After ...h6, it's beautiful -- you just keep on putting pieces en prise, and they can't be taken. The final position is a picture -- worth framing. And credit to Elixir for resigning at such a good point rather than struggling on and either getting mated or losing a lot of material.

I wish I could play like you, actually. I never win miniatures anymore, except sometimes when somebody rated 1000 points lower makes a massive blunder, and I happen to notice it. Usually I win by slow creeping and boring 'em to death.

I hafta wake up and then one more day work and I'm free to rest.

Ty for comments. I was lucky in <Elixir> game to some extent, as in Internet play the preceding few weeks I noticed that it was often a good idea to sac minor pieces if-

1.YOu are castled and he isn't
2.You control the e-d files
3. Your pieces are developed and active.

So I started with adventures in Internet play based on that idea and decided to apply it to the Correspondence game once it resumed after such a long break.

Course, I get massacred by doing it too much on Internet play. (craves excitement)

HOwever, in the <elixir> game I noticed that even if his Queen grabbed my <a> pawn and proceeded to check my on the <first rank>, so what?

Without support, Queen can't do much there. I realized I wouldn't even have to retreat bishop to <b1> to block the check. No need for that.

Once I determined this, I castled with a free heart, for initiative and tempiiiiii.

Where art thou?

I've got a grovel coming to me sir. C'mon I had to grovel twice and now it's your turn.

Plus we miss you (all of us) as well.

Look forward to your return.

Plus I'm not kidding about surrendering. Friendly competition is fun, but spamming my forum is just too exhausting; I shan't do it ever again.

I think he might have got away with it - just... By playing ...Qb3 next and trying to exchange queens. Your best response to ...Qxa2 looked like Bd3-b1, then black plays Qb3, and there are a few different ways that queens can be exchanged, but no really good way of avoiding it.

I'm trying to rearrange my books so all the novels and fiction are together. Right now everything is all mixed up, even chess.

Question: is <The Death of Socrates> by Plato a novel? Is it fiction? Autobiography (Hmm -- prob'ly not -- doesn't it say something like "Plato was not there that day"?) ... Biography? Toxicology?

Pls advise: should I store it with Ballard and Burroughs and that gang, or open up a zone called 'classics' for it and Marcus Aurelius?

I'm a patzer, you're a patzer, we are patzers all. And when we get together, we give the patzer's call - "I didn't see that."

Do they put it in the piggybank during Daylight Saving Time, and then spend it all in one big, uh, spend?

So time, as it were, is on your side, and the running score is something like 5928 to 5913.

I shall have to act. I know. I'll go *backwards* -- if nothing else, it'll confuse the hell out of me.

And that was your dastardly plan all along, wasn't it?

Sigh.

He-Who-Must-Be-Dismayed

(deep down, but you'd never know to look at him, he's such a zany old trouper, keeps up a jolly front, cracks jokes, but you know he's dying inside ... part of the pathos, really, isn't it? Nearly as good as that Ancient Bubble, wotsisname, the Frog Guy -- Aristophanes?)

Ah rest my feigns.
I wrist my veins.
Arry's Toe Veins.
Ah wrestle toffee.
Eyries Toff, Annie's
I rise to faint in his.
I raise two phones.

Und so weiter. Ha ha, you win.

Actually, it's Jessica -- and I'm very pleased to see her accelerate past me. I like a mover, I do.

Could your Patzer Song be converted to verb form? As in...

I patz, you patz, he, she, it and they patz, we *would* patz if we played together...

<
I sometimes play high-risk moves

You blunder
She drops pieces
He leaves his king en prise
It is a patzer