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USCF Rating Distribution

I used the USCF membership rating database to compute the rating distribution for “active” players with established (that is, not provisional) ratings. My definition of “active” is at least one USCF tournament result in the last year. The graphs are below.

I’m thinking about writing a script to automatically harvest the data and regenerate these graphs regularly. In my “copious spare time,” of course.

My game against a future U.S. Champion

I was getting rid of some junk yesterday, and I was about to toss an old score book that I’ve had since I first started playing tournament chess in high school. But I decided first to look up some of the names of my opponents, and that’s when I made an interesting discovery.

In the fourth round of the 1979 Atlanta Scholastic Congress, I was defeated by unrated player named Stuart Rachels. My rating at the time was 930 (provisional, based on 6 rated games). I was 14, and Stuart was 9.

Well, Stuart went on to become a somewhat better chess player than I ever did. About two years after this game was played, Stuart set the record for becoming the youngest National Master in U.S. history. Later he became an International Master, and he was the 1989-1990 U.S. co-champion. He retired from chess in 1993 and is now Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama.

Team 45 45 T37 Round 3

I have a three-game winning streak in the Team 45 45 T37 tournament.

End-of-game variations in ChessBase 9

My previous post had a number of variations that explored possible continuations following the last move of the game. ChessBase 9 unfortunately makes it pretty difficult to do this. For my future reference, and to possibly help others, here is Mig Greengard’s workaround:

At the last move, press T and enter any random move as a new variation. Then promote that move to be the main line. That makes the real last move of the game a variation. Now with the last move of the new (spurious) main line selected, press T and enter the real last move again. Now you will have the real last move twice as variations. Promote one of them to be the main line, delete the spurious variation and there you have it.

From Mig’s November 2004 “ChessBase Cafe” column at chesscafe.com

MCC May Swiss Round 1

I was back at my club Tuesday for the first time in a while, and I had a nice upset win.

In particular, I was pleased with my 15th move (as White). I was worried that my kingside pressure was draining away, and that the initiative might turn in Black’s direction. My solution was a square-clearing pawn sac. That’s not the sort of thing I can usually find during the game!

Going against good advice

Two Russian Igors (IMs Foygel and Khmelnitsky), have both advised me against changing my opening repertoire, which has remained basically unchanged for several years. They both felt that changing my openings would be counterproductive, because as an adult with a “real life,” I have relatively little time for chess study and play.

But with the Team 45 45 League’s T37 tournament starting up this week, I found myself with no enthusiasm for reviewing any of my standard opening choices.

After some reflection, I decided that I’m ultimately in this hobby to have fun. And, therefore, deciding to try some new openings because I’m bored or frustrated with what I’ve been playing requires no further justification.

So there!

Of course, in my Round 1 game (I was Black) my opponent opened with 1.f4, so neither my old nor my new prepared lines were much help. But I came out of the opening OK and was heading toward an approximately equal endgame when my opponent blundered it away.

Life Detected at ChessBase

It only took 25 days, but I finally got a response from ChessBase to my tech support query about what this dialog panel does:

Answer: It doesn’t do anything!

Here’s the e-mail I received:

The Publish option does not work in the moment. In the moment there is no other solution to transfer the HTML files of the script manually to your Server.

Phantom ChessBase Publishing Feature

In ChessBase 9, when you output one or more games to “HTML + Javascript Replay,” you get a dialog box with several tabs. Most of the tabs have to do with color choices, frames or no frames, etc.

But one tab has me completely mystified. The tab is labeled “Publish” and it looks like this:

It certainly seems to me like this tab is intended to facilitate automatic uploading of the generated HTML to your web site. When I enter my server and access information into this dialog and press “Test,” it comes back and says something like “Connection open” after a few seconds.

But … I can find no way to actually get ChessBase to upload the game files! No combination of pressing buttons and selecting options on any of these tabs will make it do anything other than save the files to my local disk. I can find nothing in the documentation that even acknowledges the existence of the “Publish” tab.

Sheesh. I’m starting to think this tab has the same function as the push-to-cross buttons at intersections, or the door-close buttons in elevators—to make you feel stupid.

Can anyone solve this mystery for me?

