This morning I worked on chess position training . I can't believe how rusty I get. To be fair, it is sometimes a challenge to remember a particular positions out of a variations.

I also worked on a particular line getting ready for my match with ronliv this evening. Attila had a wonderful idea of having us play a particular variation.

I played in the Santa Fe Open tournament. It was a 4 round event with a time control of G45/5d. I scored 2 out of 4. I did well enough and increased my rating by 10 pts.

Today I spent some time catching up with correspondence games on chessworld.net. Most of the games are going well. I have about 21 games that are ongoing. I believe I may be losing 4 of them outright.

After catching up, I spent some time following the USCL on ICC. I also spent 45 min working with chesspositiontrainer (CPT).

I also spent some time reading How to Reassess Your Chess 13-26 pp with positions/games set up on a board. I played through the Topolov - Sashikiran game and learned about positional weakness in how it might be exploited. Another example that showed having an active K as an attacking piece to deliver mate in the Short - Timman game. One of the key elements of the game that allowed the K mobility was black's weakened squares on the K-side.

I spent a total of 3.5 hours studying.

Today I decided to go on a hike and hike up to the top of the Sandias. I left the house and started on the trail at 8:20. I finished the hike 6 hours later with a ride down via the Tram. I was too tired to do much with Chess. Here is a picture showing Albuquerque.


Here is a picture of the Tram car.

I met another one of Attila's students (ronliv) that he coaches on Chess.com. Attila suggest that we set up a match and go over the game together given that my Team4545 games were completed. I had also skyped with ronliv and visited with him for a bit. I find that he is very friendly person.

We played an agreed to match at 6pm and played on the Chess.com site. I started the match as white and it was G60/5d. We agreed to play another game in about week. The site is very different from ICC and we had some trouble sharing an analysis board after the game was completed.

The opening was a Benoni. The game was interesting and ronliv is a very challenging player. I made a poor move when I exchanged an active knight for his white square bishop which equalized the game and made it difficult for White to gain any initiative. The result of the game was 1-0.

I worked on annotating/analyzing the game in chessbase for Attila so that we could review it.

Today I was very tired from work and didn't much of a chance to work on chess. I did work on few correspondence games.

Today, I decided not to go and play at the Coronado Chess Club. I thought that I would stay home and work on my chess. I was able to annotate a game for Attila that we played on the chess.com. It was a simul that he was putting on for the 1000 Bright minds.

The rest of the evening I followed the chess league play. On Wednesdays it was broadcast from chess.com instead of ICC. I like it much more on ICC with the annotations and the commentary.

In addition, I kept up with my correspondence games on chessworldnet.com

I've created this blog for the purpose of recording and tracking my chess study. My objective is to improve my chess playing and the quality of my games. The other side effect that I expect is to increase my rating toward expert (and eventually master).

Today I drilled with Chessposition trainer.

Today I read pp 61-88 of Silman's Complete Endgame Course (SCEC). I completed the test, and missed only one question.

I currently have 25 correspondence games on chessworld.net website. Two of my game has 2 days per move which I need to stay on top of. I'm caught up for tonight.

I've been following the London Grand Prix. Gelfand is leading the tourney. There is hope for us old folks. I've also been following the US Chess league on ICC.