Another lesson

Here is the Watchbot for the game: http://mekk.waw.pl/mk/watchbot/game/2989161

Haven't run it through a computer yet, and haven't looked deeper than my notes above. I don't have a whole lot of time at work (:P) right now to add more comments.

I did my best to stay focused and not post a bunch of comments during the game. I stayed cool and focused, until I lost it zeroing in on the false winning of a pawn.

Tunnel vision killed me here. This week, I will go way back to de la Maza's board vision exercise- Concentric Circles. Wednesday and Friday I'll do those. Thursday will be for some reading from Amateur's Mind. Saturday or Sunday, I'll see if I have time to get a Stoyko (sp?) exercise in. Some practice visualizing and evaluating will be useful now.

Second Team Leaue Game

A bit of a swindle, this one:



Never got around to adding more to that last one, so we'll just burn a little midnight oil to add some thoughts:

5. d5

Feel like this was the novice in me- Ooh! My pawn can attack a piece! Probably a little ahead of myself here. The subsequent exchange of light-squared bishops made me miss mine later in the game.

7. ... f5

Yikes! I thought I was playing myself for a minute- this was aggressive and a thorn in my side (as my in-game whispers reflect)

10. O-O

kosu mentions later that he thinks I should have gone O-O-O, and I considered it. Just felt too loose over there.

14. Be3

I need to look at g4. Not sure that was actually stronger or just better in the moment. When I later recapture with the f-pawn, I was looking for the open file, but think the Queen might have been more stable long term.

17. cxd6

I considered c6, but not hard enough. Need to come back and look at why.

On moving my Queen to the kingside, it was to get my e-pawn up and I was planning on sliding my Queen back to the queenside along e1. I ended up spending a fair amount of time looking for back-rank tactics through the next stretch. kosu was rightly concerned because there were some spots where I think a knight sac would get me in.

Once my knight stole the bishop, I figured two ways to draw, or maybe eek out a win. One was to trade my knight for the b-pawn while not also committing my King. Two was to get my king to the b-pawn and use the knight to trade for the k-side pawns.

Both ended up happening.

Both the king and the knight would need 4 moves to capture on the queening square. Once I had counted that, I was confident I had a draw. On 51. g4, the black king needs 5 moves to get my knight, assuming I don't move it. Like someone observed in game, the knight just pops out to f5 and the king is stymied.

At the end, I was very aware of stalemate possibilities (Hi Pat!) and was very careful, in spite of the appearance of playing quickly here (I think that is where the comment about playing too fast occurred).

A wild game. kosu was very gracious aftewards and we had a great chat. I look forward to crossing swords with him again.

Also- thanks to those who complimented Chess Adventures :) It's been slow around here lately, and the kind words should be helpful in sparking some posting!

New Babas / FICS tips

So I've learned a couple new things that might be of interest to people new and old to Babas. There are so many options that don't do anything at first, that it can take a fair bit of experimenting.

None of these are earth shattering, but simply useful and convenience oriented.

Timers:

I like to keep FICS up at work and home for long periods of time observing Team League games. At work, I often have to go into busy mode, so I may get logged out after 60 minutes. Babas can cheat this by going into File -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts and then choosing Configure Timer Commands.

You can have 3 different timers; perhaps one to go AFK (like the default example), one to advertise something (like looking to start a Team League team) and a third to keep you logged in.

Check the "Enabled" box, set the interval to the time between running your command and enter the command in the box.

I have "date" set to run every 45 minutes. I like date because I always get confused about the time difference between local and server (I know it's Pacific, but I never remember when I'm looking at a schedule of events).

Clean Console:

I prefer to have my console show none of the crap that it default displays.

I uncheck the following items in Preferences/Console and Chat/Chat Windows:
1. Show Private Tells in console
2. Show Channel Tells also in main console
3. Show Shouts also in main console
4. Show superfluous server responses

Tabbed view:

I don't like having 18 windows overlapping and popping around my screen. Click Window -> Tabbed Documents. Boom.

Channels tab has tabs for each channel (like it normally does). Info Window has its stuff. The console and private chats get tabs. Boards get their own tab.

The one disadvantage is if you like to have multiple boards up at once or a board and private chat. Tabs gives you one thing at a time. If you like it, you will probably want to uncheck the following in Preferences/Console and Chat/Chat Windows:

1. Automatic Tab Switch (this one is in both sets of options)
2. Show chat window when new tell received
3. Show channel window when new shout received

Those 3 options will make sure whatever you are looking at doesn't flip away when those events occur.

