MCC Groundhog Swiss R3, and other thoughts

Groundhog Swiss round 3 didn't go all that well. I had black against Michael Wang, rated 1340 or so. I was hoping to play a good game and perhaps win. Instead, I played a fairly planless game, drifted into a position where my pieces were tripping over one another and lost one of them. I'm now tied for 6th with 6 other people who are sitting on 2/3. The five leaders are all at 2.5/3, so while a tie for first is still theoretically possible, it seems unlikely. If the provisional pairings hold I will have white against Fred Harvey, who is rated 1400. I know that if I play a careful game I'll have a chance to win it, so I just need to focus on that.

At least I should have white. I've now played 46 USCF rated games, and am +24 =2 -20 overall, but the black white split is a bit severe:

White: +14 =0 -7
Black: +10 =2 -13

That's 66.6% as white and 44% as black.

A brief side note that will flow back into the discussion here: I've gotten one of my coworkers hooked on chess. He had some familiarity with the game beforehand, in that he knew the rules, but he had no chess knowledge. He's a bright guy, though, and while he still makes a lot of mistakes he's also starting to play some tricky and insightful moves. I was lamenting to him that I didn't really have a plan for chess improvement, and his immediate response was that I should look for weaknesses in my game and work on those. My game with Mr. Wang reminded me of a weakness that I've been aware of for a while, but sort of ignored. That weakness? 1. d4

In fact, against me, 1.d4 might as well read 1. d4! I've only met it OTB 3 times, and I'm +0 =1 -2, but that doesn't tell the whole story. I'm totally unnerved by it, and have no feeling for the sorts of positions that arise from it. Regardless of whether that is really true, d4 is in my head. My feeling is that if you play d4 against me, I'm not going to beat you, and that's bad enough. I know that I shouldn't spend much time on openings, but I now feel that what little time I do spend on openings really ought to be spent on my black response to d4.

One of my problems with d4 has been that I've spent basically no time on it. Since the dawn of my chess playing (roughly 5 years ago) I've never felt comfortable with it. In fact, I've never played it as white. Not once. Not online, not OTB. Never. I know that one way to get comfortable against openings that you don't like is to play them, but I can't bring myself to do it. On the flip side, I don't see d4 much, so I have never had to get used to playing against it, and have never been able to justify spending time on it since it has come up so rarely in my games. I think that one of the reasons I saw it so little was that I was playing a lot of beginners, and by and large, beginners don't play d4. I'm pretty sure I'm going to see a lot more of it as I play in the U1700 sections at the MetroWest Chess Club. So, time to work on d4. My old plan against d4 was extremely simple: play d5, e6, Nf6, Be7 and O-O in whatever order I felt like and then wing it. I own James Rizzitano's "Beating 1 d4" which presents a repertoire based on the QGA, but I haven't learned it enough to actually try busting it out. Unfortunately, the more I look at his book, the less I like it. As opposed to Emms' "Attacking with 1 e4" and other opening books I have, this one does very little to tell you what your general strategic plans are. I have no idea what black's main ideas in the QGA are. At a philosophical level, the QGA appeals to me greatly: almost all my openings are slightly less common, which gives me a confidence boost, and as black I far prefer an opening that lets me make some choices about where the game is going. I like to be in control.

In other news, my wife is going to fund a few chess lessons for me for my birthday, so I think it's time to call around to some local coaches and find one that fits with my schedule and get going. Hopefully the coach will also be able to highlight my weaknesses and help me develop a plan so that I can use what little time I have for chess as effectively as possible.

MCC Groundhog Day Swiss: Halftime report

I've been lazy about posting updates here. My life has been a little too busy to analyze the games I've been playing, and posting about a game without having some annotated pgn to link to seems not worth it.

I'm two weeks into the four week Groundhog Day Swiss tournament at the MetroWest Chess Club. I'm playing in the U1700 section and am currently +2!

In round 1 I again played Timothy Lung, and again beat him. I had black in a Scandinavian defense. It was an odd little game that saw his light squared bishop get locked into a corner of the board. I made some bad moves towards the end, and gave him a nice chance to win the game with an unsound sacrifice, but he played a terrible move that gave the game right back to me. I'm now +2 against him and have won our last 3 encounters. I'm hoping for a psychological edge the next time we face one another....

In round 2 I played Calvin Hori, 1653. I had white and we played a closed Sicilian. I'm really starting to like this opening. I feel like I understand it pretty well, and it lends itself to positions that are comfortable to me. I got a fairly good position before I started to play some poor moves. I walked into a fork that I'd been aware of and carefully avoiding for a few moves, but managed to turn it into losing the Exchange rather than losing a full piece. My attack was still fairly strong and my opponent was in extreme time trouble. He had about 10 minutes left on his clock at move 25 and needed to make it to move 40. He made a few too many mistakes under the pressure from the clock and the win was mine.

After the game he wanted to discuss it a little, but didn't have much time. He spent what time he had telling be about how bad some of my moves were (and they were) but (while I didn't say this) I don't feel too bad about it since, as bad as they were, they weren't bad enough to let him win.

I'm planning to post these games later tonight, after I learn a little more about Fritz's html export options. I'm pretty excited about beating Tim Lung (again) and transferring the yoke of "highest rated player I've beaten" from him to Mr. Hori.

I'm one of 5 players in the U1700 with 2 points, so I'll be paired down in the coming week. If the provisional pairings hold, I'll get a 1300 with 1.5 points. The two wins that are already in the bank seem certain to push me over 1400, and I think that if I can manage to grab another point from a 1300+ player that I might even reach 1500 by the end of this.

All very exciting, but I'm still waiting for that time when my rating reaches its plateau for my current level of chess knowledge. I don't want to say I'm not learning much from the weekly games: I am...but I'm not doing much aside from that to improve right now. At some point I'll hit a wall and more improvement will take real work. I'm still not sure where that's going to be. I don't see myself as a 1600 level player yet, but I think I'm every bit as good as Mr. Hori, and his rating has been at 1650 for quite a while.

MCC Winter Swiss: Final Notes

I didn't end up playing Michelle Chen in round 4, but our own Steve Eddins of the Steve Learns Chess blog. I played my Scandinavian against him and got myself in trouble when he fianchettoed opposite mine and I didn't take adequate defensive measures and dropped a piece. I played on and had a reasonable position (for being down a piece) where I made is bishop as bad as I could. It wasn't enough and he ground me down.

In the final round I played Travis Nilsson, rated 1427. He played the French against me and I tried my KIA for the first time in an OTB game. I made some mistakes, but his were worse. I hope to put some notes in this game and stick it online later. At any rate, he got his pieces all twisted up and had to give one up (though he had chances to avoid it). He ultimately resigned about 40 moves in, down a piece and having used only 15 minutes. I think if he'd played a little slower he could have made this a better game.

So, I went 2.5/5 (with a half point bye) in the U1800 section and raised my rating to 1354. Thanks again to Mr. Frymer for prodding me to play up a section. In spite of the beatings I took I think I played reasonably well, and I'm learning that those 14, 15 and 16oo players aren't really so scary after all.