Hall of Shame entry

What is Black’s best move after 22.Nh5?

Fortunately my opponent in Round 1 of the Team 45 45 League’s T36 tournament didn’t figure out the answer.

USCF Sales, e-mail, and passwords

In the past I’ve generally been inclined to order chess books, supplies, etc. from the USCF. I want the organization to be successful, and I felt that purchasing from them was a tangible way to show that support.

Last month I ordered two DVDs online from USCF Sales. The online ordering process required creating a USCF Sales online account, which was kind of annoying but quite common. What really frosted me was that they sent me a plain-text e-mail with my online account information in it, including my password.

I replied, expressing my displeasure at their odious practice of sending plain-text passwords around in unsecure e-mail.

Their response? None, zip, zilch, nada, after several weeks.

OK, then. No more purchasing from USCF Sales.

First OTB loss of 2008

My fellow Metrowest Chess Club members and bloggers BlunderProne and Globular beat me out in making their first 2008 posts. Here’s my Round 1 loss in the MCC New Year Swiss.

Capsule summary:

• Got outplayed in the opening a bit, resulting in an awkward queenside situation
• Found a nice tactical way to get some counterplay
• Left my king with too many open lines and not enough defensive pieces
• Gave it all away with just a few seconds left on the clock before the first time control

Happy New Year everyone!

PS. I’m back to using Palview, because I don’t like the ugly pieces in the Chess Publisher diagrams, and Polly’s comments about possible Chess Publisher oddities made me nervous.

The mysterious fading tactic

Unfortunately I turned in a rather uninspired performance for the last round of the T35 tournament in the Team 45 45 League. What bothered me most was the way I just suddenly forgot about a tactic that I’d been watching carefully for several moves.

Here’s the position after White’s 6th move.

After 6.Bg2

For my next 6 moves, I paid close attention to the h1-a8 diagonal, with White’s bishop on g2, my pawn on b7, and my rook on a8. We get to this position after White’s 12th move:

After 12.cxb5

So what do play now? Of course. 12…b6? 13.Nxe5.

I realized my blunder literally as soon as I let the piece drop with my mouse.

BDK recently commented about a similar kind of tactical fade in one of his games, although he had the excuse of being in time trouble.

This is a very frustrating kind of blunder.

Team 45 45 T35 - Round 5

Capsule summary: Outplayed in the opening, misjudged the significance of a protected passed pawn, mismanaged the clock, and panicked unnecessarily in an almost even position. If I had held the draw, my team would have won the Round 5 match point. (See the end of the post for a replayable game board.)

Let’s start with the opening. After White played 6.c4 in the Portuguese Scandinavian, I found that I had forgotten how to proceed. Actually, I can’t remember the last time any White opponent followed a main Portuguese line so far against me.

After 6.c4

When I’m trying to decide what to do in a future game, it helps me to look forward a few moves, to see how the opening turned out and whether I was satisfied with it.

Well by the time we get to 18.c5, things look just nasty for Black, possibly lost already.

After 18.c5

So now I’m ready to start looking up lines in opening references. I noticed right away that Black never lets that white pawn just sit there on d5. It certainly did play havoc with my own attempts to develop my pieces. Usually Black plays …e6 at some point.

But I’m not sure really like any of the main lines for Black following 6.c4, so I’m strongly considering dropping the Portuguese variation.

But White let up on the pressure. Eventually I regained the pawn and equalized. Here’s the position after 28…Rad8.

After 28…Rad8

The position looks pretty solid on both sides. White’s protected passed pawn gives him the edge, but it is thoroughly blockaded. I did not realize, however, that if all the heavy wood gets exchanged, that pawn becomes much more of a problem. In particular, Black will never be able to successfully attack its protector, the pawn on b4.

So I did allow the heavy piece exchanges, not fully realizing the problem until sometime around here, after 36…Nxd8.

After 36…Nxd8

Now either Black’s king or knight is stuck permanently in the vicinity of White’s c5 pawn in order to prevent its advance. White has no such problem. But it’s possible that Black might have been able to hold the game with stubborn defense. Instead, I let my clock time run down and then panicked. After 47.g5, with a minute left, I thought my position was lost.

