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[Kevin S]

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Etienne wrote: Yes, my match with irony towers is moving inexorably to the point where I make a mistake and he wins.

Ditto!

[Levin]

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Chiming in on what EEG said it certainly feels like many more games are getting to the endgame rather than ending midgame. And those endgames seem a lot more even than in past tournaments.

[Wouter D]

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"You know what?", I thought, "Let's spice things up a little by castling queenside versus Kev. That'll lead to an open game, and that'll be fun!" I was right about the first half of that.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Wow, that was a swift and focused attack by Kev there.

Edit: Wouter, I just ran a computer analysis (deep level) on that. The computer reckons you should have gone Qc8 at move 14 and, as you didn't do it then, should have done it at move 16.

[Bored Of Education]

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I've got a feeling that not only will my timed out games just give me my normal position but won't affect my rating.

[Etienne]

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Idiot. Fucking Idiot.

[Etienne]

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Me, not Bored.

[irony towers]

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Many thanks for a fascinating game, Etienne; what a shame it ended abruptly.

[Wouter D]

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Evariste Euler Gauss wrote: Wow, that was a swift and focused attack by Kev there.

Edit: Wouter, I just ran a computer analysis (deep level) on that. The computer reckons you should have gone Qc8 at move 14 and, as you didn't do it then, should have done it at move 16.

Thanks, that sounds about right. On move 14 I still thought I might get out without losing minor pieces. On move 16, I don't know what I was thinking.

[Sam]

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That banging, clattering sound you all heard was me beating Wouter for the first time. Shortly after he'd been ARROGANTLY TAUNTING me in the chat, too. Good game though, Wouter.

Interesting position in my game with Levin right now, and I'm about to lose to VT in a game I can't help thinking I should have won given how it looked a couple of days ago. This might be the tournament I'm most enjoying overall far, though.

[Etienne]

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Thanks irony towers, I was really enjoying it. Up until trying to make a move after drinking beer last night. Very unfair of you not to take the bishop two moves back.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

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Sam wrote: That banging, clattering sound you all heard was me beating Wouter for the first time. Shortly after he'd been ARROGANTLY TAUNTING me in the chat, too. Good game though, Wouter.

Interesting position in my game with Levin right now, and I'm about to lose to VT in a game I can't help thinking I should have won given how it looked a couple of days ago. This might be the tournament I'm most enjoying overall far, though.

Good work Sam. I threw away a rook in our game, and I just hung in until things got slightly better.

I'm currently struggling with my game - possibly because I'm still trying to get to grips with it. I'd like to develop some sort of house style, where I have a rough idea of where my piece development is going, but I suppose this comes with time. And I really hate that feeling of dread that comes with knowing more shit is coming your way.

[Wouter D]

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Sam wrote: That banging, clattering sound you all heard was me beating Wouter for the first time. Shortly after he'd been ARROGANTLY TAUNTING me in the chat, too. Good game though, Wouter.

Interesting position in my game with Levin right now, and I'm about to lose to VT in a game I can't help thinking I should have won given how it looked a couple of days ago. This might be the tournament I'm most enjoying overall far, though.

Arrogantly taunting is fair enough, but your 49th move was an insult to my intelligence. That my 52nd move retroactively justifies that insult is neither here nor there.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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heh.

[Sam]

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Wouter D wrote:

That banging, clattering sound you all heard was me beating Wouter for the first time. Shortly after he'd been ARROGANTLY TAUNTING me in the chat, too. Good game though, Wouter.

Interesting position in my game with Levin right now, and I'm about to lose to VT in a game I can't help thinking I should have won given how it looked a couple of days ago. This might be the tournament I'm most enjoying overall far, though.

Arrogantly taunting is fair enough, but your 49th move was an insult to my intelligence. That my 52nd move retroactively justifies that insult is neither here nor there.

Haha, not so much an insult to your intelligence as flailing around for a couple of moves trying to work out how to make my slight but obvious material advantage tell. I was playing for time (or rather, tempo) more than anything else.

