In this final-round tournament game, it's my opponent who seemingly loses by rote. I'd seen him play the same setup as White previously, although I hadn't prepared anything specific for it. The Reti/fianchetto/English type opening was not challenging at all for Black, and I had fully equalized by move 7. After that, my opponent did not seem to have much of a plan and soon ended up down a pawn for no compensation. Some of my own games have certainly followed a similar trajectory, so it was good to feel sharp this time and hungrier to create something new, rather than drift planless out of the opening.
Path to Chess Mastery
An examination of training and practical concepts for the improving chessplayer
29 October 2024
Annotated Game #288: Losing by rote
27 October 2024
Annotated Game #287: A failure of X-ray imagination
For this next tournament game, the notable lessons found in analysis were my failure to visualize X-ray tactics/patterns, the subject of the previous post, along with a general lack of imagination in understanding how I could regroup my forces to pursue a winning attack. An opening surprise did not help, as I adopted a mentality that was too defensive afterwards, although I will give myself credit for rallying after the material loss.
26 October 2024
Article: "The Most Important Tactical Pattern in Chess" by GM Gregory Serper
20 October 2024
FT article (from How To Spend It) - "Aarti and Sohum Lohia are changing chess, one move at a time"
The latest chess article from the FT in its "How To Spend It" weekend section is entitled "Aarti and Sohum Lohia are changing chess, one move at a time". They're not really changing chess, but it's still interesting to see how Sohum, the talented #2 junior player in the UK, expresses his views on chess and a description of his mother's crusading support of it.
The article touches on some modern scientific points about chess and its calming effect on the mind, as well as the nature of it as a mental sport. Unfortunately it also help perpetuate some of the typical fallacies of chess imagery in popular culture - the first photo in the article shows a somewhat abstract chess board set up properly, while the following ones, showing an antique set, have the board rotated 90 degrees from where it should be (with wrong color squares for the pieces). This includes shots of Sohum playing on it. I expect that was just for show for the journalist (understandable) and perhaps he didn't notice - but then again, especially strong players should really be aware of these things when sitting down at a chessboard.
19 October 2024
Annotated Game #286: Lessons in the Exchange Caro-Kann
With this next game, I revert to my tendency to lose as Black in the first round of a tournament. Under analysis, however, it reveals some useful lessons in the Exchange Caro-Kann, which I think is regaining popularity at the Class level. The trade-offs involved with 6. h3 I had never previously examined, and I think continuing with the response 6...g6 is fully justified, although breaking in the center with 6...e5!? is now a possibility. In the game, I was too shy of playing Bf5 and delayed developing, then find the wrong idea on move 17 for the middlegame and the trend from there is all downhill.