Well your knight-blocking strat seems to have foiled my promotion hopes, so that pawn is toast =/
Yup, you fought bravely for a while there, Auto, but I think your best chance now is for Chessic to walk under a bus.
I’m pleased to say that I pulled back my friendly against Hamlet after being exchange and pawn down, so I now feel easier about my win on time in Round 2. 
Sorry about that Edward. I 've been sans internet for a bit, but I should be back to start making moves.
Thanks for the praise. I had a few tricks up my sleeve, but Chessic saw through every single one and was finally able to break my pawn offensive, at which point I was down two pieces and had terrible positioning… Drat! Good game, at least for me. Chessic was probably playing blindfolded haha.
If anyone’s curious: Chess - GameKnot.com
Out of curiosity, what parts were you considering “tricks”? I mean, what moves exactly?
Ummm, don’t remember too well at this point, but OK. I think there was some shenanigans involving pawns near the beginning. Then, I almost back-row mated you with my rook, but you saw it. Then there was the offer to trade a rook for a knight, which if you had taken would have led to a large trade-off culminating in me forking your king and rook with a new queen. I vaguely remember something else with the rook and pawn…
I dunno… none of them were so devious, obviously. It’s more like you just kept on making the optimal plays, where-in if you had at any moment made just one sub-optimal play, I would have seized the tempo back IMO.
I was making comments throughout the game, but you either didn’t see them or ignored them.
My game with **garygnu **was going as a typical game when all of the sudden I decided to sacrifice a bishop, time will tell if my on the spot analysis was correct or this will crash and burn for me.
I like Shredder Chess:
I run Deep Shredder 12 on my laptop under Windows XP. Deep Shredder 11 was kind of buggy but 12 is bulletproof. I have the Shredder app on my iPad; it is very strong and is a real bargain.
I hasten to add these are honest opinions; I am not affiliated with Shredder Chess in any way.
I hope the tournament games can be posted in real time regardless of the interval agreed on.
Any of the linked games can be accessed and played through from the beginning to their current position, no matter where the game was when the link was posted, if that’s what you mean.
Thanks, Malacandra, I see that now. I got so absorbed in reading the first page of this thread that it escaped me that there were multiple pages. Thanks!
Trading a bishop for two pawns for the position you ended up with is hardly a sacrifice. I shouldn’t have pushed that second pawn up.
Both your game and the Malacandra/Maserschmidt
tussle are very involving.
Lots of opportunities for blunders, and thicker complications than I can untangle.
Yeah, I didn’t see those until very nearly the end of the game, so I had no idea what moves they were applied to. I didn’t even know there WAS a comments section on gameknot.
I know what you mean. 
It’s entertaining. I’ll comment later (Chessic may have something to add).
Just to give us a break, in other Chess news, just when you thought there was no more Bobby Fisher weird news to kick around:
That’s what you call a stale mate, I guess.
Meanwhile, Maser and I are down to a nice difficult knight and pawn ending…
Whoa!..
Detailed comments later but I still remember a point made in a chess book I read when I was a little one:
“Putting your king in the middle of the battle is almost committing suicide”
I have to say that both kings were eager to end their lives in this case.
One of them should have had his wish granted several moves ago. 
This will have no bearing on the present position but you may wish not to peep until you have finished your game.
[spoiler]At move 17 Black shows the moral fibre to return White’s sacrifice for the sake of counterplay. However, after 17. … Bxh2?? 18. Rg1+!, Bxg1; 19. Rxg1+, and Black can’t even save his King by giving up his Knight and Queen in rapid succession. 19. … Ng4 (forced); 20. Rxg4+, Qg5 (forced); 21. Qxg5+, when Black has a choice of two squares for his King and White can respond with 22. Qg7# or 22. Rh4# or a couple of other mates in one.
Instead 17. … Rg8 and Black’s King has room to run to f8; everything’s protected, at least for the present, and White still has to prove that it was worth shedding a piece for two pawns.[/spoiler]