Saturday, September 10, 2005

Fall Cleaning

Went through my links and moved some folks to the M.I.A. spot due to either 404 or inactivity.
Added a few new players to the list of Knights Errant, Smith-Morra, Phorku, and DutchDefence, Welcome to family, and have fun!
I even played around with some font and color settings trying to make things easier to see. The color changes will probably continue to happen until I find a nice even balance.


My opening training is paying off in unexpected ways. Even in openings that I haven't studied I'm beginning to find myself reaching favorable positions on a more frequent basis. I seem to have lost that tendency to saddle myself with structural weaknesses and inactive pieces. At the club this past Thursday I would even go as far as saying that I played my best "positional" games ever.
There weren't any tactical fireworks, because my opponent tried his best to play openings that are about as exciting as watching paint dry, which is his usual approach during our games. He tries to keep things as quiet as possible and I normally try to drag him into the deep end of the tactics pool. I'm always joking with him telling him that he would rather push a pawn than mate someone. Typically I try to blow things apart, but this time I decided to give him all the rope he wanted. I allowed him to over extend his position, all the while maneuvering my pieces into locations that allowed me create multiple attack points simply by shifting threats until his pieces literally tripped over each other. As soon as they stumbled I would pounce and win a key pawn and grind him off the board. Honestly it was as satisfying if not more so than crushing someone tactically.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said...

Thank's for the welcoming. Although i would appreciate a slight adjustment to my name. It's dutchdefence with a "C".

Sancho Pawnza said...

Fixed :)

Temposchlucker said...

I like these colours better than the old ones.

CelticDeath said...

Ditto with Tempo. I like the new colors.

Pawnsensei said...

I third the colors. BTW, what rating was your opponent? Do you have any suggestions on learning how to attack more vigorously? I have the same problem as the other guy.

PS

Sancho Pawnza said...

PS
My opponent hovers in the low to mid 1700's USCF. He was at one time in the
1900's some years ago, but now that he's in his 70's he doesn't quite calculate as fast as he once did.
He still plays a mean positional game though.

I'm not sure trying to force an attack is probably the best thing to do if the position doesn't call for it. I have learned this the hard way. :)
You can read a book by Eugene Znosko-Borovsky entitled "The Art of Chess Combination" and look over those examples. You may even go as far and try to look up the full game scores to see what openings were played to reach those types of positions.
Other than that you can choose to try and play openings that lead to semi-open/open games.

Pale Morning Dun - Errant Knight de la Maza said...

LOL, Orange Knight STILL has the sniffles! Sheesh.

I've had a similar experience with my opening study. I am much more comfortable with piece development after sifting through variation upon variation. I'm less nervous about position.

While my chess career is not as long as yours, I do know that feeling of a win via the slow boa like constriction of your opponents position. Very nice.

Blue Devil Knight said...

Great facelift on the blog!

Pawnsensei said...

Thanks Sancho. I'll check out the book.

PS

King of the Spill said...

I know a guy like that, although I doubt I will ever beat him as he is 2100+ (USCF) :-o.

I like the new template, very unique.

funkyfantom said...

Hi Sancho,

I would like to join the club. I
created an initial posting here.

funkyfantom.blogspot.com

What should I do next?
Any clues?

Thanks