2002-10-24 - 11:53 p.m.

The Return of the Blitz Monster

Today was a Thursday, and it felt a little different because I didn't have a chess column due. Well, in the next two weeks I have to finish four of them, so I suppose I should have been working on that. Well I am, sorta.

Anyway, tonight was the second round of the preliminaries of the Frown Town Chess Club Championship. My opponent tonight was Richard, the club president. Richard is good enough to be dangerous, in fact I think at one time or another he's beaten nearly every strong player in the area, but so far he's never beaten me in a rated game.

I tell you folks, it looked like tonight was going to be his night. Losing just two games in this section could be enough to disqualify me for the finals, and that would be the first time I didn't make it to the finals since 1986 or 1987. Long, long time.

I didn't bother looking up Richard's openings, which was a mistake since he played exactly what he had played before. I know there's something wrong with his opening, but I couldn't figure it out over the board. I entered the middle game with what I felt was a tiny advantage, then I hit a roadblock - I couldn't figure out what to do. One of my biggest weaknesses is that in unclear positions I start to flounder - I start spending a lot of time trying to find the best moves, and then I wind up in time trouble. That happened to me here - at move 30 I had about three or four minutes left while he had over a half an hour.

After the game Richard had been puzzled about why I'd suddenly started playing so fast - he didn't realize how short of time I was. Even though he had lots of time himself, he started playing fast too.

Back in the day, I used to constantly get myself in time trouble this way, then blitz my way out of it. To my amusement, often my time trouble would bother my opponents more than me - they'd make nervous mistake with plenty of time on their clocks. Of course, that was in the day before all these sudden-death time controls. Now, you can't blitz your way to move 40 or 50 and then relax - you have to finish the whole game.

However in the last five years or so it's been apparent that either age or diabetes was catching up to me - I was just unable to play fast after sitting and playing slowly for three or four hours. I'd get short of time, and just make horrific blunders. I tried to avoid getting myself into those clutch situations, but old habits die hard.

I still had a tiny advantage, but Richard and I were down to a rook and pawn ending and those take many moves to play out. I did not have the time for that, but nevertheless I had to keep playing.

I was tempted to offer Richard a draw, but I felt it would be futile, and a humiliating experience as well. Why grant me a draw when I was about to lose on time?

I won a pawn on the queenside, but I bobbled it and was forced to give it back. Now we were down to just rooks and kings with three pawns each on one side of the board. The game was dead drawn, but I was just dead - I only had one minute left.

Then Richard made a terrible mistake - he put his king in check to my rook. Since he made an illegal move, that meant that I got two minutes added to my time, two minutes I desperately needed.

For some reason Richard let me keep pushing him back, and back. I won a pawn, then missed an opportunity to win another. I sacrificed a pawn to trade the rooks off and win his last pawn. I now had a won king and pawn ending, and just enough time to win it. I queened a pawn an mated him with only about 50 seconds to spare. Whew!

I had totally swindled Richard. In spite of the position on the board, I had used my time so badly that he really should have won. He also told me that if I had offered him a draw when I was thinking of it, he probably would have given it to me. I wasn't sure whether to feel good or bad about that.

So I am currently 2-0, but I have my toughest games ahead of me. I'm going to have to play a lot better than this if I want to be one of the two players from this section to make it to the finals.