Motorcycles, Chess, and Life

The family of Viragos in this household has expanded by 100%. The new addition to the family is the tiny, cute, and shiny-new xv250 which belongs to my fiancee. She took the ABATE motorcycle safety/license exam course last weekend and couldn't wait to get herself an actual bike to ride.

 
This 250 is a surprising little bike though. I rode it home from the dealership so that its owner could get comfortable with it at her leisure and not have to ride her first street traffic on Colfax on a Saturday afternoon, and while I looked ridiculous on it, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of power it had for such a small bike. I had to jam my boot between the left peg and the shifter to upshift, because this is not a bike made for people my size, which made changing shifting direction at speed a challenging experience. I'm also used to a bike which weighs more than twice that of this tiny cruiser, so I was somewhat alarmed at how easy it was to throw the bike around, even at speed. That all said, it's the perfect size for her, and its surprisingly powerful V-Twin engine will ensure she doesn't outgrow this "starter" bike for a long time to come.

Well, I haven't posted much in the last month or so cause I realized that it's unlikely anyone but me (of the people likely to read this, that is) understands much of my chess posts, and as such, I found myself uninterested in writing constantly about something that nobody else might even be a little interested in. So, time for a change of subject.

The battery on my bike died a few weeks back. I had just finally taken it out to ride after all the snow we've had this year, and accidentally put my fork locks in the position that activates my taillights. Why there is such a position escapes me entirely, but when I ride regularly I remember to make sure the tail light isn't on. My several week snow-forced hiatus from riding was largely responsible. The taillight was on for about 7 hours, and the battery didn't have enough charge to start the engine thereafter. I tried the next day--then for the next week, almost daily, just in case it suddenly got it in its cells to have a wee bit more charge. No luck.

So last week I went and bought a battery charger. Dangerous, scary things, battery chargers, but I managed to reinvigorate my battery without blowing myself up or splashing myself with corrosive liquids. I immediately took it out for a short ride whereupon the usual jackassery of other motorists took on a new dimension as I was almost run over a median at 45mph by a lane-changing jackass who didn't even have the courtesy to look startled as I smashed and held my horn button. The accident was averted, no thanks to the other party, but my desire to ride that day had passed.

Today I took her out and had no near-death experiences. I mention this because it is very significant. Most places in the US are dangerous to be on a motorcycle, but Colorado has more than its share of distracted and/or blind drivers, so every time I ride out of my parking lot, I have to dodge vehicles. In fact, Colorado has the worst driving population I've seen in the many states I have visited and lived in. Why I choose to ride here, I'm not sure, but it's clearly a suicidal tendency.

At any rate, today there were no near-misses, no SUV driving soccer moms yakking away on their cell phone while cutting across multiple lanes of traffic to murder me. Nothing. It was a peaceful, if cold, ride. Delicious.

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.

Yesterday I played my first G/30 over the board in many years. And then I played three more. G/30 means that each player has 30 minutes on their clock. It used to be my favorite time control back when I played lots of 30 minute games on the internet. In recent years, however, I mostly play blitz on the net, and so have lost my 30 minute think.

 I now understand why when I was still a really horrible player (not that I'm good now, I'm just better than I was) I'd sometimes chalk up wins against much stronger opponents at this time control. It's too long for quick blitz-type moves and it's too short for really thinking about what's going on. If you're not used to it, it's very easy to screw up on time management.

The tournament in question was held at a Jesuit high school cafeteria. Oddly, it's one of the nicer venues I've played in.

I chalked up two expected wins against much lower rated players and fought like a cornered wolverine against two much higher rated opponents. Both games against the higher rated players I had good chances until my clock started getting low on time. In the first, I blundered away a nice even (perhaps even slightly superior) game when my clock hit around 5 minutes. In my second loss, I had a won endgame, but no time in which to execute it. While thinking about how to finish it, my flag fell and my opponent won.

This is the position right before I started blundering under time pressure against an opponent rated 500 points higher than me. It's black to move on move 22. After 22. ... e6 and then 23. g4 Ra5? things got ugly quickly. Ra3 was the move I should have made pinning the dark square bishop so that I could lunch upon white's d-pawn. I saw that move a little too late.

One thing that is clear from my performance recently is that I am getting a lot better and that if I can stick with it this time, I'll probably achieve a class or two higher in a few months. Heavy tactics training and learning openings by osmosis through blitz over the last 6 months has done more for my game than all the theory books combined over the last 10 years. Now if I can just play consistently, I'll have a much better time of things.

