I've been playing online again, for a while I was just studying, now I'm doing both. I've been losing badly. And not even losing badly, usually winning and then allowing my opponent to mate me or otherwise hanging pieces. There have been some interesting games though. And a lot of the time I can recover from positions that are so ridiculously bad. I have also been letting myself sacrifice for little or nothing on pure intuition and it has been going rather well. Some very pretty stuff. I'll have to find a couple good positions.

I came across MSA Data (click the link) on Liquid Egg Product's blog. It's pretty cool. I found out that out of 271 rated USCF I have 159 wins, 96 losses, and 16 (!!) draws. Yeah I'm a risk taker... I think it's probably a bad thing. I also used to resign very early because I used to attach a lot of emotion to the game when I was young. Now I am seasoned. I show nothing. I feel nothing. I couldn't even remember what my last draw was!! But I looked it up and it was over a year ago, I was so mad when I offered a draw that I couldn't win the ending but then he refused and I couldn't believe it. Someone watching was telling me to calm down and I was like "fuck that I'm the only one with winning chances here..." and then I calmly walked away. While I'm writing this it occurs to me that this may be the last time I sacked an exchange and tried to win with the bishop. I think it contributed to my aversion to piece sacrifices even when I know they are good.

On that note I was going through a Maroczy database I have and there is a game in the line I'm preparing where Kramnik and Anand had drawn and Kramnik was trying the line with White again. (The line is 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cd 4 Nd4 g6 5 c4 Nf6 6 Nc3 d6 7 Be2 Nd4 8 Qd4 Bg7, they played a different move order though) Anand defends for a while and then matter of factly sacrifices the exchange and says (it was his annotations in Chessbase) now black is completely out of danger because the pawns are on one side. OK... really?? That's all it takes for you to decide to snap off a bishop for a rook...?? So a couple moves later Kramnik starts to really press and Anand says this is a mistake and the next move Kramnik offered a draw and Anand decides to keep playing and wins the game down the exchange with black. Now I should justify this by saying that this was back in 1996 when Kramnik was just a lowly 2775...

Anyways, work's over now so I'm going to just post this and go home, but the exchange sacrifice and the positional pawn sacrifice are definitely my two biggest areas of study right now. Let me know if there's anything I should look at...

I haven't posted for a week for a reason, I've been looking at more games and I was in Vegas for work Tuesday through Thursday with limited access to the internet (I didn't feel like paying $12/day when I know things to do in Vegas...). So yesterday was game day at the club and it was an interesting one, although I failed to bring actual effort into the building (perhaps a result of the fact that my flight to Reno landed at 6:50; I was 25 minutes late; I caught up on move 12 or 13). I had been looking at the games of Botvinnik on Saturday (Sometimes I just decide to look at a random book that I have, in this case Botvinnik's 100 Selected Games; definitely a great read as it is written by Botvinnik himself; his reign is almost as impressive as Kasparov's). Anyways, this led to me reading Botvinnik-Tal 1961 while I was in Vegas. There is a very interesting history during Botvinnik's reign of the chess realm. There was a rule in effect that said that he was entitled to a rematch one year later if he lost the championship. This rule helped him regain the championship twice, he lost in 1957 to Smyslov, and then lost in 1960 to Tal (he had almost lost in 1954 to Bronstein and there is some speculation that Bronstein threw the match, although Bronstein denies this in several sources); regaining the title the following year in the return match. I haven't actually read Botvinnik-Tal until this point and I was looking at the games and much like the first time these two met, nearly every game that Tal played white was a Caro-Kann.

So when I arrive I am due to play David Parreira who I murdered the last time we met in a Caro-Kann:



I decided to play e4 and go into the Caro-Kann again, but then I decided to play a more exciting line from the Advance Variation:



There is some explanation necessary here. Filipas-Garingo had just ended in a draw and so I was going over some lines because I could not believe that there was a draw there. I was spending very little time at the board because I had a crushing position and he was spending a long time at the board. Then I went to play Bc5 and had already grabbed the Knight when I realized that the f3 square was covered by that pawn and I was mated. Another advantage of the earlier Bb5 tells as the f1 square would have prevented the embarassing mate.

After this Nathaniel and I decided to play a 10 game match with G/40 time controls. I won the first game with a mate however he had a very large advantage when this happened. I'll post this game later as these two games took some work. At least something came out of my poor performance.

