarded by the queen, but several times I almost moved the queen which would have left my knight to the same fate as Andre's. But why hang a knight when I can let my opponent offer his in exchange for my king?

andre-polly 021408.pgn


There went my 12 rating points from the last two weeks! But now I can look forward to 6 games of slow chess in Parsippany. If you're at the USATE look for me. I'm board two on "Rook Around the Clock Tonight".

Wacky Wednesday!

In keeping with my USATE theme here is another funny game from the team tournament. I was playing board three and in round one we got paired way up! They had a master on board three. Our board one wasn't even a master.

Every low rated dreams about beating a master. Some players never fulfill that dream. I did on that day, but I can't say that it was a satisfying win. It was a severe case of "finger failure". I can't remember the German spelling of the actual term, but it's the act of touching a piece that you did not want to move.



When he picked up his queen and then grabbed my pawn he had the "deer in the headlights" look. The two of us just looked at each other and said nothing. Our teammates watched to see what would happen next. The inner "Mrs. Nice Guy" wanted to say "You don't have to capture like that. I want a challenging game where I can learn something from playing a master." However this is a team tournament where every game point means something. My opponent resigned on the spot instead playing it out hoping perhaps I'd blunder back the queen.

Despite the 633 point rating difference it wasn't enough for the upset prize. There's always some monster upset like a kid rated 600 beating an overconfident adult 1800. Also winning the game did mot improve our chances in the match. We lost 3-1 instead of 4-0.

Four years later I would beat a master in the US Amateur Team. That would be my true first master scalp. This particular game was a fluke.

Round 1: Tournament of LEPers

It's funny how things work in the blogosphere. Liquid Egg Product made a short little post about playing on FICS and asked how know when other chess bloggers are on. One comment led to another, and a tournament was born. Thus a 10 player round robin between various bloggers has started this week. Here is the participant list in rating order:

kevingafni (drunknknite) 1898
NoTB (Tacticus Maximus) 1834
ppwchess (Polly) 1700
RockyRook (Rocky Rook) 1682
LiquidEggProduct (Donnie) 1678
RLP (Wahrheit) 1671
TheDarkKnightTwo (l3rucewayne) 1593
Rhuiden (Tom) 1530
gorckat (gorckat) 1465
mandalorian (chessloser) 1337

We are playing G/15 with a 30 second increment. This is my first time playing something slower then G/10 with no increment online. I usually am too distracted at the computer to play anything slower then blitz. Though for me the problem with blitz is, I suck! I hang stuff when I play fast, and I lose on time when I play too slow. When I play online it's even worse because spacially I have trouble with the one dimensional board. I've been playing blitz on FICS for about a month now. I keep doing stupid things like leaving my queen en prise, or overlooking mate threats. My FICS blitz rating is in the low 1300s. It's almost as bad as my CTS rating. I may have to include one of my FICS gems in an upcoming Wacky Wednesday post. Considering how this round went maybe I should have saved this for tomorrow.

Round one I'm black against Tom. He went on a sac rampage that didn't quite work.




On move 30 I did one of my typical online blunders. I attacked his queen with an unprotected rook. Fortunately for me, he didn't notice and simply moved the queen away. Phew! I thought that he was going to salvage a draw since he got in a whole series of annoying queen checks. It took me 12 moves to stop the checks and get the queens off the board. On move 65 I missed Qg4 mate. Instead I went pawn grabbing with Qxe3+. I guess that was as good as mate since he resigned.

Hopefully as the weeks go by I'll get used to playing slow online. Maybe I'll actually manage not to hang stuff. Stay tuned for upcoming rounds. Good luck everyone!!

Woo Hoo! I Got Plus Score at Friday Action!!! **

** King Kong and Mike weren't there.

Okay so I didn't have my usual issues of having to get past my inability to get King Kong off my back. I also didn't have face playing Mike again after the January's candidate for my Wacky Wednesday post. I was number two in this month's quad. Even so it didn't mean I'd cruise through the tournament. I still had to face three strong kids who each have at least one win against me.

My first round opponent, Josh always plays me tough though I actually have a good record against him. 7 wins, 5 draws and only 1 loss. The last few times we've played we've drawn, and each time I was relieved to get the draw. Sometimes he'd win a pawn early and then I'd fight my way back to the point that a draw was pleasing result.

When I first started playing Josh he was in second grade. He was down right scary to play. He would attack wildly and get way ahead on the clock. I remember the first time I played him he had me totally beat over the board and on the clock. However like many kids I've faced, he fell into the trap of trying to out blitz me when I had 10 seconds on the clock. Then he started hanging pieces.

