As for my latest games, I don't think any are worth posting. The most radical thing I did was to play 1.d4 in one game -- paradoxically, as a way of getting *out* of regular QP openings. My opponent plays for the same team, has a slightly lower rating, but is tough and good at blitz -- he beat me twice before when I opened 1.Nf3 and transposed into a regular King's Indian. So I planned either of two ideas: one was 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bf4 d6, with a sort of London System vs KID. But our last game had started 1.Nf3 c5 2.g3 Nf6 before going into the KID, so I prepared an Anti-Benoni line too: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 c5 3.d5, where White doesn't play c4, and that's how it went.

It continued 3...d6 4.Bg5 (this is usually only played after 3...b5, the Pseudo-Benko -- the usual non-c4 move after 3...d6 is 4.Nc3 ... but I'd had a look at some games in this line and knew the basic ideas) 4...Ne4 5.Bh4 Qb6 6.Qc1 g6 7.Nbd2

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And I was happy here. White will play c3 and e3, probably exchange a pair of knights, continue with Be2 and 0-0, then e4. Black will have to retreat the Queen to c7 to protect e7 in order to castle, and his development is slow.

In fact, his Nb8 never moved at all. I let him off the hook in the centre trying to open it up for my bishops, and after 30 moves we reached this position:

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I should exchange Queens, with a workable ending advantage. I kept them on, and let him get a perpetual.

Then, White again in the last round, I switched to the English, again vs King's Indian, and got into this mayhem with 3 mins left on my clock:

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Here I played 40.Qxf5, after spending too much time looking for a win with 40.Re7+ Kxe7 41.Qg7+, which doesn't work. It eventually became a draw too.

I really do appreciate it, so so kind of her..

I always figured i'd be refused premium membership, on the grounds of LMAJ's crazy accusations last year!!

Maybe i have just been paranoid, but either way i did not expect that, and im more than pleasantly surprised..

"Big up the frogspawn massive", lol :)

I really need to stop all this 'Lolery', and hunt down that bloke with John Lennon's face as an avatar, and bribe him somehow ha..

<"Had to go crazy to love you
Had to go down in the pit
Had to do time in the tower
Begging my crazy to quit

Sometimes I'd head for the highway
I'm old, and the mirrors don't lie
But crazy has places to hide in
That are deeper than any goodbye.">

As he wrote in a book about 50 years ago: <I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what twenty years sitting on your ass does to your face>.

It seems that Leonard now reckons he was unduly optimistic about old age:

<The present's not that pleasant Just a lot of things to do
I thought the past would last me
But the darkness took that too.>

In my game, I always have e3 to block the bishop out.

I'm playing another tournament in Dublin next weekend. As entries stand, I could be playing the same guy in the first round. Despite the fact that a majority of entries so far are from players from Norway, Lithuania, Congo, etc, I could still find myself playing a guy who plays for the same club team.

that's a little problem, innit? i was wondering if i should create a custom avatar and get it uploaded to avoid such perceptional crashes.

I've seen him do it in real life, with good results against some pretty strong players. His chess hero is a guy named Duncan Suttles, whom everybody should be more aware of. Especially if they like to walk on the wild side.

Sometimes it’s not the best place to be. Here’s an example: Kramnik vs Beliavsky, 1995

Of course, that’s a Stonewall Dutch, not a Rat, Modern, Leningrad Dutch or any other line with …g6. In the Basman Variation of the Dutch, the Black Knights go to a6 and h6, usually heading for c7 and f7 next.

It’s also now fashionable for Black to play …Nh6 in the Advance Variation of the French, eg after the moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Nh6 … the knight is heading for f5, which it can also reach via e7. But …Nh6 tries to tempt White into playing Bxh6, when Black has plenty of compensation for the damaged kingside. I’ve played this a couple of times, but nobody has bitten.

Again though, the French is quite different to the kind of opening systems <mack> is talking about.