After 47.g5

So I played a desperation move: 47…Nxc5 48.bxc5 Kxc5. That was just silly. I should have stuck with stubborn defense and make White prove something.

Here’s the replayable game board. I’m trying ChessPublisher for the first time. It’s certainly more convenient and quicker to use than Palview, which I’ve been using for a while. It doesn’t look nearly as good, though, because of the aliased piece graphics. I wonder if the creator would let help him with the piece images?

Which rules of chess offend you?

Although I’m not a big fan of blitz, I sometimes have a spurt of playing a lot of 2 5 games on ICC. I guess it’s when I need a change of pace.

Most ICC players are polite and friendly, but every now and then you run into an exception. What puzzles me the most are the players who get offended when you force a draw by repetition. This happened to me again last night. I faced a complicated position with four rooks plus passed pawns plus mating threats on the board, with relatively little time left for calculation. I saw no winning chances and lots of losing chances, and I saw that his king was fairly open to checks from my own pair of rooks. I went for the draw and got it.

A few seconds after the game ended, my opponent informed me that I was “censored” from playing further games against him. I hadn’t said anything at all to him, and he offered no explanation. I can only assume that he doesn’t like to play against people who know and use the repetition-of-position rule.

Sheesh. I think you should find a different game to play, fella.

Updating links

Robert Pearson’s recent post about updating his blog links reminded me to do the same on mine.

Secrets of Grandpatzer chess just recently posted a very informative series on how to use the opening repertoire feature of ChessBase. I’ve already started to try it out with one of my White openings.

Castling Queen Side is one of the most enjoyable blogs I’ve read in a while. I particularly enjoy her humorous tournament descriptions.

Links on the right.

Interaction between time management and concentration

I just don’t understand how some of my fellow bloggers do it. Some are posting lengthy, almost daily essays, and apparently inhaling books like My System in a sitting or two. Others are dissecting USCL games and insults, or USCF politics.

Me, I’m just going to keep on keepin’ on, at my own pace, posting maybe a couple of times a month, on those rare occasions when I have a thought about learning chess that seems worth writing down.

Lately life has severely interrupted my chess hobby, darn it. My oldest son just turned 16 and needs help both with learning to drive and with school work. My youngest son needs help keeping up his workout schedule for the Physical Fitness merit badge, plus transportation to baseball three times per week. My wife’s graduate classes are keeping her frantically busy, and so I want to help her as much as I can. At work I’m preparing for several upcoming presentations at different universities, plus there’s the usual routine of urgent development deadlines every other week. Any finally, pressure is heating up to make progress on the 2nd edition of DIPUM.

(So why are you writing a chess blog anyway, you dope! Hey, chill.)

Phew, glad to get all that off my chest.

Now, about time management and concentration. Something very interesting happened in both my club games last month that I want to share.

First a little personal history regarding time management. In club and tournament games, I’ve been writing down my time remaining after each move for several years now. This accumulated record of my own time management has left me with several impressions.

• Moving too fast is not my problem. I always use almost all of my time, and my games tend to be among the last to finish at my club.
• Very often I run somewhat short of time in the last 10 moves of the first time control. In a 40/90 time control, it’s fairly typical for me to have about 7-8 minutes to make the last 10 moves.
• In mutual time trouble situations, I tend to come out on the short end. Basically, I stink at blitz.
• I often take long thinks.
• My long thinks are often the result of indecision in noncritical situations. Then after my opponent responds and the board situation hasn’t changed all that much, I tend to go into another long indecisive think.
• This last impression is the most subjective and iffy, but maybe the most important - my long thinks just aren’t productive. I have slowly come to believe that any time used after about 4-5 minutes is mostly devoted to mental floundering.

I have concluded previously that I would be better served by a much more even move-making pace. (Neither of my instructors seemed to have much sympathy for this view, but I’ve decided that in this instance I have a better understanding of myself than they do.) But it’s been hard to break the habit of taking long, unproductive thinks.

