2002-10-10 - 11:43 p.m.

Captain Stupid reporting for duty!

Today there was further proof that all is not right in the noggin of Mr. Hamster.

Since it was Thursday, I had to get my chess column in to the editor of the paper. For some reason it seemed to take me a very long time. I always try to get it in before 4 p.m., but today it was after five before I was able to finish up. I went to the paper, unzipped my little satchel - only to discover that last week's column was still in there. How thick can you get? Luckily the newspaper offices aren't too far from my house, so it wasn't a big deal to go back and get the right column.

Later, while I was puttering around the house I made an amazing discovery. I found the black address book that I thought that I'd thrown out. While I was relieved to see it, I was annoyed that I'd gotten all in a tizzy over it before. Well, I had hidden it very cleverly - it was sitting on the Playstation2, under a couple of video tapes.

Thursday night is also chess club night, and I needed to collect the games from the tournament last Saturday so I wandered down to the club. They were running a tournament, and they asked me if I wanted to play, and I said what the hell, why not?

I should have been a little more careful, because it wasn't the usual sort of tournament. It was a thematic tournament (meaning you can only play a certain opening) and it was at a very fast time control, game in 15 minutes. The thing I didn't appreciate when I agreed to play was that it was RATED.

My first round opponent was a weaker player who was strong enough to be dangerous, but who I've always managed to beat before. I got a good position, and was close to winning when my time ran out. So he got his first win against me.

In spite of losing my first game, I was paired against a stronger opponent the next round. The opening we were playing was an old favorite of mine, so I got a good position, and eventually wound up winning. "Well, this isn't so bad," I thought.

My third round opponent was a high school age kid who was unrated. I assumed that he was kind of weak, but he seemed to be playing very well, in fact he kept steering the game into drawish channels and I couldn't seem to stop him. After the queens came off I thought I had a small advantage, but I foolishly allowed my rook to be trapped, leaving me with an utterly hopeless game. However, I kept playing with what I had and I was eventually able to force him to trade his extra rook for a pawn I'd just queened. The game was dead drawn after that, so when he offered me a draw, I accepted. He could have just kept playing and run out my clock.

My opponent fourth round was Bobby, they guy who'd beaten me on Saturday. I was not happy to be playing him with only 1 1/2 points out of three, and furthermore I was getting my third black out of four games. In this thematic tournament, I knew the white side of the opening pretty well, but knew very little about the black side. It made me take a lot of time and play a lot of second-best moves. Nevertheless, I got a good position, but ran out of time again. This makes it twice in a row that Bobby has beaten me.

This put me in a vile mood, and I had a hard time keeping a lid on my emotions - another sign that's things weren't quite right with me. However, I'd had a terrible tournament - my rating was about 1900, but my performance rating for this event had been about 1450, meaning I was going to lose like 70 rating points. Well, thank heaven this wasn't my REAL rating, only my quick rating - a fine distinction.

When I got home I discovered that I'd set the VCR wrong and so failed to record Friends and Scrubs for Lily.

Okay, now I'm worried. The last couple weeks have just been a parade of stupid blunders. Am I starting to lose my mind? This is a question I've asked before, but I can't remember making such a huge bunch of bonehead mistakes in a row. It's time to seriously hit the books and find out what I'm doing wrong before I accidentally kill myself or something.