As for …Bh6 in the Tromp, the game I had in mind was P Wells vs Shirov, 2006. Different from mine, in that Bxf6 gxf6 was played, not just the fianchetto …g6. My computer took a long time to see that black is in trouble after …Qxb2 and …Qxa1. But in trouble he is, as Wells knew and Shirov apparently forgot – the line had previously been played in a couple of Julian Hodgson’s Tromp games.

I remember a rather good chessplayer whose first name was April. Of whom other chessplayers -- in a homage to the poet Robert Browning -- would recite "Oh, to be in April/ Now that England's here".

Where slot machine confusions

And the plastic universe

Are objects of amusement

In the fiction of their curse.

"Pity".....how to answer & keep it light........I mean, this the digital equivalent of a handshake/introduction...you don't say hello to someone & immediately bite there ear off on a subject that's had so much bearing on "who you are" that it could be part of your DNA.......come to think of it I HAVE done that before, quite a lot, tut tut.

I might of have felt pity at one time, now I don't know what I feel. On good days its sympathy, even if someone does see what's going on & hates it, how do they get out of it? It cant be easy if everyone you know is going that way ⇩ & you wanna go this way ⇧. I feel empathy as well, I've chased after crap & accepted as truth all the little lies & the big enormous ones too. But mostly I feel numb. numbnumbnumbnumbnub.

Damn, I aimed for light, but hit honest.

If i'm just playing my first game on there in weeks and feel really rusty, i'll wait till they've moved twice, and if its another "daft" move, il just resign without saying a thing!

When i think about it, it's not a very nice thing to do in case its actually a child, but i need to learn myself, and don't have the time to play tutor to them.. Either way, with names like <Male and single> i'm doubting im playing a child!!

I do have a nice story about playing a kid one day on that site though, but i'll tell you that little tale another time, maybe..

So Dom, you're actively playing in tourneys still, whats your BCF rating? If you have one..

I'll have to spend some time and look at some of your games, because i know you as a kind of "French master", and thats one opening i really want to learn about..

I *hate* playing against it as white, and always go for the exchange variation, bottling out of getting deep into theory..

Aiming for light is good, but those photons are tricky to hit.

Some people have to take serious amounts of drugs to feel numb. Anyone who can generate numbness spontaneously is a step ahead.

The trick, as always, is switching it on and off. If only humans came with a remote control and an attitude adjuster ...

Hats off to Harper, though. For 'McGoohan's Blues' and 'I hate the white man' and a whole lot of other things, including the cricketer and the crease.

but aren't you happy anyway, since you get to f5 without blocking the bishop, thereby adding a little flexibility? or don't you have any plan to or interest in using that extra flexibility (after Nh6 instead of Ne7)? or doesn't it really give any extra options?

I've just checked my results. I lost eight out of 40 games with the French in the past few years (I won 20, drew the rest) -- and six of those losses were against IMs or GMs. In the other two, I blundered in the *bloody* exchange variation, out of boredom.

The Exchange French is actually a disguised Petrov -- identical pawn structure, with nothing on the e-file. It's quite possible to play for a win with black, but it doesn't seem to suit my style.

<Mark> Hmmm. There are actual Grandmasters who play 1.a3 -- Kallio, from Finland, does it regularly. So be careful who you hang up on -- they're not always children, beginners, mentally deficient or half daft.

I sometimes used to open 1.e3, but I wouldn't reccommend it.

Ratings are unreliable -- especially now, with different varsions around. I don't play online, so I don't have an internet rating. I'm in the process of playing enough games to get a FIDE rating, currently on course to be over 2000. But my current Irish rating is only 1754 -- I was 2000 in the 1980s, but after my 'comeback' I lost a few games to 1100s. Easily done. I'm trying to break the habit, by actually *concentrating* when playing people with much lower ratings. And bearing in mind that *everyone* who plays in tournaments can actually play a bit. And will be happy to show you, if you give them the chance.

Knowledge of openings can be useful, but too many people put too much faith in it. I've played the Grunfeld (and won) as both black and white, without ever consulting a book on the subject. Just general knowledge of ideas, and games I'd seen.