Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Can Black Draw ?

In the actual game at Hamilton Quads on July 27, 2013 in the Class A section White's 45th move was RxRf6+, immediately thereafter Black resigned. Can Black draw this game after Whites takes Black's rook check ?

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Black to Mate in Three

Here is the position as Black on the move. I had one second to figure out mate in three. Unfortunately, my clock expired in this 3-minute game. Note that White moves his Queen on move 17 and white's queen is sitting out in left field the whole game, until he moves it back to its starting square d1. In effect white was playing the game a queen down from move 17 until the end of the game. Black to move and Mate in Three Three minute game below as played out on ICC with time control of three minutes.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

A Legend on the Road by John Donaldson

A book has been written on Bobby Fischer's 1964 Simul Tour by John Donalson. The name of the book is " A Legend on the Road" Bobby Fischer's 1964 Simu Tour. Despite visiting over 40 cities, there were a few cities Bobby did not visit. Some of the big cities that Bobby did not go to were Miami and St.Louis. < page 11> " A Legend on the Road"

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Recent ICC Blitz Games of Diamondback

I welcome any amateur chessplayer rated USCF 1200 up to Expert level to email at diamondback1529@yahoo.com some ICC blitz games or over the board skittles games that I can post on my blog. I am keenly interested in games from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington D.C. Also any chess player on the West Coast is welcome to email games. I don't necessary need any extensive analysis of your unrated over the board or ICC games. What I am looking for are games with great tactics and surprise checkmate......Diamondback
The major theme of this chess blog is "Chess from the Amateur". Here are some of my most recent ICC blitz games. Be forewarned that some of these games are very shallow and my opponents were making blunders left and right.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Resigning a Chess Game Too Early

Here is a standard fifteen minute game that I played on July 1, 2013 on the Internet Chess Club. The first twelve moves were played in under five minutes. My opponent playing the white pieces lost the exchange. Stockfish an android chess analysis program only gave Black a three point advantage. There was still more left in this game to play rather than resigning.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Queen and Pawns vs. Rook and Knight

Here is a very recent ICC standard game that I played. The time control was fifteen minutes with a three second increment for each month made. Obviously Black is much better in the endgame. My opponent resigned realizing that White has too many pawns and a Queen vs. his lone rook and knight. But if I was White playing down in the endgame, I would have played on to the biter end. Only because Black can make a mistake and perhaps lose his Queen somehow. The first chessboard game is from the actual game. The second chessboad is Endgame analysis using an online endgame database Nalimov Endgame Tables. using a maximum of six pieces which are for Black: King, Queen and A pawn and for White: King , Knight and Rook. Nalimov Endgame Tables.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Dutch Defense Falters

George is of Holland descent and has the Dutch fighting spirit in his blood. But unfortunately in this game played the year 2008 in Hamilton Quads against NJ upstart Kimberly Ding , who is now rated in this year 2013 around 1978 with a floor rating of 1800, young Kimberly was on a King Hunt that day in July 2008. I did play Kimberly just about the time she was just starting out in chess and I was sitting on my hands the whole game but managed to win that game.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Blitz Chess Is Fun

Here is a very recent blitz chess game on ICC, that I played. Please be advised this is a very ugly game played by my opponent, in fact he fell asleep at the switch. I rarely learn anything from my blitz games that I play OTB, but sometimes on ICC, I go over my blitz games even the games that I win to learn from all my mistakes. Enjoy this short game that my opponent led me step by step to victory !......diamondback .... NB I do not take Blitz chess as serious chess at all, in fact Blitz chess is not real chess, but one can learn quick tactics and time control from Blitz chess.

