Apr-01-14
 | | Phony Benoni: Illogical. |
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Apr-01-14
 | | offramp: Captain Kirk's famous catchphrase, "Scotty, beam me up". Did he say it? Yes. Scotty, BTW, had a right hand identical to Mikhail Tal's. |
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Apr-01-14
 | | al wazir: A little matter of some 600 Elo points separated the two players here. Guess which one won? |
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| Apr-01-14 | | sydbarrett: Was this game featured solely for the obvious pun? Because it's pretty horrible??? |
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| Apr-01-14 | | sydbarrett: Oh it's April the 1st. Oh okay, get it over with. The next game-of-the-day better make up for this one. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | GumboGambit: For clarification: Scotty aka James Doohan lost a finger due to a D day war injury, whereas Tal was missing fingers due to an inherent deformity to his hand. |
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Apr-01-14
| | offramp: <Sydbarrett>, a laurel, and a hearty welcome to our online community. I'm sure you'll enjoy it here. Remember to set your controls for the heart of the sun.
Best wishes,
Alan. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | Once: Oh, I don't know. There are things to like in this game. A higher graded player steadily outplays his opponent, grabbing advantage after advantage. White centralises his pieces, pushes black's pieces to the edge, grabs the important diagonals and files and then effortlessly sets up a mating net. Not a classic, by any means, but a smooth and efficient day in the office. Some little nuggets:
22. b4!
click for larger viewThis kicks the black queen into a poor offside position. The c4 pawn looks to be en prise, but if black takes it Nb6 forks queen and rook. 23. b5
click for larger view White kicks at the black knight protecting the e7 pawn. If that pawn falls, d6 becomes weak. He doesn't exchange bishops with Bxg7. Far better to have his own Bb2 contesting the long diagonal than to ease the tension. 24. Nf6+
click for larger viewThis forces black to exchange bishop for knight - leaving a wonderful white bishop lodged in the f6 hole. Now we see why white didn't exchange the bishops. He is starting to set up a mating net. The d6 pawn quickly falls and then we have a Monday queen sac for a back rank mate. It's not a deep game. There are no sacrificial fireworks - except at the end (which does not really count). But what we do have is an exhibition of smooth technique. One thing I have noticed is that good players tend to develop that little bit more quickly than lesser mortals. They are usually the first to get their minor bits off the back rank so theirs rooks can talk to each other. Their rooks grab open and half-open files first. Then rooks and/or queens get doubled on said open and half open files. Queens move forward more quickly into commanding positions. Knights find outposts. Bishops get juicy diagonals. Then the tactics come, but only after the positional advantages have been won. One thing I have admired about Kasparov's games is that his rooks always seem to become active more quickly than many of his opponents. We can probably learn more from games like this than the sometimes incomprehensible titanic struggles between uber-GMs. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | morfishine: <Once> Very good and sound points! Perhaps Black should go ahead and sacrifice the exchange netting a pawn with 22...Qxc4 23.Nb6 Qe6 24.Nxc8 Qxc8
25.Bxg7 Kxg7
click for larger viewSort of reminds me of Fischer vs Spassky 1972 (Game 17): Spassky vs Fischer, 1972 Except in this game its Q+R vs Q+N instead of 2R vs R+N ***** |
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| Apr-01-14 | | JohnBoy: <sydbarrett> - do you play at Yahoo? |
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Apr-01-14
 | | perfidious: Maybe if there are users there called <rogerwaters> or <davidgilmour>. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | hedgeh0g: Awful game. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | Castleinthesky: What do the Star Trek Enterprise and a wad of toilet paper have in common? They've both circled Uranus! Although this game may not win a brilliancy prize, it is a good game to learn from as White sets up a clear plan, makes Black's knight useless and dominates the center. Kudos for the pun and game! |