I'm one of the most competitive people you're likely to meet. Actually, that's most likely an understatement. One of the venues I use to vent said competitiveness is tournament chess. Each week, the Denver Chess Club holds a USCF rated game, and I've had a love-hate relationship with the club since its reformation several years back. Generally, I get tired of the junior high-school level political nonsense, or how late the games often run (the rated games can go to 11PM on a Tuesday night). Things that have nothing to do with chess.

I returned to the club after a three-year absence two weeks ago. I had an excellent performance my first week, an abysmal one the second, and fairly normal play yesterday.  I've played an awful lot of blitz in recent years (fast games, generally 5 minutes for each side) on the Internet Chess Club, and it has had both good and bad effects on my game. Good in that my openings are somewhat better and my tactics are much better and I recognize both much more quickly, but bad in that I often move too quickly and make entirely too many unsound sacrifices. In blitz your opponent is just as likely to overlook something unsound as you are (at least at the level I play at), but in a long game such things can spell certain doom.

In other chess news, my lovely fiancee has decided, after 7 years of poo-pooing the King's Game, to take it up. She's working through a beginner's book of problems and core concepts as we speak.

For those who are interested, here follows the score of the game I played last night.

Opponent - Me
DCC December 12.12.2006

1.e4 g6 2.Bd3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.d3 Bg7 6.Bg5 Nxe4

The crowning tactic of the game, nice and early.

7.c3 Nxg5 8.Ne2 Bf5 9.d4 Qd5 10.0-0 Bh3 11.Nf4

Here I pay (slightly) for my cocky overconfidence combined with narrow "King Vision" and an obsession with a quick mate.

11. ... Qf5 12.Nxh3 Nxh3+ 13.gxh3 Qxh3 14.Qe2 e6

Deciding after a long think on a quiet move to maintain my material superiority instead of several half-baked tactical ideas which wouldn't have worked out and would have probably cost me most of my kingside pawns a bit earlier than I'd like.

15.Nd2 0-0-0 16.Nf3 Rd5 17.Ne5 Bxe5 18.dxe5 Rhd8 19.Rfd1 Qf5 20.Rxd5 Rxd5 21.Re1 Qg5+ 22.Kh1 Rd2 23.Qf3 Qf5 24.Kg2 Rxb2 25.Re4 Qxf3+ 26.Kxf3 Rxa2 27.Rf4 Ra3 28.Rxf7 Rxc3+ 29.Kg4 a5 30.Re7 a4 31.Rxe6 Kd7 32.Rf6 Ke7 33.Kg5 a3 34.Kh6 a2 35.Kg7 a1Q 36.Rf7+ Ke6 37.f4 Rc4 38.Rf6+ Kd5 39.Kxh7 Rxf4

This would be me somehow failing to notice the king moving off the a1-h8 diagonal. In another game, that could have been the losing move, however in this one, there is really little to stop black from victory, even after throwing away major material.. 

40.Rxf4 Qxe5 41.Rf2 Qh5+ 42.Kg7 b5 43.Rd2+ Kc5 44.Rc2+ Kb6 45.h4 Qxh4 46.Rg2 g5 47.Kf6 g4+ 48.Kf5 g3 49.Ke5 Qh2 50.Rxg3 Qxg3+ 51.Kd4 c5+ 52.Ke4 b4 53.Kd5 b3 54.Ke4 b2 55.Kd5 b1Q 56.Ke6 Qe4+ 57.Kd7 Qd6+ 58. Resigns (58. Kc8 Qe8#) 0-1

I originally created this blog to write about my motorcycle. Hence the name. In the months that have passed, I realized I don't have enough (read: nothing, really) to say about it to make a blog worth keeping, so I decided to keep the name, but make it a more general purpose blog.

For those who are interested in the actual bike, it's a 1982 Yamaha Virago xv920j. One of the earliest Japanese cruisers, and it still runs like a dream. It sports a "cycom" which looks something akin to a Timex-Sinclair 1000 mounted above the bars which contains the speedometer and many gauges including a fuel gauge! It's very futuristic looking, for 1982. I'll post pictures of it here soon.

My other interests include such novelties as chess, reading books, playing video games, watching movies, and so on.