For some people, Tabs will be a lifesaver and for others a hated inconvenience.

Trying to make a 1400 team for FICS Team League

In joining the FICS Team League, there are a couple teams that might be able to use me as a reserve in the 1600 section, and not many spots open at 1400.

I've messaged some other folks on the interested list to try and get a 1400 team together. We'll see how it goes!

I should probably read up to see if messages on FICS can be sent to multiple people, rather than copy-pasting as I did to each person...if so that would have made sharing info easier.

Seriously? I missed that?

Starting a book...of my mistakes

Taking Dan Heisman's advice in Novice Nook 81 (item #12), I am starting a 'book' of positions where I erred. They will likely be flat out material losses in many cases. Until I improve, what else would they be- poor attack of an isolated pawn? Nope (see item #14).

The article was also a good bump for reinforcing why I need to do all the mate in ones in PCT...not so much for me to see them, but rather to see them in replies my opponent may have.

So- mistake number one.

Up a Queen for a Knight, I played 20. ... Rxc2. I still won, but it was a lot harder than it needed to be.

Should have played ... Rxe5, with threats of mates or getting another exchange.

Babas/FICS tips and tricks for LEPers

Glenn and I had a little trouble getting out game started for round 1, mostly because my formula was set to restrict my opponents to between 100 points below my rating and 200 above. Babas has a great little feature to make it easy to turn my formula on and off without needing to recreate it over and over.

First off- how to create a formula in Babas:

Go to the View menu and choose Formula Wizard. It goes through several pages of options letting you narrow down what kinds of games your looking for. Personally, I like ~30 minute, rated games with players about my level and no guests, computers or abusers.

Once you have the formula created, the wizard will display it. Highlight it all and copy it to the Clipboard. Click Finish if you'd like to turn it on right now.

Now, pop over to the Quick Commands menu and choose Configure. Click the New Command button. Name it something clever, like Formula On, in the Name field. In the Script to Execute field, delete all the text, type "set formula" and then paste the formula from the wizard. Make sure there is only one space between the word "formula" and the next character, or there could be syntax problems.

Click OK and bam! You can now turn on your formula whenever you like!

To get full use of the ability to turn your formula on whenver you like, you need to create a Formula Off command. Create a new command, as above (do not go through the Formula Wizard this time). In the Script to Execute field, simply type "set formula" and save the command. Choosing this new command will turn off the formula whenever you like.

If you play a variety of games, like blitz or bughouse or whatever, you could create several formula commands specific to each type.

The main benefit to using formulas is that the Seek Graph and list in Babas will only display people looking for what you want, and it prevents random people from poking you for a one minute game with 17 second increment. My graph is often empty with the formula on, because not many people play 30 minute games, but I rarely wait more than 5 minutes when seeking for what I want.

When you use the Action->Seek command in Babas, you can save your preferred time limits, choose to use the formula and get exactly what you want, generally improving the online chess experience.

The second big question Glenn had was about examining the game.

There are several ways to start an Examine session on the server. If you're doing a post-mortem, you should each automatically be examining the game on your own. As long as the other person (or anyone you want to be able to move the pieces and make circles and arrows and stuff) is listed in the Observers tab (under the board), go to the Console window (press F2 if you can't find it- that'll bring it to the top) and enter "mexamine USER" where USER is that person's name.

Now they can move stuff around. I've never done this, so I have no idea exactly how the variations are added and saved or how it works (like a Pushmepullyou, I'm sure). Using the Edit->Examine menu, you can see commands duplicating the arrows most people have below the board, but also the Circle and Arrow tools. These do exactly what they say they do. Go to the Actions menu and choose Examine last game and play around with it. Nifty stuff.

To customize the appearance of the Circles and Arrows (as well as everything else board wise), go to File->Preferences. Choose Board, then Piece movement and scroll the Move Input box almost to the bottom and you can change the color of your Arrows and Circles. If you have an examined game with stuff on it, choose a color and hit Apply and you can see what it'll look like without having to go through the menus again.

Some of this info is in the Babas Help files, some in the Fics files and some by just fiddling around. I hope this saves others a little bit of time, and I'll add other cool stuff as I learn it myself.