Earlier this summer, Dan mentioned to me a time management rule of thumb I hadn’t heard before. Use only 20% of your first time control to make your first 15 moves. (I think he attributed this rule to Bronstein, but I can’t remember for sure.) In a 40 / 90 time control, this corresponds to roughly a minute per move, less than half the overall average time per move, and much faster than I usually make the first 15 moves. I don’t remember the way Dan expressed the logic of this rule, but I think the idea is basically that, although it may be difficult to find your way through the opening, the moves still tend to be easier to calculate than what often goes on during the middle game. There are often several reasonably good moves to choose from, and choosing the 2nd or 3rd best often isn’t a critical error.

This notion stuck in my mind, and when September came I was ready to try one more time to alter my move-making pace. I decided that I wanted 10 minutes left at the end of the first time control, instead of 0, and that I would make the first 15 moves in 15 minutes. In between, I would make each set of 5 moves in about 13 minutes. I marked these goals on my scoresheet in advance.

Making the first 15 moves in 15 minutes felt very fast to me, but I managed it. It seemed to help me establish a good two minute per move pace for the rest of the first time control, and I did get to 40 moves with about 10 minutes left. No long thinks at all. I think the longest time I took on any move was around 4 minutes.

I won the game against someone rated 150 points higher. But that isn’t the really interesting part.

When the game was over, I looked up the from board around the rest of the room. It was 11:40 PM, the game had taken just over four hours, and only one other game was still going out of about 35 boards. And I had no idea! I was totally oblivious to what time it was, or what was going on in the room around me.

Now this was very unusual for me. It seemed to me that I had achieved a significantly deeper level of focus and concentration than ever before. After reflecting on this, I made a tentative connection to my altered pattern of time management. I wondered if adhering to a stricter pacing discouraged indecision and mental laziness, as well forcing a more urgent attention to the board on each move.

Now for most chess players, if it happens in one game it’s an indicative trend, but if it happens in two games in a row it must be an ironclad fact!

Sure enough, the next week I tried this quick opening moves, no long thinks allowed, even move pacing routine again. I scored my 2nd 150-point upset in a row. And again, when the game ended after 11:30 PM, I was totally oblivious to the time and to the rest of the room.

I really enjoyed playing these two games, and I looking forward to my next opportunity to try this time management approach.

Note that I don’t intend this post as a recommendation for anyone else to follow. I’m certain, in fact, that many players will react to this post by quoting Colonel Sherman Potter - “Horse hockey!” As I said, this experiment was based largely on a few years of personal observations about my effective and ineffective use of time in my own games.

My recommendation to others would simply be to get in the habit of always recording your time on your scoresheet. Over the course of many games, then, you will be able to form your own conclusions about your strengths and weaknesses in this aspect of the game.

Another upset win

Before this month, my USCF tournament record against players in the 1700s was 9 losses and 2 draws. So I’m excited to start the club September tourney off with two wins in a row against players in the upper 1700s.

The comments and variations below are not intended to be a detailed analysis. Instead, I have tried to record roughly what I was actually thinking as the game progressed.

While I was entering the moves into ChessBase, it occurred to me that I made several tempo-wasting moves in the opening and early middle-game, and I think this was the root cause of my difficulty along the e-file. I came close to losing the game there.

The endgame is a possibly instructive example of knight vs. bishop imbalance, and how a bishop isn’t always better even when there are pawns on both sides of the board.

In John Nunn’s Secrets of Practical Chess, he talks about dogged defense, and how sometimes players fail to recognize when a position calls for you to patiently do nothing. Well, that’s how I felt about the endgame position between about moves 35 and 45. I had no winning chances, so I made my position as solid as I could, preventing White’s king from penetrating. Then I basically shuffled back and forth, waiting for White to do something.

The situation changed significantly when White gave me the e4 square for my knight and began to shift his king toward the queenside, which allowed me the chance to penetrate on the kingside. In this phase of the game my knight was able to dominate White’s bishop, and I was able to gain a passed pawn and then the game.

A good start to the September club tournament

After some atrocious games in July and early August, I decided I needed a break. No club games (or blog posts) in August.

For the September club swiss I decided to play up a section, in the Under 2000. I had a nice upset victory in round 1. It seems like mostly I post my losses, so here’s a win for a change. The comments are intended to reflect my thoughts during the game. I haven’t had a chance to go over it in detail yet.

No such thing as “drawish lines” for us club players!

