...in which I am starting off well.
I am very pleased. I just finished my first complete online chess game, and I am victorious!
I say “complete” because kickboygerlachand I have tried to play twice, both times playing correspondence games where each of us would move once a day. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But the problem with having 24 hours to make your move is that you still have to make a move within 24 hours, and sometimes things come up. I lost the first game on time while reallyamermaidwas here last weekend (got distracted). Gerlach lost the second game on time while helping a sick friend. We’re both irresponsible and unreliable people, I guess, but we’re trying again, hoping the third time is the charm.
But yeah, I played a game against Tempos, a person I don’t know, last night. It didn’t start off too well; this guy is clearly superior to me in the opening. But I’m an adequate opening player, and as the game gets going I get more dangerous. I’m much stronger in the middle game. Somehow I seem to be more alive to the possibilities than most people, which (if I may say so) appears to be true in real life, as well as on the board. During the opening the board is full of limitless possibilities, and it is very hard to pick any of them out from the others. But after a while I start to see and recognize everything, like how you gradually recognize a familiar face as a person approaches through thick fog. And every game, like every person, has its own personality, and although there are many ways each person might behave, you know enough about them to loosely predict how they’ll respond to any situation.
Anyway, he had a much stronger position than I after seven or eight moves, but I gradually expanded and waited patiently for my chance. It was clear to me that I wouldn’t win an endgame and would have to have a master stroke during the middle game to put him away. When he moved one of his rooks off the back rank to threaten one of my pawns the chance I’d been waiting for came. I could tell that he was concentrating on the wrong part of the board. I moved my Bishop, and that move told him a false and comforting story: first that I was worried about his attack and was moving to defend myself, and second that I was willing to trade Rooks to reduce the attacking forces.
The Bishop move proposed what appeared to be a simple exchange of rooks, but which really gave me command of the file I need to attack his king directly. Confident that I was scrambling and desperately trying to fight him off, he pressed his attack on the wing. I finally pounced with 28. …Rc1+. You can see the final position in the picture on the right, and it really shows how I lulled him (and how confident I was in my own plan). Believe it or not, up until just three or four moves before this, his position looked much stronger than mine. You can still see at least one sign of that, which is my wrecked and tortured pawn structure. But you can also see how I opened up the queenside and took over the game from there. Both the Knight and the Bishop, the two pieces cutting off the King's escape, came completely around the board, beginning on the kingside, moving to the queenside on other errands (which also lulled him a bit, since it appeared that they had other things on their minds), and then swooping back in to set a perimeter, and the Rook is delivering the coup de grace from the far side himself. Sometimes a bad pawn structure isn't such a burden, as when it allows for a wide-open attacking style of game.
This position isn’t technically mate, because he can interpose the Bishop on the spot marked X and save himself for one turn, but I’ll just take the Bishop with the Rook if he does which will be mate, so he resigned honorably. I am feeling good after having beaten a guy who might well be a stronger player than I to begin my new career at the site.
I don’t know if any of you dig the chess, but if you do, come to Chess.com, open yourself a free account, and look me up at OgreVI. We can play live games or move-a-day games, whatever you like. It’ll be a blast. I’m looking forward to seeing you there.