The position in my game against Levin has gone from 'interesting' to 'oh dear God, make them stop!' pretty quickly.

[Levin]

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Not trying to rub it in but if you'd made pretty much any move but 23.Ne1 I wasn't sure how I was going to break you down.

I am learning patience in the middle game this tournament. Not every move has to crack open the opponents defence or lead to gaining material.

Edit: so far this time around white has won 53.33% and black 44.44%

[Sam]

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Levin wrote: Not trying to rub it in but if you'd made pretty much any move but 23.Ne1 I wasn't sure how I was going to break you down.

Yeah, I wanted to transfer it to a square I suspect it'll never reach now, and as soon as you responded to that move I remembered why I'd been trying to leave it right where it was. I'll be interested to see what the computer says would have been the best move there.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

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I've been rushing to get games finished, hence the sloppy play. I'm off for a week to an area that may not have internet access, so I'll have to see how the next few days go.

[Wouter D]

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PM for VT.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Isn't it annoying when your opponent has a rating way below his/her ability level? In one of the tournaments I'm currently involved in, a small 960 tournament, I'm playing a guy whose (non-live) 960 rating is 1063, so I will lose shed loads of rating points if I don't beat him. Normally I should be strong favourite against an opponent with a rating of 1063, but I see his ratings for Blitz, Daily, Tactics, Bullet and Rapid are respectively 1316, 1349, 1473, 1523 and 1727. I'm not happy about that.

[Levin]

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There does appear to be some massive gaming of ratings on the site doesn't there? People timing out or resigning to reduce their rating.

There is quite big thread on one of the tournaments Sam and I are in. It's a sub 1200 tournament but that is only checked when you sign up not when the tournament starts (which is a separate issue really). However this guy raised some hackles as he routinely gets to 1500 or so and then dumps his rating down to circa 1000.

I only realised a week or so ago that it's not Elo but Gliko used for the ratings.

EEG is your knock out tournament still going?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Yes, I had a bit of a flurry yesterday when two tournaments I was still in started Round 2 and another one I'd registered for got going.

The 2->1 format of my "It's a Knockout 2" tournament, with both players going through in the event of a 1-1 score, has resulted in 61 of the 96 entrants making it to Round 2.

I'm also in a big 960 tournament with an excellent 6->3 format. If the tie-breaker always worked, the field of 96 entrants would work perfectly to yield 5 rounds each in groups of 6 (16 such groups, then 8, 4, 2 and a final group), but almost inevitably, as we approach the end of Round 1, there is already one group where the tie-breaker fails to separate the players in 3rd and 4th spot, so Round 2 will have to have 9 groups, presumably a mix of fives and sixes, and there will need to be at least 6 rounds.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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However this guy raised some hackles as he routinely gets to 1500 or so and then dumps his rating down to circa 1000.

That's pretty anti-social. There ought to be some facility to exclude people based on that kind of thing, like, say, a rule that you can't enter a tournament when your rating has been more than 150 above the ceiling at any time in the 12 months before kick-off.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Is there anything more frustrating than seeing a flaw in a move, finding an alternative but wanting more time to double check and then when you come back to the game making that first move?

Similar kind of thing - being half way through an advantage-grabbing move combo when you go to bed, then forgetting about it when you wake up and it's your turn and you throw it away.

Happened to me just now in this match:

https://www.chess.com/daily/game/147376688

I skewered his Q and R with my B on move 22, he made a bizarre bishop sacrifice to make a diversionary check in response, so I captured the B on move 23 and went to bed. Woke up to find he'd checked with his Q. Totally forgot I'd had a skewer, so failed to spot that that could obviously now be converted into a fork with 24 Bd6, and made the howler Kg1 instead, confound it! Still, at least I'd already gained the B which he threw away.

[Etienne]

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I just decided my game with Sam was getting a bit one-sided.