What about those Chess Games !?

There was another meeting of the minds last Saturday. The third unofficial casual gathering of the Medfield Quadrangular Chess Club. [the games were played without clocks or scoresheets] This was a pot-luck event. Traditionally, we have shrimp on the barbie. This week was no exception.
We also had baked salmon and some ‘Kick’n Chicken.’ The games were on and then they were off and then on again. Did I mention this was a casual event? One more time, the Big Prize was a lottery ticket.
The results: (drum roll please) One defeat, two undefeated players and one clear winner… Christopher. With two excellent winning games, he earned it. He left without scratching the ticket though. No word yet as to whether or not he won any money. My guess is that if he doesn’t show up for work on Monday, then he hit the jackpot.
Special mention goes to Matt Gipson, who broke his losing streak by holding me to two draws. As for me? I played the most games but lost one with a final score of 1-2. A fine time was had by all. Oh, BTW: my wife Sharon was once again the star of the event due to her excellent cooking and organizational skills.

Q4 Chess Club 2nd Meeting in Medfield.

Without any fanfare, we had a casual meeting or gathering of the chess minds.  Now mind you, there was no tournament, but there was a couple of chess games played and baked salmon was served after.  And the winner was… my wife Sharon for her hosting and excellent cooking.  Due to various circumstances, one of the founding members (sic) couldn’t make it.  Another one, (Danie) arrived early and helped my wife secure digital Elton John tickets and load them on her cellphone.  We have another winner! 
     Then I played him a casual game.  Unfortunately, in his strategical execution involving castling long, he overlooked a positional sacrifice that left him with a shattered pawn structure in front of his King.  A few moves later I harvested material, yielding a trio of connected passed pawns.  He resisted valiantly, but the King found himself all alone.  Dazed and confused, he walked into a mating net and capitulated.  Citing personal business, he had to leave early. 
     Matt, the final member to arrive, missed his brother by only a few minutes.  We sat down and got right to it.  I believe I distracted him with some unrelated chatter, and he blundered a piece on his 2nd move.  So, we agreed to move on.  In the second game I returned the favor and Matt corralled my stallion in the open field.  A fine horse indeed and was sorely missed.  My King may be growing old, but stubbornness has always been his trait, so he dispatched his Queen while the royal guard set up a defensive position.  Blow for blow the game continued… one good move followed another until the next blunder, which was made by Matt, gave me the initiative with actual mate threats.  He had superior forces but couldn’t advance.  I my valiant Queen kept checking until we both agreed to a truce.  I really liked this game.  There was no scoresheet, but Matt, who as Black, snapped this photo:

And there was shrimp on the barbie

Yesterday afternoon we had some friends come over and we played an informal chess tournament which I called the 604 Quadrangular. After firing up two grills and putting on steaks and chicken drummies and of course, shrimp with lemon slices, we continued playing quick games of chess using a 20/20 format on the clocks. It was great fun. Dani Gipson won by a score of 3-1 with no losses. My wife Sharon presented the prize, a lottery ticket which yielded $20. Congratulations to Dani… and the peanut butter squares were delicious!
Here is my game with Dani: W: Dani B: Eddie 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4Nf6 3.Nc3 Bc5 4.d3 0-0 5.Be3 Be3 6.fe d6 7.Nf3 Bg4 8.h3 Bh5 9.0-0 Nd7 10.Nd5 h6 11.g4 Bg6 12.Nh4 Bh7 13.a4 Re8 14.Bb3 c6 15.Nf6 Nf6 16.Nf5 Qc7 17.d4 Rad8 18.Qd3 Rd7 19.a5 Red8 20.c3 d5 21.c4 de 22.Qc3 Bf5 23.Rf5 ed 24.ed Rd4 25.c5 Rd3 26.Qc4 Qg3+ 27.Kf1 Rf3+ 28.Rf3 Qf3+ 29.Ke1 Qh1+ 30.Qf1 Qf1+ …and a draw was agreed in a few more moves.

Returning to tournament life ~ 5th Massachusetts Senior Open

~ Earlier this year I returned to chess… the study of chess that is, and as a result, I became hungry for the tournament life.  But as you would know it, we had a little situation called Covid.  So, what I did instead was to rejoin the US chess federation and decided to read and study master games and get back into it, waiting until the tournament's return.  I couldn’t believe it had been nearly six years since I dropped out of competition.  Too many things had piled up in my personal life, preventing my participation, to even consider talking about.  Let’s talk about chess.  As spring emerged this year and Covid wore on, I moved into my new office and studio, unpacking a mountain of boxes.  I found more than a dozen forgotten boxes containing chess books, equipment, software and nearly everything I had collected since 1969.  I picked up a copy of Alekhine’s “Best games of Chess” and a chess set and began going over it that night.  The fire was rekindled.  Studying chess for about 2 hours every night before going to bed (if I even went to bed) became the norm until the present time.  So, now we arrive to the place where I was in a tournament playing chess once again.  I was eligible to play in the senior tournament because of my wrinkled birth certificate.  I entered and played.  It was a very good time.  

This blog is getting quite long… I do believe there will be a Part 2 where I’ll tell the story of my not-so triumphant return.  It was for me, a very satisfying experience.  I’ll leave a little mystery about how I did, but I truly felt great.