When I was paired last night against a player rated about 200 points down, I decided to take Simon Webb’s advice and play a solid, positional opening. I entered the Queen’s Gambit Declined as Black intending to play the Orthodox variation. MCO-14 says “[The Orthodox variation is] used today by very few players because of its lack of active counterplay and the small likelihood of Black getting any winning chances.” (I get the feeling the author was just itching to use the word boring here.)

Well, White varied first by playing an early e3, blocking his queen bishop. On move 13, White decided to castle queenside:

So much for boring! I responded with 13…c5 and we were off to the races! My pawns arrived first, and White felt compelled to give up a piece to stop their advance. That was enough to win the game. (See below for a replayable game board.)

I ended the month with 3 wins (all against lower-rated players) and 2 half-point byes. That earned me part of a four-way tie for 2nd in the Under 1700 section, which was worth $20. Maybe I’ll retire early now!

Congratulations to fellow blogger Steven Wollkind (Strong Among the Weak), who picked up 70 rating points with his strong performance. He lost only to the first place finisher in the U1700 section.

Questionnaire Tag—Part 2

Continued from my previous post, which answered the first two questions.

3. What is the single most helpful method of improvement that you have ever used?

Working my way through several tactics books in a sequence recommended by Dan Heisman:

1. Bain, Chess Tactics for Students. Repeated this set seven times until I could solve all the problems in a few seconds.
2. Fischer (Author) Margulies, and Mosenfelder, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. This book is mostly about basic mating patterns.
3. Woolum, The Chess Tactics Workbook. (There are lots of errors in this book; see my list.)
4. Coakley, Winning Chess Exercises for Kids. Despite its name and its cover art that makes you want to hide it, this book is just fine for improving adults up through about Class C.
5. Alburt, Chess Training Pocket Book. Not just tactics.

Now that I’m at the upper end of Class C, I’m trying to figure out what study practices might be most effective for me to get solidly into Class B.

4. What is your favorite opening to play as white? As black against e4? As black against d4?

I’ll buck the trend and answer this straight up. As White I play mostly the Vienna Game and the Grand Prix Attack. As Black I play the Leningrad Dutch and the Scandinavian.

That said, I am interested in expanding my opening selection to include more variety. I recently played a QGD Orthodox for the first time, and you might see something new from me as White soon as well. I might try both some solid, positional lines as well as some speculative gambits. I want to learn to deal with more types of positions and to have fun.

5. Who is your favorite chess player and why?

I don’t have a favorite chess player.

6. What is your favorite chess book?

I have way too many chess books to be able to pick out a favorite. Here are some recent reads that I’ve found particularly interesting, useful, or influential:

• Silman’s Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner to Master
• Webb, Chess for Tigers
• Stean, Simple Chess
• Rowson, Chess for Zebras

(The animal theme is just a coincidence. Really.)

7. What book would you recommend for a friend who knows only the rules of chess?

For learning enough about basic mates, tactics, strategy, openings, and endgames to beat all your casual chess-playing friends: Wolff, Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess. Don’t be put off by the title; it’s really good.

For a different approach that focuses on thought process, board vision, time management, basic tournament etiquette, etc., try Heisman, Everyone’s Second Chess Book.

8. Do you play in in-person tournaments? What is your favorite tournament experience?

Yes. I generally enjoy over-the-board tournaments much more than online play, although I have also enjoyed playing in the Team 4545 League.

My favorite tournament experience was the 2005 World Open.

9. Please give us a link to what you consider your best two blog posts (on your own blog).

• Seeds and CT-ART
• Why Blog?

10. What proportion of total chess time should be spent studying openings for someone at your level?

19.237%

I tag Globular.

Questionnaire Tag

“Questionnaire Tag” has been floating around the chess blogosphere lately. Thanks to Joshua (Chess Praxis) for tagging me.

1. How long have you been playing chess? Have you played it consistently since you started, or were there lulls in your play? How did these lulls affect your performance?

I started playing chess seriously when I was a sophomore or junior in high school, sometime around 1979. Physics teacher Fred Hayes ran a chess club out of the physics lab store room. I believe he had some magazines and other materials (maybe Chess Life?) with local tournament announcements. I played in several scholastic tournaments and a couple of adult events as well. I bought and devoured several chess books, which I still have. These were all in descriptive notation, so I’m comfortably “bilingual.”