My last couple years of high school I basically stopped playing, then when I was a freshman in school in Chicago I started playing a lot of blitz cause there are places to play (North Avenue usually has some good players hanging around). So then I started playing again and I really didn't know what openings to play. I had played the Accelerated Dragon for a long time (I still do) so I didn't need any help against e4. But I had no idea what to play for white or what to play against d4. I had played both e4 and d4 at different times in my youth and against d4 I had played the Benko and I had also played the KID, enjoying good success with both. But I was in the mood for a change so I started looking around. Then I found a complete repertoire book from Larry Kaufman called The Chess Advantage in Black and White. Now I would never buy a book like this now, but back when I had limited knowledge of theory it was a very useful find. He sets up a repertoire for white based on e4 with the Spanish Exchange, the Bb5 Sicilian, the French Tarrasch, the Caro-Kann Short System, and the Be3 Pirc. These systems share the fact that the theory is relatively easy to learn and they are all highly respected systems. For Black he recommended e5, which I ignored, and the Semi-Slav, which is a system that I like playing a lot. So I read the book and started playing these systems. But I found that with white I wanted more than these lines gave me, so I gradually made substitutes.

The first line to go was the Spanish Exchange, I learned the Scotch exclusively from a database and was getting good results with it online but I don't think I ever had to play it in a tournament. Throughout this whole period I was not playing tournament chess during the year as Chicago unfortunately does not have a good club (actually did not while I was there). Next I began experimenting with other Caro-Kann systems (also from a database), the advance with Nc3 and g4, and the main line. I am confident that in tournament play I could play any of these three systems at will although I have not looked at the advance Caro-Kann for a long time. Next to go was the Sicilian, from another repertoire book incidentally by Jacob Aagaard (and others) called Experts vs. the Sicilian. If you want to learn the Open Sicilian I would start with this book, it gives you a very strong introduction to the lines. Then I switched from the Tarrasch (or Trash as I like to call it (only because of my style, it is a very solid opening)) to the French Main Line, with help from Lev Psakhis in two texts from his four volume survey of the French. I have only read the two focusing on Nc3 (one is on 3 Nc3 Bb4 exclusively and the other is the rest of 3 Nc3) but assuming the other two are of similar quality this series is indispensable if you play the French. So that's how I built the repertoire I have now. You'll notice I am mostly drawn to the main lines, this has been a gift and a curse. These lines are very theory intensive, if you cannot learn theory easily then this is not a repertoire for you. What draws me to these lines is that the ensuing games are extremely fascinating. I used to think the French was boring and dull, but now I've played several Winawers and Alekhine-Chatards and I realize that this is far from the truth. The problem with playing main lines is that you are biting your opponents pet line. When you are learning the Open Sicilian you have to prepare to meet many systems (Najdorf, Dragon, Classical, Sveshnikov, Kalashnikov, Four Knights, Kan/Taimanov, Scheveningen, etc.), your opponents on the other hand only have to be prepared to face a few lines within each system. For instance I know when my opponent plays the open sicilian against me that I will only have to face the Main Line or the Maroczy Bind, but at that point (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3.d4) my opponent must be ready to play against the Kan/Taimanov, the Classical, the Four Knights, or my Accelerated Dragon. This used to be very frightening when playing the Open Sicilian, especially when I knew I could play Bb5 and get a comfortable game. And the lines are usually at least 10 moves long, in the 4th round of the WSO I played a game in the Dragon that followed a well-known game until my opponent deviated on move 25! (we had played each other the year before and we could tell we were playing each other so we both hit the databases hard in between rounds). However, the strategic and tactical themes are surprisingly similar throughout all of these systems, so once you start to pick up on these it makes it much easier to be confident in facing c5 with the Open Sicilian. My conclusion from learning main lines is that they are a lot of fun but they are very difficult. The primary reason that I learned the main lines is that I feel that they are essential if you want to be able to play to win at a higher level. This is obviously a controversial statement and there are of course other systems that afford White good practical chances. But the fact remains that these are main lines for a reason and against a seasoned player it is very difficult to gain any sort of an advantage in the opening with a side line.

Now that I have a good hold on the main lines of e4, I would like to broaden my repertoire further to include d4, primarily to give myself experience in different types of positions. I played d4 three times last year, once after losing three straight games, it was a nice win against a weaker player. I also played d4 in two out of my three games with white in the 2006 National Open and both were very impressive wins. So I'm sure that I can be successful with d4 but I am not sure where to start, but I have a repertoire book about 1. d4 on my computer so looks like I will repeat the process with which I built my current repertoire. If anyone has suggestions as to books or systems I would appreciate it.