Chess and Cats

Welcome! Here’s a nice game I played two days ago, where I played against the Hippo setup. I was okay out of the opening, but then allowed a scorching attack on my king, which I barely fended off, at the cost of my two central pawns. I then was able to use a tactic to win a minor, and eventually the game.    I think this game really shows the power of the f5/c5 push in the hippo. I’ll definitely watch out for it in the future.

Hi! Here’s a game I played a couple days back, where a nice tactic won the game early for me.    I haven’t been able to use a pin like this in a while, so this was pretty cool.

Hello again! Thanks for checking in today. Here’s a game I played today that involved a nice rooklift at the end which won me the game. I don’t normally do rooklifts, so this was pretty cool.

Hi! I finally put in my second game from the tournament, so here it is. My opponent played more passively, and I was able to get the initiative and start an attack. Afterward, some poor decisions left me with a slight edge, and my opponent missed a tactic that let me win a minor. They then tried a trap for me, which I didn’t fall for, leaving me up a rook. After that, it was just cleanup.   I was pretty glad to win that game. My score for the tournament at this point was 1/2, which is okay considering that I hold the lowest rating of 888 (though I’m probably underrated considering my chess.com rating is around 1500). I’ll hopefully get to posting my next game, so stay tuned! Also an update, my first tournament game stopped showing up, so I’ll fix that.

Welcome back! I’m finally back at 1500! After the catastrophic 100+ rating losing streak from last week, I’ve finally somewhat recovered and broken the 1500 barrier. I was always winning in this game, though I made some pretty poor decisions in the middle that allowed my opponent to have chances to recover. In the end, I messed up horribly, but fortunately they didn’t see it :). Even though it wasn’t really fair that I won, because my opponent missed that the pawn was hanging, I’m glad they did :P.

Hello! It’s once again getting to the weekend, which means hopefully I’ll get to putting at least one game into the computer. This game was pretty equal, and in the end, we were both very low on time, when I sacrificed an exchange to get an attack, and my opponent ended up flagging.    The last few seconds of this game were extremely chaotic, but they were also definitely fun!

This was a nice game, where my opponent overextended, and then I was able to consolidate and launch a counterattack, and my opponent, low on time, missed some good moves.    This week I’ve yet to post another tournament game, but hopefully this weekend I’ll get around to doing that.

Here’s a game I played yesterday in which my opponent valued being aggressive over king safety, and even though I didn’t do a good job, I did manage to somewhat punish them.    I just started playing more bughouse, but unfortunately there isn’t a good way to share bughouse games, so I won’t be sharing those as of right now.

Hi again! This is a game that I played right after the one yesterday, where I trapped my opponent’s queen. In this game, I did the same, and also trapped my opponent’s queen!    There definitely were some moves that I made that weren’t that good, but when you’re up a queen, it doesn’t really matter.

Welcome back! Here’s an exciting game where I trapped my opponent’s queen! After that, the game was pretty much just me finishing my opponent off.    I haven’t trapped a queen in a long time, so I’m pretty happy about this :D.

Hello again! I once again didn’t input my second tournament game, but I did play this really nice online game. I feel that this game really highlights the importance of piece activity.   Because my pieces were more active, I was able to convert that spatial/positional advantage into a material one, and then win the game.

Welcome back! I was too lazy to annotate another tournament game (mostly too lazy to input it), so here’s a blitz game. As yesterday I lost 150 points, I’m going to probably take a while to recover. Last time something major like this happened, I lost 100 points in one day, and regained 80 of it back the next, but I didn’t feel like playing too much today. Here’s a game, where we were equal pretty much the entire game, until it was ended by a bad move by my opponent. Hopefully tomorrow I’m going to input my second tournament game, so stay tuned for that.

Here’s a second post for today. Unfortunately, due to playing bad, external factors, and trying out the Scandinavian Defense and not being very good with it, I lost 150 points on chess.com blitz. I’m starting to get a sense of how to play the Scandinavian though, and I’m hoping to gain back most of the points tomorrow, and continue climbing. Here’s an interesting game that features a very interesting sequence in the middle, and plenty of mistakes as well.    I’ll try and post my second tournament game tomorrow, so stay tuned for that!

Sorry for missing yesterday’s post :(. I’ve finally found a bit of time today to enter one of my games from my tournament last weekend. Here’s my first game. I realized from this that I need to start solidifying my openings and figuring out what I want to use, I also need to work on calculations. In this game in particular, I’d say that my opponent’s fianchettoed bishop really wrecked havoc on my position.