Book Review in process

 Last night I began a review of Garry Kasparov’s volume one of “My Great Predecessors,” but I didn’t finish or even time-stamp it.  Oh well, it was sometime early in the evening or perhaps even late in the afternoon.  The point is that I will finish the review sooner than I will finish the book.  As of this writing, I am on page 11.  To be honest, I did a quick read of some bits of the chapters, but only to whet my appetite.  This book alone is a massive undertaking, and I am talking of only the first volume!  The page numbers end at 464 and the print isn’t large, so it resembles a college text-book in many ways.  The book is historical and informative, yet not really a tome.  I have been following the story of chess since 1968 and Garry has revealed even more than few surprises to my absolute delight.  So now I return to page 11, soon to turn to page 12, and immerse my mind into the history of the struggle which began before the 1600’s.

 

Two Steps Back

A little while ago I checked my USCF rating for May and sadly, after playing for the past two years, I’ve plummeted from 1650 to 1470.  That is nearly a two-hundred point drop from last year.  Just a little reminder to myself that my goal for 2015 was to gain 200 points and break into the class A ranking.  So now I am four-hundred points off of my intermediate goal and farther than ever away from the master status.  The only good news out of this is that I now qualify to enter the “under 1500” section in the upcoming Massachusetts Open.  However, I need to be mindful of the fact that my downward spiral is largely due to several losses playing against the younger players with ratings under 1400.  I also should remember that I have only recently begun to play in chess tournaments after a twenty-five year layoff, and it is quite possible that I am not as strong as I was in 1989.

Chess Video Review

Last night slipped into an early morning before I turned in because I was watching the latest IM Dr. Kopec video, “THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP.”  I became too tired to finish it as I was approaching the last part.  I began watching this fascinating story in my hotel room at the 25th annual Eastern Class Championships in Sturbridge, Massachusetts Sunday morning.  Even though I have read and re-read these stories and followed the fresh reports of chess events since before the Fischer years, this video brought new life into the 150+ years-old story of the world chess champions.  Amazingly enough, Dr. Kopec packed all of this into one DVD lasting nearly 4½ hours.  I find myself wanting even more, wishing for inclusion of some of the earlier players like Philidor, Staunton, Tchigorin, Rubinstein, Tarrasch, Nimzovitch and Keres.  But there are so many great players that came close to the pinnacle of chess and the history too rich to include them all in one video.  As Dr. Kopec said, “It had to start somewhere!”  You can bet that I’ll be watching this again, as I already have with his other eight videos on chess.  IM Dr. Kopec is highly entertaining and instructive and I heartily recommend his videos and books as well.  For information on how to order this and many more books and videos on chess, go to http://kopecchess.com/

 

In the lead

5:39am ~  Last night I won my third game of the MCC tournament for the month of April.  I now share the lead with one other participant.  There are three other players close on our heels, so any one of us can win the event.  Or there could be a tie.  Next week will be the final round and I expect the games will be hard-fought.

A slight adjustment...

Monday, 18th of April, 2016 - 1:27pm

I'm making a slight adjustment in my blog format, utilizing the tools of my host, which provides the platform to deliver this blog.  There will be even more adjustments as I learn the process

In the meantime, I am busy preparing for the upcoming Eastern Class championships.

~ Older posts ~

Zedwaldo's Chess Blog

This chess blog will be unique in the sense that I am not a "Chess Master."  I am however, dedicated to the game and have played for more than fifty years.  I have played from coast to coast in the United States and in a few countries all over the world.  My qualifications for this blog is that I simply love chess.  My level of skill is slightly above average (bouncing between the C and B rating classes).  As a writer I want to log my progress as I return to serious study and tournament play.
    My plan is to post a weekly update of my chess activities and write a short piece which I shall call, "Fun Chess Stuff."  As I said before, I'm not a master, but I aspire to take the journey.  I will mark my gains and losses here.  Stay tuned.

Friday. 15th April, 2016

     I'm going to follow the format of posting my latest post at the top of this blog.  I mentioned in the header that I planed on a weekly posting, but I finished another chess cartoon late last night and I want to upload it now.  So the general rule of a weekly posting has now become more expedient, but not necessarily periodic.  This is to say that I might post more than once a week, or only once a week or perhaps only once or twice a month.  I might even post several times a day, as in relaying information about a chess tournament in progress.  We shall see how things develop.

Thursday, 14th April, 2016

  My first official post will be to briefly introduce myself and to jump right into what will be the basic review of my chess activities.  My name is Eddie D Griswold (aka Zedwaldo) and I play chess out of the Boston area.  I won't include lots of detail regarding my life outside chess because all of that can be found elsewhere on this website.  I play tournament chess mostly at the Metro-West Chess Club, which is currently located in Natick, Massachusetts.  I also play in selected weekend tournaments in the New England area now and then.
     The last tournament I played in was in Marlboro, where I turned in a miserable performance.  My score was 1.5-2.5 against players rated hundreds of points below me.  Every game was sub-standard and I will blame it all on the fact that I was feverish with a head-cold,
     On the other hand, I finished the 2nd round game of the monthly MCC tournament by recovering from a badly played opening by refuting my opponent's attack, ending up with a piece for a pawn.  I further consolodated my positon and then played for forced exchanges until I ended up with a Bishop+pawns -v- pawns endgame.  I feel better, and now my overall score for the month stands even at 3.5-3.5.