I hope he’s not sick of getting beat. You’ve got to plan on losing a few if you have not been a regular player.
Yes, I’ve been following your game and mentally keeping score. Obviously it would be out of order for me to comment at the moment though.
trying to find the challenge
i am assuming i am white and have started it up.
Argh! I can’t invite you on Gameknot because I use an ad-blocker. What’s your chess.com name?
Also, since I’m being a slow 'tard, what times are good for you to play live-ish? I’m EST and am a night owl.
Well, confession time, I was also not even sure what that opening was…
The truth is that I have not played chess at tournament level (And then barely touching a chess board) in 10 years. The rust shows. 
I was actually impressed that I could keep up in other games after so many years of inactivity.
However, I’m training more now in the background, and gaining back the experience I had before.
So I have to warn you guys that I will be tougher for others in the near future.
Yes, but are you training at 10x earth gravity?!
Unfortunately I do not have a gravity room like the ones offered by Capsule Corp. 
Yeah, and I bet you don’t have a hyperbolic time chamber, and beating you to the point of near-death is kinda risky… I guess we’re stuck with the old-fashioned way! 
As recently as 10 years? I played in our local league (sub-county level) back in the early 1990s - I was briefly captain of our chess club’s first team, but all that meant was that I was willing to do the donkey-work and tentatively fit to play fourth board, not that I was by any means the best player in the club (and we’d lost a number of our good players that year, too). Until a couple of years back when a friend invited me onto gameknot, I hadn’t played a human being in that long, and I haven’t *beaten *a computer in about that length of time as I’m too proud to handicap a robot and not strong enough to beat one in a fair fight. In fact, I’ve not beaten any program that runs on a 386 or later architecture.
More seriously, my chamber has been the Chess.com live chess feature. I have been clumped many times already, but I’m beginning to creep up in the ratings, some games though are beginning to look impressive:
At the time I was rated 200 points less than the french guy here.
Nice attack! But your opponent badly mishandled the opening; 3. … a6 was a sheer waste of time and 4. … e6 needed to be 4. … d6 (or better yet, 3. … d6 ). Then I think he needed to be bold and play 10. … Nxe5 - castling was just asking for trouble when you were all set for that pawn-storm up the kingside. As things turned out, though, you had the balls to go five points down and say “Now get out of that”, and then you tossed more material on the bonfire to set up a good old-fashioned king hunt. Good to watch. 
At chess.com I’m “bedgyro”
I’m on the West Coast, but I’m also a night owl. We’ll see.
Challenge sent. I’m Autolycus84. Let’s try to make up for lost time. My bad.
I never saw the challenge this weekend. I’ll check again once I get home and if I don’t see it I’ll send you another one.
sounds like a plan
Eek.
Indeed. When I reach the end of the game due to some combination where the opponent’s pieces seem to be “juuuust right”, I like to do two things. 1) Marvel at the beauty of such a thing, and 2) figure out just how that came to be.
It turns out in this game, I won because of piece development. Sure, you trapped your queen, but if it wasn’t for my piece development, there would be no net for her to get caught in.
Secondary to the development was the fact that I controlled the center. That’s sorta the same thing, but it’s an important type of development. Your queen went to b2. That’s offsides. In order to get back in the game from b2, a piece either has to travel through some line that just so happens to be open (like the b file) or, more commonly, travel through the center. When you put your queen on b2, you basically declared that it must either sit on the bench the entire game or get involved via the center. Once I controlled the center, I blocked her escape. So even if she wasn’t trapped, she’d be useless anyhow.
The lesson: Don’t use a 9-point piece to go grab a useless 1-pointer. The effort it takes to make that piece useful again usually isn’t worth the point. If you want to grab the pawn, make sure she has a route back to safety, usually through the center.
Um, you’re lecturing the wrong person, feller.
Talkin’ to Maserschmidt there. That’s what happens when girlfriends interfere with chess and the internet. They cause unclear antecedents, apparently.
Besides, I’m lecturing everybody! I don’t see you taking notes, mister :mad:
