I may have gotten too good to enjoy chess...

...and I'm not really very good. I went to the US Open in Indianapolis (my hometown) and hit a wall. I didn't have any will to get into positions (to calculate deeply, that is), to do the hard work over the board that is required for success. I almost liked it better when I was 1600 and a win or loss seemed to be more a result of inspiration than grinding. I admit, I was a little out of sorts as I was spending the days with friends and family that I rarely see, but more was going on than that. I simply wasn't enjoying playing. I was lucky to score the 1.5 points that I actually managed. The loss to Magness wasn't such a big deal as he's a talented junior on the rise, but the loss to Pressici was the worst upset I've suffered in years. I even saw the tactic he laid on me before he played it, but I was too lazy to do more than a superficial assessment of its power. It wasn't that I didn't know I should look more deeply into it, I just didn't have the will.

It may be that after I get my mental shit together I'll be able to play well again. I've been pretty out of sorts on many levels since I wasn't selected for a Project Management job (I got through two interviews and was very confident), as my employment outlook is pretty bleak. Chess is very mood dependent, as least for me, and I have not been in a mood to play serious chess for some time. I hope I have the first again by September, as I like the idea of playing in the Miami Open. If I were to play in my current mental state it would just be throwing money away. I'd probably end up withdrawing like I did from the US Open.

Ironically, not getting the PM job freed me up to take the chess teaching position that I'd been offered. It's only an hour a week and thus won't screw up my unemployment as I continue to search for work. The irony lies in my accepting the position only as I become less personally enthusiastic about chess. It may reignite my love of the game to see it played by kids without agenda or fear of losing rating points, or it may just make me even more tired of chess by forcing me to think about it when I'd rather not. I'm hoping for the latter. We'll see.

Almost as a post-script, here are the games I played. Go through them and you'll probably see why I withdrew. All I can say is that I played as well as I could with everything else going on in my life and in my head. It was really bad timing that the Open came when it did.

Roopnarine-Rampley.pgn


Rampley-Magness.pgn


Presicci-Rampley.pgn


Rampley-Yang.pgn

Notes from the hospital...

They've switched me to oral narcotics from intravenous. That's good as a sign of progress, but they're much less effective and I'm in a bit of pain right now. To get my mind off of it and to fight creeping hospital boredom, I've decided to post some old games of mine. If you follow this blog you might notice some differences in the annotation style, mostly that I knew a lot less about chess than I do now. It's funny to play through some of these games now because I was such a patzer when I first annotated them, and my standards were so much lower. I may not be a lot better now, but at least now I know how little I know.

This is a game from the Indiana Class Champs in 2007. I had just gotten back from Napa Valley where my fiancee (now wife) and I were vacationing, so I was jet lagged, hung over, and in bad shape to play chess in general. I lost my first two games and I was in a very violent mood. This game is the result of that mood.

1700-Rampley.pgn


I must admit I changed some of the annotations, primarily removing off color language and some of the comments that were a little too over the top. Even though this game isn't perfect by any means, I still enjoy looking over it because it was cute attacking effort.

My recovery is going well, and soon I hope to be out and playing serious chess again. I am healing very well so this is a realistic goal. I also need to get a job, so if you have any friends in banking in southern Florida in need of analysts or project managers, let me know.

Finally in Florida

So I'm finally in Florida and will soon start looking for playing opportunities down here, though from what I've seen so far the chances to play in slow time control tournaments is limited. Back to ICC perhaps, though I've certainly been frustrated in the past with the tournaments held on the server.

Special thanks goes to all the guys in Indiana that I went to tournaments with. You all taught me a lot (easy to do, since you all outrated me by at least 150 points), and I hope to be back in the Midwest within a year or two so I'm sure we'll play chess and drink together again. It was always fun.

Indiana State Championships Under Way

So, Garrett, Ben, and I are at the State champs in Logansport. Nate is also playing, though he's not staying with us. I'll give you a taste of my games. This one was from the second round. I'll post the rest later.

Rampley-Lewis.pgn


And there you have it. Certainly not error free, though not a horrible game. I'm using my time better, though I'm still not doing comprehensive safety checks every move. As usual, I did have a disappointing loss (in some ways the best of the three I've played), and I'll post that tomorrow.

Garrett is rolling the open section, 3-0. Took out GaterNation in the last round, like 4 non theoretical moves in a Dragon. Ben beat Jim Dean on time, after which Jim promptly withdrew. I would have too. Losing on time sucks ass, and I wouldn't have wanted to drive here from Ft Wayne three nights if I wasn't going to win any money. Funnily enough, the field is so weak that Dean probably still would have won 1st. I'll post more about this this coming week, maybe from the Cleveland Clinic. Wish me luck on the surgery.

