On the "Boomer", Raccoons and a warm touch

The main playing hall after the big merge

Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, I'm trying to juggle a very busy workload with playing a chess match every night this week and there's clearly not enough hours in the day for such a feat. This is one facet of my life that keeps me at "hobbyist" level in the chess world. If Congress had taken up The Beatles suggestion back in the 60's to adopt an eighth day of the week, I'd be a happy camper. So imagine this hobbyists surprise when I show up for my round last night, fully expecting to be paired down after my horrible loss the night before, and find myself paired against--no, not another Expert-- a Master! A gentleman from my home state of Ohio rated 410 points higher than me! To put that into perspective, a 200 rating point difference means the higher rated should win 75% of the time. A 400 point difference is probably closer to 98% of the time! More perspective on the strength of the tournament overall is that my opponent is seeded 53rd overall, meaning there are 52 players rated even higher than him! So the odds were stacked against me for sure. However, I had an opportunity early in our game to steer it into an opening variation I'm fairly familiar with known as the Noteboom variation, or the "Boomer" as I like to call it. It's one of those opening sequences that defies the normal tenets of how you should play in the opening: don't make too many pawn moves early, develop your Knights before Bishops, don't surrender the center with pawn captures, and so on. Yet the variation has eluded any outright refutations and is still playable, possibly because of the main positive: Black creates a passed pawn duo on the Queenside. If Black can survive the middlegame onslaught, the endgame is usually a win. Opting for this variation turned out to be a blessing for me in many ways. I entered a position I was comfortable with and I was able to test it against a very strong opponent. The game went down to the bitter end, we even promted pawns into Queens late in the game to extend the battle even further. In the end I succumbed as he had a solitary pawn left that I was unable to stop from promoting. So another loss, but you know what? I feel great about my performance last night as I went toe-to-toe with a Master and nearly pulled off a tremendous upset! It's amazing how much my own play, regardless of outcome, determines my outlook afterwards. I can only give my best and I felt I did that last night for over 5 hours. Chess improvement is a series of mountains to climb and I can now see the top of my next mountain, something I couldn't see at the start of the 107th. I'll post the game shortly, it looks to be very instructive.

Me playing in round 6 against a Master. Boom!

Another great thing happened last night and that was my wife Maureen came to watch me play. I can't tell you how much this means to me, to have her support in my crazy endeavor and to see a friendly face in the crowd does wonders for me. She stood behind me during the game and would put her hand on my back, a gesture of support with a warm touch that had a calming influence on me. She's the best "coach" I could have and she doesn't even know what a Noteboom is!

As I was leaving the hotel afterwards, nearly 1:00 am, I was startled by some commotion behind me and just caught a glimpse of a raccoon rocketing into some bushes nearby. The strange thing about it was the critter came from behind me, very close, as if I had let it out of the hotel after it's renegade mission into the building had failed to achieve it's goal (or maybe it did!). It scared the livin' daylights out of me which is good, because it was the middle of the night at the time.

A quick sidenote: What's up with this blog layout anyway? A narrow strip of text down the center with lots of blank space on either side, it's like someone gave this website a brazilian wax. I'm renaming it "The Landing Strip" if I can't figure out how it change it....

They published another of my games in the daily bulletins, which are absolutely awesome. With each one clocking in at over 100 games, by the end of the 107th I'll have over 1000 games at my disposal!

Standings:I'm currently at 2.5 points out of 6, which isn't where I'd like to be but it is what it is. I'm in 340th place out of 543 overall, and 55th in my section out of 100.

GM's duking it out on the top boards

At the top of the leaderboard, the GM's and IM's have clustered and there are 9 players with 5.5 out of 6. 18 more follow them, a half-point back. It's all heavyweight bouts on the top boards from here on out. Winning qualifies them for the U.S. Championships