Empire City Open (II)

I tied for 1-3 for the U2000 prize in the U2200 section at the Empire City Open. In the final round I swindled my opponent from a bad position out of the opening. This is the game:

I was lucky to see the following wild ending played by FM Alex Ostrovskiy and Andrew Ding. Congratulations are in order to both for such a great game:

Empire City Open

I got off to a reasonable start at the Empire City Open in NYC with 2.5/4. This is a game I lost:
I made an interesting draw in round 4 of the tournament:
Bishop endgame for analysis: My rating should currently be over 2000 for the first time ever. No small achievement. I thought I would be here years ago. The one advantage I see I have vs. those with greater chess talent is that I have a good sense of training regimens that work well and which work less well. I tried so many of them. I look forward to helping other adults reach their chess goals.

T55 Round 5

I lost ignominously in round 5 of the T55 tournament. This is the game with comments.

Luvizminda Machan IX

I played in the Luvziminda Machan open at ChessMates in Rahway NJ. I scored 2-1-1 in the 4 round g/40 d5 tournament. My rating moved up to 1997! I'm now just 3 points away from my goal of a 2000 rating. I lost to Rodion Rubenchik in this tournament on the Black side of a Kings Indian. I did not know the variation played by Rubenchik very well and ended up in a bad situation. This is my chance to learn the opening.

T55 Round 4 Game

I was matched with Greedy-Reedy again in round 4 of the ICC T55 Tournament. This is the game.

White must have been better for much of the game. I think this game indicates an important quality I lack to be a chess master is technique. I will comment on improvements in a subsequent post.

Where I went wrong:
Looking over the game it seems to me 23. Rec1 was a lost tempo... I should consider 23. Ra5 right away. Another improvement maybe instead of 26. Bc3 I should consider 26. d4. I was too happy to just win a pawn here. The opposite color bishops turned out to be more of a factor than I thought even with rooks on the board. The ending is the type of thing that no player in the world would want to face vs Magnus Carlsen for sure. I think this is the type of position to make an in-depth study of and find similar master games to study.

How to Write a Chess Blog Post

Writing a worthwhile chess blog post is time consuming. My goal is to make this easier for myself and others technology wise. I find that the available tools for showcasing games on a blog are a bit cumbersome and on occasion completely stop working. Just in the last day the pgn4web site stopped functioning. There has got to be a better way to
1. Upload complete games
2. Upload diagrams
This blog post is my scratch pad for solutions. If nothing fits the bill I pledge to fill the void with free and easy to use tools. No red tape.
Current methods:
To get the FEN string for a position from a complete game I tend to use quite handy Game Editor feature on chess.com to set up the board. I find that the diagrams I can get links to from chess.com do not fit well into a blogger blog. Instead I take that FEN string and run it through chess.tv's FEN tool which I find to be a better solution. If you think that's cumbersome you don't know the half of it.
I think there are enough chess bloggers out there to justify a direct blogger widget for this purpose. I don't currently have the skills to make that happen but I am planning on making a go in my spare time.
Please drop me a line if you already know a better way to do this. Thanks.

Bishop Pair Utilization

Kasparov obtains the bishop pair vs the former World Champion and utilizes this advantage to help create a passed pawn. I'm mostly interested in the play after all the rooks are off the board. I'm still trying to grasp why Smyslov seemingly just blundered a pawn.

I will analyze the ending when I have time.