Indiana Class Champs mostly completed!

So as usual, the tournament started well, then I got tired, which made me lazy, and I started playing poorly. Ben and Garrett also had bad third round games, both of which ended in losses due to time trouble, so we withdrew and went to see 'Stepbrothers', which sucked. In any case, I'm including my 1st and 2nd round games, which were of decent quality. The third round was a a Grunfeld that looked like it was played by two 7 year olds who needed naps. My opponent was much worse out of the opening, then in my impatience and fatigue I went into a significantly worse ending. Then I threw away the draw. On the upside, at least I wasn't hung over. Here are the games.

R1.pgn


Not a bad game at all, though I did have about a 150 point rating advantage. Only one major error, and even it was a few ply down the line. My goal this tournament was to play safely, not overextending due to impatience. I think this game was a good example of that style of play, with the possible exception of Ng5. Here's the 2nd round:

R2.pgn


Not as good of a game from my side, but my opponent was very slightly higher rated than me and this was the first time I'd gotten to play the Classical Sicilian in OTB chess. As I said, the last game isn't worth showing, it was such a comedy of errors. I won't come to this tournament again unless it's expanded to two days. It's too much chess and I can't keep my play up for 4 rounds (or even 3, frankly) of long time control chess. 2 long games/day. No more than that. It's just not worth the money or the frustration. By the way, aren't the Fritz verbal annotations strange? The one about the cat seems like a bad German translation to me, but who knows. Every country has its own weird sayings. What the hell does 'by and large' mean, anyway? What sort of sense would it make translated into German? I'll leave you with that thought.

Maybe I should just play quick chess...

Well, it's Friday night and I just won the reserve section of the Indiana state quick tournament. 4 games, 20/3, $70 first prize. Covers my entry fee with enough for a few beers. Here's the only game I could remember all the way through. It's an error filled Benoni but it has some cute tactical ideas. I hope you enjoy. Good luck to Nate, I hope you're doing well. Wish you were here. Maybe Kokomo's not so bad after all.

RampleyWycoffe.pgn


So many errors, as you would expect from a quick game, but fun and a good one for me to win.

IN State Class championships in beautiful Kokomo approaching

For those of you who don't know, the Indiana state class championships are coming up, to be held once again in Kokomo IN. That means that Garrett, Nate, maybe Drew, Ben, Quinn, and I will be making the godforsaken drive up 31 to Kokomo. If you've never taken this drive, then let me tell you that the only thing worse than this indescribably dull stretch of highway is the even duller stretch of highway that extends to South Bend. Thank God we're not holding the tournament there.

Which raises an interesting question: why Kokomo? It's not centrally located at all. And as it happens, Indiana does have a large, centrally located city where it might make more sense to hold the tournament. Yet our state tournaments are often in either Kokomo or, even more oddly, Logansport (this may just be because Logansport is the home of former ISCA honcho Gary Fox, whom we all thank for his hard and extremely thankless work in chess). Is this to accommodate the South Bend contingent? Or is it just cheaper?

In any case, I expect a sub par performance on my part, not least because the drive to Kokomo almost forces you to drink once you get there just to stave off crippling boredom. I think if I lived in Kokomo I'd have to be drunk all the time. Seriously, the main reason I'm not predicting a win is that the tournament is a 4 round, g/90 affair conducted in one day. For those of you a little slow in the math department, that's up to 12 hours of chess on a Saturday. That's a shit ton of chess in one day. I bet the average player loses between 100-200 points of effective strength between the first and last games. It's a grueling schedule.

And it's played at a UAW hall. Leaving aside the stale scent of despair the sits on this (or probably any) automakers union hall, the place is fairly pleasant to play in. There are swings outside for Maxx to frolic on, picnic tables for folks to sit on and watch Roger stalk geese, and a pleasant breeze that luckily leaves you upwind from Kokomo proper (just kidding. I really have no particular issue with Kokomo, other than having to take 31 to get there). It's no Sheraton conference center, but it's not bad for what you pay to enter.

So as you can probably tell I'm really looking forward to this one. Last year I locked my keys in my car and lost my last round game in like 11 moves (probably because I just returned from a wine junket in Napa), and just generally sucked ass. Let's hope that this year is a little more successful. I don't want to drive to Kokomo for nothing.