Old Indian Defense Games

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Scid Chess Database (Shane's Chess Information Database)

Shane's Chess Information Database (Scid) is a popular free UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Mac application for viewing and maintaining huge databases of chess games. It is written in TCL/TK and C++. Scid has undergone several stages of development. Firstly by Shane Hudson, and then Pascal Georges. Scid supports portable game notation and its own database format. It can interface with Winboard engines (such as Crafty and GNU Chess), and UCI engines (such as Fruit, Rybka, Stockfish and Shredder) to perform position analysis or play computer-human games. Scid can be used as a graphical interface to connect to and play games on the Free Internet Chess Server, FICS. It can use up to five piece endgame tablebases, includes a move tree with statistics, and display photographs and information of players in the database. Scid can classify games using the standard ECO code, as well as its own extensions to the ECO system. One can search for specific endings, such as pawn vs. rook or rook vs. queen. Scid's search allows filtering by player, color, year, result, and ECO code. Shane's Chess Information Database (Scid) is a popular free UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Mac application for viewing and maintaining huge databases of chess games. It is written in TCL/TK and C++. Scid has undergone several stages of development. Firstly by Shane Hudson, and then Pascal Georges. Active development is mostly with the fork - Scid vs. PC. Shane Hudson is the original author of Scid. He worked on it from 1999 to 2003 and the program is named after him (Shane's Chess Information Database). A lot of code he wrote are still in use (especially c code) and if you are curious or nostalgic have a look at his last readme. The people who helped him are thanked here. Shane's code focused on speed and most notably implemented two very clever ideas: •store chess moves using only one byte. Representing 64 squares requires 6-bits(2^6 = 64), so in order to store a move (from square to square) you need 6+6=12-bits. Add a least 1-bit for promotions and you are at 13-bits. Chess players usually like puzzles: i let you the fun of discovering how to store chess moves using only 8-bits. •when searching games for a specific position, search instead for the games that did not reached that position. This apparently strange idea is the reason why Scid's tree search is so fast. Modern computers have now a lot of memory and speed, so saving bits is a little out of fashion (and there are obviously some drawbacks: the 1-byte format makes chess960 and illegal moves difficult to store, and the tree search do not go into variations), but many other projects was created from his codebase and nowadays, PGN format apart, scid is the most known free (GPL) chess database format. Pascal Georges Pascal Georges worked on Scid from December 2006 to January 2010. He added many features: •Interface for UCI chess engines •Docking mode •FICS •Training features •support for Novag Citrine He also ported Scid to Pocket PC. The Scid Project TODO: Franz Nagl added new spelling and rating files on April 2007 Alexander Wagner June 2008 (scid-3.6.24)

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Two Knights Mate In Amateur Game

Here is a resurrected game, that I played in May 2010 Hamilton Quads. From time to time, I do look at chess and only play online with the Internet Chess Club. I only play standard long games on the ICC online chess club under my user name " diamondback". Its been two long years since I have played over the board chess and I am contemplating stopping by Ewing Chess Club, New Jersey to play in their quads very soon. Here is the crosstable of April 2013 Quads at Ewing Chess Club and one can see many names on the Ewing crosstable that also frequent the Hamilton Chess Club Quads. One name that appears on serveral occassions at Ewing CC Quads is Atomic Patzer. Maybe Atomic Patzer will post some games or pictures of Ewing Quads on his chess blog soon. Hopefully, some of the regular heavy hitter New Jersey masters who show up religiously at Hamilton Chess Club Quads will play in the Ewing CC Quads sometime. Directions to Ewing Chess Club Quads in New Jersey.

Monday, May 6, 2013

GM Timur Gareev defeats 29 in blindfold simul

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12187/707/ SAINT LOUIS (May 1, 2013) -- It took 10 hours and 39 minutes for Grandmaster Timur Gareev to topple the final king and leave the chess community in Saint Louis dazed and amazed. On Tuesday, GM Gareev put on a 33-board blindfolded simultaneous exhibition at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, scoring 29 wins, four draws and zero losses. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ezsearch.pl?search=Timur+Gareev Chessgames of Timur Gareev Press Release of Chess Life and Review about GM's Gareev Blindfold Simul Bio of GM Timur Gareev from Wikipedia Chessbase Blog article on GM Timur Gareev 33 Board Blindfold Simul Susan Polgar's Chess Daily News blog post on GM Timur Gareev 33 board Blindfold Simul