He's matured greatly in two years and has become a much more positional player. He gets solid positions and as long as he manages his time well he does fine. However there are times he still plays way too fast when it's not necessary. We reached this position after 29. Qd2.



I was not particularly happy with this position. I had blown a pawn on the 24th move after letting him pick up a crucial tempo with 23...Ne6. Even though the extra pawn is doubled I saw lots of problems for me after 29...Rxd6, 30. exd6 Qd7. Sooner or later b5 is coming, he'll be able able to trade off the c7 pawn and I may have difficulties holding onto my d6 pawn. He's ahead on the clock, but at this point I about 10 minutes and he has about 18 minutes. I'm not overly concerned about the time difference.

Here's where playing too fast catches up with him. After I played 29. Qd2 he replied 29...Kf8. It's a natural looking move, but is a mistake because I have 30. f5. The funny thing was when I played it I didn't see that the rook on d8 is hanging after he moves the knight away. I had mainly played it so that after the eventual Rxd6, exd6 I can work my bishop over to f4 to help defend d6. I was very surprised when he played 30...Rxd6 since after 31. exd6 I'm attacking both his queen and knight. Duh!

The game continued 31..Qd7 32. fxe6 Qd7 33. d7 Qe4+ 34. Kg1 Qb1+ 35. Bc1. He's out of checks unless he wants to sac his queen for one more. He resigns.

Round two was a messy game that I won. This set up the showdown between number one and two in the quad for round three. I was 2-0, and Harry was 1.5 - .5. I simply need a draw to win the quad, but I know Harry is not going to settle for a draw. Harry has beaten me with white the last two times we've played. Once again I lost the toss, and ended out with black.

I made the same mistake in the opening in both of those previous losses against him. I wasn't going to play that same move again if we went into that same line again. He surprised me as he went into the same line against my Accelerated Dragon that King Kong and Mike went into during the last two Friday Action tournaments. After I played 7...Qa5 he said "This looks familiar." I resisted the urge to say "This is the same line that I screwed up against Kevin and Mike in consecutive tournaments, but now I know what I'm doing." At least I thought I knew what I was doing until move 12 when I played the very natural and safe looking move of O-O.



Sigh. A chance to win a little money and pick up a decent number of rating points bites the dust. It's about a 15 minute drive from the tournament site back to my house. As I'm driving down I-95 I'm thinking to myself, "Geez, what a f-ing moron you are. You won a pawn, and then you play a stupid ass move and lose a piece. Can't you manage to not screw up when you have a chance to win money and gain rating points? You are such a loser!" I continued to berate myself for a few more minutes then it hit me. "Hello! You should have lost the first game. The only reason you didn't was because he played a move too fast. You were toast, but you got a break. So rounds one and three were a wash. You won a game that you probably should have lost. You lost a game that maybe you can win or draw. Quit your bitching."

By the time I got home, I had calmed down. It wasn't really such a bad night. I beat the two lower rated players, and I lost to the higher rated player. That's not a terrible result. I actually picked up 9 rating points. Sometimes I have to internally vent to work out my feelings. Then I can stand back and look at things more rationally. What would have happened if I lost the first game? Would that have put me in such a funk that I would have been off my game for the remaining rounds and gotten blown out with three losses? Who knows? Fortunately I did not have to answer that question. It actually felt damn good to get a plus score against the kids. That hasn't been happening lately.

Welcome To Wacky Wednesdays!!!

Last week Blunder Prone posted a butt ugly loss of his. We've all had them. Those horrendous games that we lose very quickly, or the agonizing hard fought game that implodes late due to some stupid idea we came up with. In the comments LEP suggested we have an ugly loss week in the blogs. With over 3200 rated games played over the course of 36 years I wouldn't be able to narrow it down to a few games to show in one week. So I've decided that hump day would become Wacky Wednesday where I'd share an amusing game from the Polly archives. Some of the games will have a story, and some of the games won't. Sometimes they'll be ridiculously short, and other times painfully long. In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I will even show some games where I was the recipient of gift from my opponent. Contrary to popular belief, I do actually win short games sometimes due to opponent incompetence.

Since this is February and I'm getting ready to play in my 28th US Amateur Team I thought I'd start with a game from my very first US Team tournament back in 1978. I played fourth board on a stacked team. Bill Goichberg put together a team with Ken Regan on one (2363), himself on two (2327), Mark Ginsburg on three (2247) and me on four (1444) to bring the average down to 2095. Ginsburg was supposed to be our secret weapon on three. In November of 1977 he had surprised everyone by winning the National Chess Congress as an expert. So his rating on the annual list was only 2247, though in reality he was actually closer to 2400. Goichberg felt we had an excellent chance to go 6-0 since Ginsburg's real rating would have put him on board one. How many teams had a board one player on three?


