Motorcycles, Chess, and Life
I won my class section in a tournament on ICC on Sunday with a perfect score of 3/3. This is not to say I played good chess, I merely won. Two of my wins were luck or psychological in origin. Hard to say which, but my opponents merely missed great opportunities to destroy me.
The first game was against a much lower rated player, and he dropped a knight on move 10, and in the end I got a nice rook-sac leading to discovered mate out of the deal. The second and third should have, if there were justice in the world, been lost games for me. My opponent in game two missed mate twice in spite of my bungling under time trouble (one of which was a one move mate) and I ended up liquidating to a won endgame. In game 3, I was cocky and rushing (for unknown reasons, since it was G/45) and dropped a bishop in the opening and decided just to throw everything at his castled king. That apparently was enough to make him miss winning opportunities, cause he did.
In this position it's white's move 43, and I'm black and in very serious time trouble. I have less than 4 minutes remaining on my clock and have just lost two pawns as a result. 43. Qf8+ is the beginning of a mating combination which I didn't until after the game when some kibitzers were talking about how my opponent robbed himself of a win. Fortunately, I was not the only one who missed it. My opponent did as well. Then, I made an even worse move: 43. ... Ke5, which I also didn't notice led to a one move mate with 44. Ra5. Neither did my opponent! He traded queens instead! In the end I managed to assert one of my central pawns and ended up with a rook and two-pawns vs. four barely advanced pawns. An ending that was easy to win even with only a minute or so left on my clock.
The tournament was part of a grand prix event, which means you pick up a certain number of grand prix points for your performance in each tournament of the series. Winners of the tournaments get nothing but bragging rights and the adoration (or scorn, perhaps) of their peers, but the winners of the entire grand prix event win extensions to their (now quite costly) Internet Chess Club membership, so I'm hopeful the next couple of Sundays will be as generous to me.
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