French defence Advance variation

Posted on October 17th, 2011 by Richard

I like the French defence. It is my favourite defence as Black vs White 1.e4 and as I play 1.e4 as White I often face it as White and am trying to learn & play the French Advance variation as White.

Off the top of my head now I cannot remember a specific French defence game as Black or White as good examples. I will try & look into this as I think it helps understanding of the openings if you can recall specific games. I do know Bobby Fischer played as White vs the Winawer variation several times. For the Black side I recall Botvinnik had some good French defence games & Unzinger specialised in it (Korchnoi must have played it too!-I will investigate!).

Well here is my latest chess video showing a 5min blitz game in the French Advance. I made several mistakes as White in this game & my opponent certainly made mistakes with a massive end blunder to lose the game!

I intend to learn from my mistakes and improve my chess play & rating!!

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Mixed post:-Rapidplay and SCID software!!

Posted on November 25th, 2010 by Richard

I have played 2 rapidplay club matches over the last week.
Format is G30 as White & Black against the same opponent.
I quite enjoy that format overall in contrast to other players who seem to prefer longer play games.

Results? In the first match I lost both games & in the second match I won both games! All very topsy turvy!!!
Here below I show 1 loss and 1 win. The games were definitely not good with many poor moves and missed opportunities for both sides but especially from my side! I have room for considerable improvement and I will try and learn from my mistakes & so try to improve!

Game 1-Colle vs English defence opening!
I am black and should have played 16…. Nxg3 but I didn’t and then the White bishops were strong and I made a blunder with my knight at the end & I resigned!

Next game: French Defence (I am black and make a big mistake at the start but White does not finish me off and later I get a chance and white makes a blunder giving mate!)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

SCID chess database & game play software

I have mainly done my computing on PC’s running MSWindows (XP or Vista) and a long while ago I installed SCID chess database. I didn’t really use it much as I also had Fritz9 and ChessBase Light and found these easier to use.

However I recently added Ubuntu10.04 to my son’s old Vista computer which now dual boots. I am enjoying the Linux type computing with Ubuntu and I added SCID to Ubuntu to try it again but I cannot get it to play a game with any installed engine (Stockfish Toga or Crafty).

Does anyone know how I can play against an engine using SCID? I will continue to try to do this but I am most grateful for any helpful instruction (of course I have followed a few links from Google search but no post has solved this for me yet). Does anyone reading this post use SCID? If so please let me know how to play against an engine with SCID-thanks!!

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I am now aiming to get my FICS 5 min blitz rating to over 1400 by Christmas! (Currently my FICS 5 min rating is around 1200 and I feel if I can play more I can get it to over 1400-here goes….)

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BSE Chess Congress 2010

Posted on November 1st, 2010 by Richard

Last weekend (30/31 Oct 2010) was the Bury St Edmunds Chess Congress in the

new  Apex function hall. There was a large entry of over 170 chess players.

BSE Chess Congress 2010 in the new Apex building

Anyway I played badly in my 4 matches in the Minor section only acheiving a draw with 3 losses so finishing with 1/5!

This was very disappointing to me. I played several openings:- French Exchange (as black)/Alekhines’s defence (as white)/Bird’s Opening (as black)/Nimzowitch defence (as white) and my favourite Scotch (as white).

There was a joint winner in the Open section-a tie between GM M Turner and GM N Pert

 Open Section

 Here is my only half reasonable reult-the draw I made in round2:

Alekhine’s defence-Draw agreed

I was very disappointed with my play and results-in all games except round2 draw I blundered away good positions I had achieved. The only thing I can do with this is put it down to experience and try & learn some lessons from it and play better in my next matches! I do need to do 2 specific things:

1. Do not spend too much time on moves and then try to play too quickly to get to the time control.

2. Do not move too quickly and make blunders!

These are almost mutually dependant actions and overall I need to think more carefully about how I play each move and the whole game.

So I still have a lot to learn and a lot to improve to achieve my aim to play good chess and improve my rating!

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Must improve my ratings-Blitz & OTB

Posted on October 28th, 2010 by Richard

My 2 current chess goals are to improve my Blitz rating and my OTB rating.

I want to get my 5min blitz rating to over 1400(currently is 1200) and my OTB BCF rating to over 100. Both should be possible if I can spend some time playing and studying!

Here is a blitz game I won today.

Alekhine defence B02-I am playing White:

I enjoyed the successful kingside attack finishing with mate!

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Catalan BogoIndian opening…pardon?!

Posted on October 4th, 2010 by Richard

I lost my last OTB game last week. I was black and white played 1.d4.
My main reply is 1….e6 and from then on there are a myriad of possibilities of openings depending on the next moves. I have had some coaching recently in the English opening but have not yet played it enough to know the variations.

In this game I lost and when I analysed the game with the computer engine (Crafty) it told me the opening was the Catalan BogoIndian.
The what???
The Catalan BogoIndian! (ever heard of it-ever played it?!).

Well I lost the game-I kept losing position gradually & somewhat lost interest in the game. Eventually I made a really poor move but I wasn’t really interested in playing by then!
Why don’t White players just stick to 1.e4? It would make life so much easier & a whole lot more fun! 1.d4 and 1.c4 should be banned (along with everything else except 1.e4!)!!

Now I am going to check out the Catalan BogoIndian defence & find out how this opening should be played!

Here is the game:

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3 minute blitz chess

Posted on August 24th, 2010 by Richard

Earlier today I found my 15 yr old son on my computer playing chess 3 minute internet blitz. My son is a good player who has more or less given up regular time control chess but he plays a few 3 minute blitz games for fun.
I watched him win 3 games in a row before I asked to use my computer!

Here is the last game he played and won-very entertaining as both players were low on time:
CaroKann Opening

In contrast to that last week I had a bad time at chessclub in a decreasing time control tournament. I lost 4/5 games and forgot there was a final round 5 game & left the club!
I shall try and get some practice in against Numpty chess engine.

In regard to Numpty it is written in Basic (.bas) and about a week ago I tried to convert this to C code using BCX converter.
It didn’t work! I got an error message (I have forgotten now exactly what). The only trouble I have running Numpty is that it seems very memory hungry and I can have no other programs open & running when I use Numpty. This is inconvenient as I like to play after research/computer work and I like to keep my browser tabs and programs open mainly.
One day I hope to fix this in Numpty-then I can do more practice against Numpty chess engine!

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Written by: Richard