drunknknite
He was winning,
but he didn't see it
and I escaped - as usual.

-Levon Aronian

Underestimated

By drunknknite
So, the match is over I guess, after this game Garingo said that the game 2 weeks earlier was just a practice game. We got paired in the normal tournament, something tells me soapstone played with the pairings... but nonetheless, we got the same colors we were due to have.
It's nice to be underestimated every once in a while. Garingo decided to avoid any preparation and played an absurd opening, hoping that I would forget how to play chess. My notes are extensive, but there are very few variations, this was a strategic battle and I showed very good depth and built a strong initiative from very little. In tournament play against Garingo I am now 2-1 and I have had Black all three games. I hope he is realizing that I am at least on his level.




So this helped save my rating after the disaster last round. I only lost 3 points, I'm up 100 since I moved back to Reno in July, not bad at all. Also Garingo got set back from 2173 to 2105 so maybe I will be able to catch him and win the race to master. I hope to make expert in the next few months, I may have to travel down to LA for the tournament MLK weekend to score some points.

Thanks LEP for the Chess Publisher Tips!

Side Note: Mamedyarov is on the ropes after losing his first game... I hope he can pull it out.
 

5 comments so far.

  1. Anonymous December 1, 2007 at 6:42 AM
    Very nice game, Kevin. I said earlier that you should be the next Expert. Except for that inexcusable loss the previous round, I may have to retract what I said about Garingo being the next Master in favor of you. On pairings, mea culpa. I did in fact play with the pairings because there were major mismatches on the first four boards among people who had been complaining about being bored with their matchups, namely you (originally paired with Soltani), Garingo (originally paired with Harrington), and Shoemaker (originally paired with Parreira). Alsasua originally had Hall. So I switched Hall and Shoemaker, Harrington and Gafni. No one lost money and I believe the games were much better.
  2. likesforests December 1, 2007 at 9:35 AM
    Very nice. I wouldn't have "allowed" 17.cxd4 (giving you doubled ISOLATED pawns) but furthering your strategic goals or found 22...Bc1.
  3. drunknknite December 2, 2007 at 1:26 PM
    Ernie - Thanks. And thanks for the pairings...

    likesforests - Yeah those double isolated pawns were tough to take on, I was thinking of silly moves like instead of recapturing playing b4 to keep the knight trapped, but it doesn't work, white can put his rook on d1 and then develop the knight to d2. As far as Bc1 goes, I had another move that exploits the move Ne1, 22...Be6!? because the f pawn is pinned to the rook, but after 23 Be6 fe 24 Nf3 e5 25 Ng5 Qg5 26 Qg5 hg I wasn't so sure about the ending, my rooks are more active but I have these weird looking pawns, then finally I settled on Bc1.
  4. Liquid Egg Product December 2, 2007 at 6:50 PM
    I must echo likesforests on your 16th move. The d4 pawn looks like it should be weak, but White's got nothing to attack it.

    It's interesting that White's Queen was so out of play, it could basically be ignored.

    Just looking at the ratings, 2100 to 1950...seriously, the players are close enough in strength so that the 2100 can't treat the 1950 like a joke, right? That's just stupid.

    It's gratifying to see people adopting my CP modification :D Thanks for the shout out.
  5. Robert Pearson December 2, 2007 at 9:18 PM
    Nice annotations, Kevin, it made for an enjoyable and instructive replay.

    My inexpert opinion after seeing a good bit of Garingo is that he'll be a Master if he plays for results only; he seems to play "interesting" moves sometimes, and they're occasionally bad. If he played every move with care he'd be very tough. But I doubt his personality will change in a hurry.

Something to say?