I also played in several USCF postal chess events back then. I believe these were called the “Golden Knights,” or something like that. I had a couple of cardboard books containing game position pages, with little sleeves to put the cardboard pieces in. I also had a stamp for inking the board squares onto a postcard. Seems pretty quaint now!

Back then I could play a sort-of-decent game of blindfold chess, and once or twice I amused myself by beating my high school friends without looking at the board. Although I’m a much better player now overall, I don’t think I could play a blindfold game anymore.

Late in high school I got heavily involved in both instrumental and choral music programs. Between those activities and the transition to college life, I lost interest in chess.

Somewhere around 1987, newly married and fresh into graduate school, I played in one downtown Atlanta tournament. I won a small prize, which I used to buy a wooden chess set from a tournament vendor. But most Ph.D. students don’t really have the time or the money for hobbies, and that included me.

Then around five years ago, I taught my my oldest son, then ten years old, to play. I got him, and later his younger brother, interested in playing in scholastic tournaments. That rekindled my interest in playing the game seriously, and I started looking around to see what the opportunities were for over-the-board play. I had not yet discovered how thoroughly computers and the Internet had revolutionized chess and chess culture, so I assumed that I would need to find a club or some OTB tournaments to play in. I wasn’t sure, though, if it would really be practical to play in tournaments, because my kids were still young and I didn’t know if I could really get away for a whole weekend.

As luck would have it, though, the largest chess club in New England is located just minutes away from my office. It meets on Tuesday nights with a format of one OTB tournament round per week. That was just about perfect for me, and I reentered the world of tournament play in February 2003 with a rating of around 1200.

Since then, I’ve been at it pretty consistently. At times there have been lulls of a few months where, because of my family schedule, I haven’t been at the club regularly. These lulls did not seriously affect my play, other than leaving me feeling a bit rusty upon my return.

2. Aside from playing games, what is your primary mode of training?

My primary mode of training is buying chess books! Surely, the next one I buy will be THE one! Although I was proud of myself for not buying a single chess book at this year’s World Open, I promptly bought several (!) within a week of getting back home.

OK, seriously. This is a hard question. I do put quite a few hours into studying, but between work and family it’s always a struggle finding the time. So I don’t really have a primary mode. Instead, I bounce around between several modes. Sometimes it’s tactics, tactics, tactics. Other times it’s going over endgames. Or reading annotated game books. (I’m currently stuck in the middle of Marshall.)

Regarding tactics, I actually prefer books to computer programs, although I have and use both CT-ART and PCT.

Philosophically, I’m quite in agreement with Jonathan Rowson’s view, expressed in Chess for Zebras, of the distinction between knowledge and skill. “Players seeking to improve therefore need to place emphasis on developing their skill, not increasing their knowledge; to improve their ‘know-how’, and worry less about ‘knowing that…’. They also need to focus less on the ‘what’ of chess, and more on the ‘how’ it is done. […] if you want to get better at chess you need to place more emphasis on ‘training’, whereby you try to solve problems, play practice games, or perhaps try to beat a strong computer program from an advantageous position. […] Most players seek to increase their knowledge by learning new positions, and tend to study by “reading and nodding” as Nigel Davies put it. What they should be doing more often is honing their skills, however meagre, by forcing themselves to think through training and practice.”

Although I’m just as susceptible to “reading and nodding” as many other chess-playing adults, I do try to find effective ways to drill and practice. Here’s something I just started trying recently. Take a thoroughly annotated game, preferably one that’s available in a database or PGN file so you can easily strip out the annotations. Play through the game. Starting at move 10, stop every five moves and take 10-15 minutes to thoroughly assess the position. Write down a variety of candidate moves, find your “opponent’s” best responses and your most likely follow up. Identify the principle variation. After going through the game in this fashion, go over it again with the annotator’s notes and see how well your assessment and move choices match the annotator’s.

I’ve done this a couple of times and plan to continue.

OK, that’s enough for tonight. I’ll go ahead and post what I have. I might be able to complete the rest of the questionnaire tomorrow night.