Hello again! This game is a rematch with the person I beat yesterday. This time, I ended up in a roughly equal position, but ended up creating 4 connected passed pawns and winning the game.   So yeah… I don’t think that even a grandmaster could have defended there at the very end, 4 connected passed pawns was just too much.

Sorry for the late posts today! This game was roughly equal, until the end where my opponent missed a tactic that I had. A note is that this a 5 minute game instead of the 3 minute games that I normally play. To help me think more, I think I’ll start playing 5 minutes more. Once again, sorry for being not very on time recently, I’ve been busy. I’ll probably post one more blitz game tomorrow, and then start sharing some of my tournament games.

Sorry for posting this a day late, I was busy yesterday and didn’t have time. In this game, we ended in a drawn position, but I had a pawn left and flagged my opponent.    I probably didn’t deserve that win, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, I still won.

In this game I unfortunately blundered and allowed a mate in 1. My opponent found the move, can you find it?   Good job finding it! Unfortunately, I just didn’t think that last bishop move through, causing me to lose.

Hi again! Sorry for the late post today, I once again was playing in my tournament. After a pretty rough day 1 and 2, scoring only 1/3, I finished off strong today, ending with a score of 3/5. I’m fairly happy with my score, but I definitely could have played better. I’ll be sharing the games from the tournament hopefully soon, though it will take me a couple of days as I’m going to be busy this week. Anyways, let’s check out this game.   This was a pretty good game, which was ended by the pushing of my passed pawn. I wish that my opponent didn’t resign so I would have had the chance to continue playing, but I guess they probably didn’t want to keep on playing the lost position.

Welcome back! I was busy today at a tournament, so sorry about the late post. Today I won a game against an opponent I lost to last year, and then lost my second game. On Friday, I also lost my game :(. I’ll be posting about all of my games from this tournament eventually, but as of right now I don’t have the time to annotate them properly. I also tested a stream yesterday, and I think that I’ll start streaming more often. That game definitely wasn’t the best game, and it was less me playing well and more my opponent just making mistakes, but either way I did reach 1500 :D.

Welcome back! Here’s a nice game, where I sacrificed material and ended up with a nice mate.   This was a pretty cool mate! I don’t really sacrifice material very often, but this time it paid off. I’m considering starting streaming on twitch and maybe making some youtube videos. I also might not post this weekend because I’m going to be at a chess tournament.

Welcome back! I once again achieved new highs with this game! I surpassed my previous 1465 rating, and now have reached 1471 :D. This game was highly swayed in my favor due to a tactic I found, and then I found a critical move to prevent a tactic from being used on me. I then finished off with another tactic to finish off my opponent. This was one of the games that I’m pretty proud of. I don’t think I really played any bad moves, and I made the right ones in the key positions.

Thanks for joining me! Here’s a snippet from a game that I played over the board. I set this trap for my opponent, who unfortunately didn’t fall for it. Can you find what would have happened if he did?   That’s right! I would have won a knight, and probably the game with it. Unfortunately, my opponent didn’t go for it and instead just won a pawn, equalizing the position. We ended up drawing the game.

Thanks for joining me today! Here’s my first game of the year! My opponent went for this variation of the Sicilian Defense that I’ve never seen before. I was worse out of the opening, when I blundered heavily and pretty much lost the game, though my opponent didn’t take complete advantage of it. We then both missed a mate in 2, and I ended the game by forcing my opponent to sacrifice their queen for my rook! That was a really crazy game! This game has shown that I really need to work on my tactics and learn some common mating patterns.

Here’s a nice tactical combo that won me the exchange and then the game after my opponent made a subsequent blunder afterwards. Can you find it? Nice job finding it! Especially with the blunder which allowed me to have a mate in 2, my opponent really ended the game quickly :).

Hi everyone! Welcome to 2019! Seeing as this is my first post of the year, I’m going to be recapping on last year, and sharing some of my goals for the upcoming year. I started the year off being rated 924, and now I’m rated 1458 (chess.com blitz rating). I’ve gained 534 rating points! Here’s one of the first games I played of the year. On January 9th, I first reached 1000 rating. On February 5th, I first reached 1100 rating. On February 17th, I first reached 1200 rating. On May 12th, I first reached 1300 rating. On December 22nd, I first reached 1400 rating. Here’s one of last games that I played of the year (You can also see this game in one of the tactical snippets). As white, I’ve pretty much always been playing e4. In the middle, I did switch to d4 for a short amount of time, and of course randomly tried other openings. As black, I’ve started off with the Sicilian Defense, and also ended with it. However, I’ve also tried the Caro-Kann, the...