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| Apr-01-14 | | Memethecat: 24.Nf6+ is a nice move, putting Whites DSB on the sweet square (anyone that's faced this position knows how horrible it is), white must've seen this on 23.b6 if not earlier, Blacks N is stuck guarding e7 so is forced to counter with 23...e6 or exchange pawns and then counter. Sort of expected a fools mate or something given the date, has SeeGee abandoned its whimsical ways ? |
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| Apr-01-14 | | kevin86: You're dead, Jim! |
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| Apr-01-14 | | sydbarrett: To offramp: I frequent this site a lot, but I never registered to chat before. Thanks for the welcome! To JohnBoy: yea Yahoo just died last night. I was there a lot, in the advanced lounge, for 14 years. 1/0 player. Do I know you? :)) |
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| Apr-01-14 | | sydbarrett: If I can overly self-interested for one more comment... I'm really intrigued by JohnBoy's comment. If someone associates "sydbarrett" with "Yahoo chess," then I must have made an imprint on this world. :) |
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Apr-01-14
| | offramp: < sydbarrett: If I can overly self- interested for one more comment... I'm really intrigued by JohnBoy's comment. If someone associates "sydbarrett" with "Yahoo chess," then I must have made an imprint on this world. :)> It sounds like you're intending to retire! |
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| Apr-01-14 | | sydbarrett: ust using self-deprecating humor ;-)
For what it's worth, Yahoo chess ended it's 15 year run last night. I averaged an hour a day there for 14 years. It's renovating and will be back up, but who know's if what they come up with next is total crap.
Knew a lot of people there. So the change/closing of Yahoo chess is bittersweet.Maybe that's why I've finally decided to register here. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | JohnBoy: <syd> - i played yahoo in the advanced lounge for about 8 years and routinely saw your name. I played under a variety of names, usually 2/0 or 3/0 as 1/0 is just too fast for this old man. We played a few times - when you screwed up and got on a 2/0 board (and then I cleaned you) or I stumbled into a 1/0 board (and you slaughtered me). My modus operandi was to take a new ID to 2100 as fast as possible. Finally quit when my wife threatened to scalp me, with maybe 10 ids in the 2150 range. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | JohnBoy: I found that most of the 1/0 Yahoo boards were bot-populated, and to maintain at 2000 I had to avoid such critters. There were also a ton of cheaters - dudes who would change the time from 3/0 to 1/0 after a game, without agreement. Stuff like that. Favorite opponents: CMUZephyr and DanTheMan (whom I routinely called dan the water-boy). Zeph was fast and played a lot of 1/0. Dan was a cheater and fun to get flustered. When he would do the old time-switch I would start talking big smack. There was some 2250 Seattle player (latino surname) who was great to play. Whenever he was on-site I would try to corral him into 5/0 games and we would waste hours. It's been a while - EdReyes? A very nice guy, he usually hovered around 2000 at Yahoo. |
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Apr-01-14
 | | keypusher: <Once> Thanks for your lucid comments. <We can probably learn more from games like this than the sometimes incomprehensible titanic struggles between uber-GMs.> Surely right. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | sydbarrett: Sorry to the other people as I don't mean to hijack this board for something of a private chat.
JohnBoy, I enjoyed reading your take on Yahoo chess thanks for writing back. Yes I talked to Dan a lot over the years. I would always keep a Yahoo game board open overnight or during the day... I'd use it to watch chess or chat when I needed breaks from study whatever. Dan was a frequent overnight host. Sure, there were also a bunch of "Latino players" there who were into 1/0. Maybe you were referring to Luis Kamma specifically. I'm going through severe withdraw and hope Yahoo chess comes back online soon, and more or less in the same social format (i.e. retaining the capability of having several players to a table). 8 years eh... What were your screennames? I'd be surprised if I don't know you. Well, see you at the new Yahoo maybe. |
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| Apr-01-14 | | waustad: In any case, if this Mateo is the Mateo we know - we're honored to have your commentary. If he isn't, commentary by the latter is still one if the all time highlights of this site. |
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Kibitzing
