Mini-Pirc

I just finished a short game against a player rated over 2000. I am not sure what happened. I was fully expecting to have a hard fight, but he seemed to just play lazily. Taking just a few seconds for each move. I was a little lost in the opening. It wasn't until move 8 that I hit a position I was sure I had studied before. This game puts me at 2021 on ICC. I am impressed with my results so far, but there are some serious issues as well.
1. I'm finding it so hard to use my thought process. I am playing more cautiously, but that's not the only thing I want.
2. I have less and less time for playing games and my study time seems to be getting more fragmented.

Enough complaining, here's the game...

USCF Rating Tracker - progress Report

I have started working on the rating tracker in my spare time. Here is a shot of what I have completed so far.
The meter will be used to display the progress towards the player's goal rating. To the right of that there will be a line graph showing the previous three months results. In the box in the middle there will be a list of the player's games which can be sorted by opponent's name, tournament, win/loss, date, etc. The bottom two boxes will display the player's career win/loss/draw ratio as white and as black.

Currently it only allows you to add a player, it downloads the information from the USCF site, but I have to go through the tedious process of programming the logic that extracts the statistics from the downloaded web pages. If any USCF members would like to take part in the Alpha and Beta testing, let me know. Also, if you know how to program in C# and want to help, I would love to have a hand as I am still just a novice programmer.

Of course it is going to be open source so other programmers can make versions for FIDE and any other chess federations.

Nice Mate Gets me to 2010 on ICC

I sucked it up and got a membership to ICC. They had an 18 month for the price of 12 deal going on. I have some money coming from a yard sale, so it was easy to afford at the moment. My provisional rating after two games is 2010, which will only fall from this height for sure. But I can at least brag and say my highest rating on ICC is 2010 right? Well the game that got me to 2010 was rough. I was playing sloppy and hung a pawn. Cooking dinner while you play is not a good idea. But this made me start paying more attention and I started to use my move process. My opponent then dropped a piece, and in mutual time trouble we reached the position in the image.

Mate in one and you have two options for it. I had two minutes on the clock and he had two and a half. It was a harsh game. He was down a piece but had a bit of an initiative and started to force things. This caused him to lose his queen and it just crashed from there. That's it, nothing instructive. I just thought it was an interesting mate with all of white's pieces swarming around.

Odd Vision Problem

Have you ever played a game and had a player make a move and some how been trapped in their delusion? Check this position out. I was some how convinced that taking the knight would lead to mate. WTF? So, I played a second best move 31... Bc5+?! 32. Kh1 Bf2. It still wins, but why not just take the dang piece? I really need to work on my anallytical ability. But first, I have to get this thought process down.

Missed Tactic

I missed a tactic in a game on FICS today. Can you find the move?

Click for the answer. At least I didn't miss the mate in one, though. I used the thought process somewhat poorly. I really need to continue training it. I would like to know your opinion, though. Is it cheating if I play with a sheet of paper that has my thought process in front of me? This certainly wouldn't be legal OTB. What do you think? If I had used my thought process I would not have missed this tactic.

MSA for Charting your USCF Rating

If you’ve never seen this program and you are a USCF member, you will want to. It’s great. It downloads data about your rating (and the ratings of others if you enter their USCF ID) and allows you to work with it and create charts based on the data. Were you ever curious about your win-loss ratio against Player-X? Would you like to know your win-loss ratio against players rated 100 points over you? Or against lower rated players? Well, it’s easy to get these details with this program. And, you cannot beat the price... Free.

Planning for Another Weekend

I’m looking to get in some games against human opponents on FICS this weekend. So far my studies are all on track. I have been doing board vision training on a daily basis, I have been reviewing my endgame positions, completing problems in Practical Chess Exercises, and I have completed my mini-circle of the first three levels of CT Art. The problem is still finding time to get in long games against strong opponents. I really have to make this a priority as it’s the best way to train my thought process and develop my analytical abilities for OTB play. This means I actually have to wake up at 6:30 on the weekends. It sucks, but I see no way around it. I usually have to have breakfast ready for the family by 9:00, so that will give me enough time to eat and get a game in before the hustle-and-bustle starts.