Thursday, March 13, 2008

Atlas Shrugs

Just arrived home from the final round of the Reno CC Ch. Qualifier, where I lost to Chris Harrington (1539) aka ChargingKing, and thus failed to qualify. As White in another King's Indian Four Pawns Attack I played the opening pretty well, pushed the center pawns and won a piece for two pawns--but my king was pretty open, he counterattacked, did some good calculation and won.

I'm very, very tired. Probably there was a winning move for me in there somewhere, but as usual my play wasn't as good as the game dragged on. I'm done with late-night tournament chess for at least six weeks. I'm going to kibbitz at the Far West Open next week and just enjoy the Tournament of the LEPers for a while. I'm really coming to like the G/15 + 30 sec. time control; I don't get tired, it's still pretty good quality chess and it's a great bunch of folks to play and chat with.

I'm sure the hunger for serious chess will return after a break, but right now I just want to get some sleep.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Robert, don't feel too bad. I lost a winning position against Gafni tonight. I hate it when I primarily beat myself. It's much better when the opponent just outplays you. But, these things happen and no chess player is immune from it.

Think of it as "over" and begin afresh! As you can tell over at my blog, I'm already over it and I have some special projects I want to work on.

ChargingKing said...

I'm interested to see your analysis for this game.

Anonymous said...

I know the feeling.

A game of chess can take very much energy. This is one of the moments I am very confident that Chess is really a sport.

Robert Pearson said...

Yes chess teaching, very much energy.

I hope this post didn't come off as sour grapes--fatigue wasn't that much of a factor during the really crucial couple of moves where things turned around...and I just didn't see what other moves to play at the time than the ones I did. I suppose you could just say I outplayed him for a certain portion of the game, but he outplayed me in the last part, which as we all know is where it really counts in the crosstable!