Huzzah. A win.

So tonight marked my return to competitive chess (if you want to call it that) since my surgery. This game was uneventful. It was the first round of a Swiss, and I was at the bottom of the top half of the tournament. It was patzer time.

Now normally I try very hard not to talk any shit about anyone, and I think 'patzer' is generally a really cruel thing to call someone, because everyone has their own goals in the game, and people also vary into the amount of time they're able to put in, even if they're willing. If you take up the game as an adult when you have a job and a family, it's going to be hard to study. So I try to give players the benefit of the doubt. Tonight though, this guy did one of the things that annoys me more than anything else in chess: he made me checkmate him, using two queens. If it were ICC, I might have suggested (the degree of politeness would vary inversely with how drunk I was) that there was a reason God and the admins invented the resign button.

Of course, over the board you can't do such a thing unless you Kasparov (because he's a jerk, not because he's the best player ever. I just wanted to pick a jerk you all knew. Though IMO, best ever hands down.) So I had to play on and checkmate this guy with my two queens. I thought about doing the Nakamura thing (or so I've heard) and make 4 knights and then checkmate him in some obscene knight net. I thought better of it when I realized he probably wouldn't get the joke. He's probably have just left the table thinking I was an idiot.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on him. The guy is very new, and he did play one or two good moves. He also made several blunders. The hardest part about games like this is forcing yourself to keep concentrating after you're completely winning. Just because a person't rating is low doesn't mean they don't see anything. They may see quite a lot when they look, but looking tends to be rare in the lower classes in my experience. I probably should have told him after the game that it's polite to resign when down two queens to someone 700 points higher rated than you with no hope of stalemate, but again I'm not trying to offend anyone. If that's what he enjoys doing, it's his prerogative. It just annoys the piss out of me. Here's the game:

Lyons-Rampley.pgn


So that's that. I post it only out of habit. If Mr. Lyons happens to read this blog, nothing personal, just resign when you're that far down in material. I know how much it sucks to sit there and know you're going to lose. It's okay to resign. Only little kids make you play it out, because frankly kids are more likely to screw up. Against 'A' players ('B' players too, really) it's just insulting.

In other news, I am leaving Thursday for Colorado. It should be fun. I will soon be 27. That feels much older than 26 somehow. Especially since I'm unemployed. Thanks Wall Street.