Sometimes things don't work quite as planned. Having someone on your team getting sick sucks. Having two players including your ringer on board three get sick, really sucks. Having a fourth board who is playing sucky chess all weekend is a disaster. Ken and Mark took turns having raging fevers and losing or drawing against much lower rated players. I found creative ways to toss away draws or wins. Bill was our one constant. He went 6-0 on board two. Unfortunately back then they only gave one prize per board for top score, and his tie-breaks weren't good enough, so he didn't even get the clock prize for his effort.


In round four we got paired down against the Collins Men. These were fathers of some of the Collins Kids. It should have been an easy 3-1 win for us since we outrated the top three boards by a significant margin. I can't remember whether it was Regan or Ginsburg that fell victim to the upset in that round. It didn't matter. It cases like this where a stacked team needs helps from the give away fourth board. So what did I do? I played this "fine" (italics for the sarcasm impaired.) game where I decided to avoid perpetual check and walk into a forced mate.



This is one those classic cases of forgetting to put your team's interests above your own. If I had simply settled for the draw we win the match 2.5 -1.5. If I recall there were still games going on in our match, so it wasn't clear that the 1/2 point would be so crucial. I don't remember if we had been 3-0 or 2.5 - 0.5 going into that round, but drawing the match changed the entire tournament for us. I think we ended out scoring 4.5 which wasn't good for anything. It just goes to show you that the stacked team theory doesn't always work as planned. There's no guarantee that they can score 3-1 every round.

There has been talk about a 3 grandmaster team with an 800 on fourth board playing in this year's USATE. It does seem to go against the idea of being an amateur team tournament. For a few years they had a rule that capped the rating difference between boards three and four at 1000. If you wanted a 2400 on board three it meant you had to have a 1400 on board four. For what ever reason the rule went by the boards.

There is no guarantee that the stacked team formula works. All it takes is a balanced team with an up and coming kid with a 2100 rating on board three to pull an upset of the 2400 on the stacked team. Chances are the 900 rated sacrificial lamb is going to get crushed on board four, so that means boards one and two just have scrape up a 1/2 point to win the match against the GM team.

I'm not worried about it since I'm playing board two on a team of friends from my chess club. We come to play chess and eat nice meals in between. My USATE blog may be part chess and part food critic.

The Kings Of Football!!!

Sorry BDK. That was one exciting game. Talk about handling time pressure! Amazing last posession by the Giants. As the Three Dog Night song goes...."Eli's Coming!" I couldn't believe Eli actually escaped the potential game killing sack and got that pass off. Then I couldn't believe Tyree actually caught it.

I was watching the game with the mom of one my students. She said "That's what chess needs. Timeouts! You're in time pressure with a minute left and you call a timeout to pull yourself together." Don't we all wish we could handle time pressure with such grace and determination.

Liquid Egg Product's mascot knows his football. Called it right again. I don't bet, but if I had, I'd probably be too embarrassed to admit that I got my betting tips from a cartoon egg. Good call Mascot!

Explaining The "Monkey On My Back"

I saw this video on the Gilbralter Chess Festival website, and got thinking about all the people who have my number. Some newer readers of my blog never saw my earlier posts on the proverbial "monkeys on my back". These are the players who seem to have my number, and make me crazy as I find new and creative ways to lose to them. Some players have my number and I've yet to beat but I don't consider them as one of the proverbial monkeys on my back. I'm oh-fer lifetime against titled players like FM Boris Privman and IM Jay Bonin but because they out rate me by 500 - 600 points it doesn't bother me. Maybe some Thursday night I'll catch one of them on an off day, and pull a big upset. In the meantime I'll take my lumps because according to statistics I should lose to them around 99.9% of the time.

One of my students who reads my blog thought the nickname King Kong came about because the player plays or acts wildly. He was not familar with the term "monkey on one's back." So I explained to him exactly what was meant by the term. I then explained that losing over and over again to a lower rated kid had become more then just a proverbial monkey on my back. Having a losing streak against an adult near my rating had become gorilla proportioned, so who's bigger then a gorilla? King Kong. Hence the name. Now that he's higher rated then me, and has fried bigger fish then me I don't worry about whether or not I'm going to beat him.