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.

A Return to Chess...

...sort of. This game wasn't rated, and while we both took some time it's obviously different when it's just for kicks. I think my opponent took more chances than he would have in a tournament game, but at least it made the game entertaining.

Cachuela-Rampley.pgn


In other news, I have started looking for jobs in earnest. It's pretty depressing. I blame Greenspan, Wall Street shortsighted greed (as opposed to long term greed, which bothers me less), and Bush. In that order. South Florida has a higher rate of unemployment than the rest of the country as well, though I hope that is mostly unskilled workers whom I'm really not competing with. Construction has been slammed down here, for example. We have more foreclosures than anywhere other than the West Coast.

At least I'm healing well. Went to the gym for the first time today, and it was sad. 15 minutes on the elliptical. It'll come back quickly. This Friday I plan to play my first rated game since my surgery. We'll see how it goes.

Getting back to full strength...

...chess strength at least. The physical strength is taking a while. The two big wounds still haven't closed, but everything else is healing beautifully. I want to go back to playing tournament chess soon, though I'm somewhat worried about sustaining concentration over a long game. That might still be asking a bit much.

Have you been following Linares? It just finished, with Grischuk and Ivanchuk sharing first, Grischuk with the better tiebreaks. A nice breakthrough for Grischuk whose style I really like, and another amazing performance from Chucky. I love that guy. He's totally crazy. If he ever releases a book of best games, it will have no repeated openings. He plays everything in the book, coming up with significant theoretical novelties in the most varied positions. It's a pity his nerves will almost certainly prevent him from ever taking the World Championship. Of the players who came up in the early 90s, Anand, Kramnik, and Ivanchuk were by far the strongest (Shirov close behind, Topalov's a little younger). I personally think they all were strong enough to win the world title, and in some ways Ivanchuk is the most brilliant. He plays some games that just blow me away with their originality and complexity.

In any case, congrats to both. Just because I like posting games, here's a little blitz effort I put together online tonight after re-upping my ICC membership. I really hate anti-Sicilians on principle (I sometimes play the Grand Prix, and I feel like a bitch every time), so it's nice to deliver beat downs to anti-Sicilian players.

Gotta Watch Out For That Boden's Mate!.pgn


Later.

So Topalov beat Kamsky...

...hopefully after Anand WHIPS HIS ASS sometime later this year, the blatant FIDE favoritism towards Topalov will be over. Finally. But I doubt it. I also realize I haven't written a proper sentence this post. Deal.

Seriously though, who would have thought that the Tarrasch French would be the opening of the match? The French wasn't exactly a mainstay of Kamsky's repertoire prior to this match (though it does fit his style in my opinion), and I can't imagine that his team spent as much time on the Tarrasch as on the Nc3 mainlines since that is what Topalov has mostly played. For what it's worth, I expected Topalov's team to outdo Kamsky's team and that didn't happen. Kamsky got drawable positions from the opening, he just messed up. Time usage continued to be an issue for him, and lack of time definitely played a role in his errors.

In any case, Kamsky should have been playing Anand directly but since I think he would have lost that match much worse than he did this one, it doesn't bother me so much that he didn't. With FIDE you have to expect disruptions and changes for no reason, and this is just another example of that.

In other news, Mamedyarov has accused Kurnosov of cheating at Aeroflot. If you look at the game (a short and brutal crush of Shak), there were only something like 6 moves out of theory and they were relatively forced. I think a player much weaker than Kurnosov could have found them. I have always thought that Shak Mamedyarov was overrated. Obviously his 2750 rating isn't BS, but he seems to duck the top tournaments and when he does play against Carlsen, Anand, etc, he doesn't impress. I think he'd probably do a Loek Van Wely swan dive if he couldn't play the slightly weaker opens like Aeroflot. His opening repertoire is offbeat which is not necessarily a bad thing, but he's no Morozevich and I think he gets a few points from playing positions his opponents aren't as familiar with. That wouldn't work at Linares. You can probably tell I think this cheating accusation is bunk and that Shak is acting like a child after a brutal loss to a weaker opponent. He should stop bitching, stop accusing people, and reassure himself that losing to a 2600 player is not such a bad thing. 2600 does in fact mean you can play some chess. Though Shak did have white.

On the personal side I don't recall if I mentioned that there was too much scar tissue to do the surgery laparoscopically or not, but that was in fact the case. They had to open me all the way up, and so recovery is taking much longer. I have 30some staples and I don't get those out until Friday. Even after that's done, it will be a while. A bit of a setback, but no serious infections (thankfully). I'll be playing again soon.

The Curious Case of Veselin Topalov

What's so curious about Topalov? You might well ask this question if you haven't been watching his recent games against Gata Kamsky. Aside from his hideous suits which look like scaled up duds from a 1970s Ken doll and his Rasputinesque facial expressions, his opening choices have been baffling to say the least. He started off somewhat normally with two relatively sharp Gruenfelds and a sharp offbeat Lopez, but the last two games have been so out of character it seems like he's been possessed by the ghost of 1974 Karpov. A main line Closed Lopez and a Tarrasch French? Topalov has ~60 games on the white side of the French in the Megabase 2008, and only 5 are Tarraschs. I expected this match to produce some major theory since Topalov is such a great expert on the white side of the Gruenfeld, but so far I haven't seen much.

So what's going on with these games? Grinding positional battles are Kamsky's wheelhouse, and I don't understand why Topalov would play that sort of chess by choice here. He did win today, but only because of a Kamsky blunder. He didn't have shit out of the opening, and the game should have been a draw. If Kamsky gets to play two more Closed Spanish games in his other two whites, he very well might win both. Has Cheparinov run out of ideas? Has Topalov's copy of Rybka gone on strike? He's probably the sharpest player of his generation, and we've seen no gambits or even the exchange sacs he's so well known for. You can probably tell I'm dissapointed by the match so far. All I can say is that if Topalov goes on to play Anand and continues in this manner, he's going to get eaten alive. Incidentally, this would be fine with me because I'm not big fan. I think he dragged Kramnik through the mud for no reason other than to protect his pride, and I think his manager is the chess equivalent of Don King. I don't assume he will get a shot at Anand however, since Kamsky is scrappy and definitely not out of it yet.

Here is today's game, which Kamsky blundered in and lost. Prior to the blunder it was one of the most boring games I've ever seen at this level.

Topalov-Kamsky.pgn


In personal news, I might have gotten an infection after all. It remains to be seen if it will extend my hospital stay. I dearly hope not.

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.

I'm still standing.

My surgery was a success, though their was so much scar tissue from the previous one that they had to open me up (the surgery was supposed to be laparoscopic). I have 20 some staples in my abdomen now, but at least I'll have a bitchin' scar. I'm recovering very well. Thanks for all the support. It's much appreciated. I should be out of the hospital in 3-4 days. On the beach soon after. Playing through Kramnik's Best Games, which is poorly translated but excellent in terms of material. Did you know Kramnik used to attack?

That's a joke. Kramnik spent almost all his career as a much more dynamic player than people gave him credit for. After his loss to Anand he made some noise about revitalizing his game, and I hope we see him bring back the Classical Sicilian or some other lines he used to whip ass in.

That's all from Delotid land for now. For those of you who don't know, that's a strong narcotic flowing into my arm right now. I doubt it's helping my chess, but at least I'm not screaming.