Live blog: Week 1 game.
16:30 It’s a good 30 minutes before the final match of Week 1 is expected to be played, me vs. Wahrheit. As the crowds tailgate outside and the fans start buying “RLP” foam fingers, I wait in the crappy visitors’ locker room (having the Black pieces), going over last-minute strategy and warming up. Having the #1 seed, the drunknknite vs chessloser game got the good announcing team of John Madden and Al Michaels. No one cares about the mediocre seeds, so we get Emmitt Smith and Bob Dole to cover our game.
In a pre-game scrimmage with a 1900 rated player, I had a fairly easy draw. Which means I shouldn’t have a problem with a mere 1671. (Yes, I’m hoping my opponent reads this before we start and starts shaking from intimidation.)
17:03 There’s been a delay, as the field is still not ready after a major snowstorm. Talk about “icing” the players.
I wonder how long I can keep up the cheesy (American) football analogy?
17:12 Gorckat’s stopped by the locker room and told me he got tickets for the Mascot’s mom, so I will have to look for her in the crowd. She’ll be rooting for me. Thanks, gorckat! (The Mascot is actively rooting against me, even going so far as buying one of the aforementioned RLP foam fingers.)
17:21 RLP starts with d4. I counter with my typical turtle defense (King’s Indian).
17:24 With f4, RLP chooses an aggressive setup. I hate it, and never remember how I’m supposed to deal with it, and possibly castle into a crushing attack. With c5, I try to break up his center. Maybe I can sac with b5, but don’t really know how to get good compensation.
17:24 7. … Bd7? What did I just do? Now I have to try to get b5 in without sacing, which I guess was the point.
17:33 I screwed up. I have no clue what to do.
17:42 RLP saves my bacon. Or, if he has a pretty finish, I at least want to see it.
17:49 Now, when I said “saves my bacon”, that was relative. I’ll only be down a pawn in a losing position instead of a piece in a losing position.
17:58 Second time I’ve played a move then half a second later: “NOOOOO!!!!”
18:04 Desperately hoping for perpetual check. Won’t get it.
18:15 If this were a football game, it would have been about 21-3. Wahrheit punished my mistakes efficiently, minus the going up a piece. (I may even be wrong there, but don’t have Fritz or anything on this laptop to double-check. Probably should work on getting something sometime.)
thank...
Babas has Crafty built in. It should have a pop-up at the end of a game with the option to “Analyze”, and its also available in the Edit (iirc) menu.
My daughter claimed usage rights to her laptop in the middle of the game, so I didn’t get to stick around.
Comment by gorckat | 16 February 2008
Loved the ‘live-blogging’ of the game.
Comment by Rocky | 16 February 2008
I, uh… RAH! RAH! SIS BOOM BAH!
Um, did you win?
Comment by annie | 16 February 2008
Dude, you live blogged our game!?! I’m just hella impressed you could do it.
Haven’t had a chance to review the game yet but I never saw (or saw that I had missed) winning a piece, but near the end I think I had a killer Qh6/Ng5 combination, threatening mate and a rook, but I thought you had a perpetual, then after making another move realized my queen would have stopped it, or so it seemed. I’ll be doing more analysis on it so we’ll get closer to the truth.
Thanks again for playing and for sponsoring this prestigious event:).
Comment by Wahrheit | 17 February 2008
@gorckat: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that! Never really used that capability. Too bad you couldn’t stick around, but it was a bit of an embarrassment, really.
@Rocky: Thanks; it was interesting, but not exactly conducive to unbroken concentration.
@Annie: Well, my gameplay was worse than your cooking.
@Wahrheit: You will notice that the pre-game and post-game entries are significantly heftier. It was interesting during the game…like using RLP instead of Wahrheit because it was quicker to type. Next game, I’ll have a program in place where I can just type my entry in a small window and have it automatically update the blog entry instead of having to switch windows every time.
You don’t know how many times I just wanted to give up. It’s not being down material, but having no activity was torture.
Re: the piece. When you lined up your Queen and Bishop against my Knight, I’d pushed my Pawn up to attack your Knight…simply Nd1 would have saved your Knight, and I still couldn’t do anything to save mine.
Comment by Donnie | 17 February 2008
nothing is worse than my cooking. Ask Caroline about the last dinner I cooked for her.
It’s ok. According to Mr Rogers, you’re always a winner.
Comment by annie | 17 February 2008
The thing about cooking for other people is this: learn two or three dishes and become experts in those. They will be the only things you cook for other people. The “experiments” you can try on yourself.
Thank you for being such an encouragement with the spirit of Mr. Rogers.
Comment by Donnie | 17 February 2008
Final commments on the game–you were spot on about winning the knight, I actually looked at Nd1 during the game and I can’t remember why the heck I didn’t play it…luckily for me I also skipped the fancy Qh6/Ng5 attack, because I was right about that one, it didn’t work.
Comment by Wahrheit | 19 February 2008
See, Wahrheit, this is why I can’t root for you. I don’t feel real confident about someone who misses winning a piece. Although I am glad you kicked that guy’s butt and am still grateful for that.
Comment by The Mascot | 23 February 2008