2001-07-19 - 11:46 p.m.

19 July 2001

I Win Again (Thankfully)

A while back I mentioned that I was playing a chess match with a local player for instructive purposes. The idea is that we were supposed to play every week, but when my father got sick we had to put the match on the back burner.

Today we played the fifth game, and the score now stands: me 3, him 2. So I'm winning! Isn't that good news?

Well... it is and it isn't. It's nice to be winning, but considering the differences in our ratings the score should be close to 5-0 in my favor. Also, I'm supposed to be the teacher here. It doesn't look good if I can't show that I am, in fact, the better player.

After losing the first game I bounced back in the second, winning mainly because I knew the opening better. The third game was a 23-move blowout where I pretty much dominated throughout. I was starting to feel like my old self again.

Then came game four.

We played the same opening as in game two, and I was fairly confident that I knew what I was doing. He made what I thought was an error that allowed me to win a key pawn. However, the pawn was "poisoned" meaning that he got a strong attack for it. After he made a knight sacrifice that I hadn't seen, I knew I was in trouble. Still I thought I had everything covered, when he made a capture I thought he couldn’t and I was looking at a mate in two. That made the score 2-2, and made me the victim in the shortest game yet: 19 moves.

Losing two games is nothing short of a disaster, ratings-wise. This would be improved a little if I could win the last two games, but not much. In a match played against a lower-rated player I have little to gain and much to lose.

In the game played today, we essayed the same opening as in games one and three. This time we went into the main line instead of the side variation we had been exploring. This apparently surprised him because the main line involves trading off queens early and going into an endgame. He thought I didn't like games like that, but I had been examining games from that line and white (me) seemed to have a persistent advantage. Sure enough he was never quite able to equalize and after a couple mistakes his position was resignable.

This was another short game: he was down two pawns and a bishop when he resigned on move 28. Your average chess game usually lasts to about move 40.

All these short game are showing neither one of us at his best.

Anyway, there is one more game left. I thought that the match was to ten, but it turns out it is to six. It would be nice if I could finish up with a win, making the score 4-2, but we'll have to see how I'm playing.