This was exciting! I rushed home from work to login into my chess.com account with minutes to spare. Then I made some coffee and got ready. The cat would eat later. This was a 7-round 3 2 US Chess Federation rated online blitz event. I usually score 4-5/7 but today EVERYTHING went my way. I either played really well or the others made serious mistakes. I rolled to 6/6 before conceding a draw in the last round. And it was fine because I won the event by 1.5 points. It feels great to finally do it after trying since January. My plan is to play these USCF-rated blitz and rapid events all year and see what my ratings look like. And I can do it from home. No need to jump Trump's walls. So what did I learn today? I learned about overloaded rooks. White to play!! Black's rook on d8 is extremely overloaded because it's guarding the bishop on d5 and it's connecting its partner on c8. So White wins with 22. Ba5! No what can Black play? 22. ....Rf8 loses the bishop on d5; 22. .....Rd7 runs into 23. Bg4 so the only move is 22. .... Rd6 and then comes 23. b4 and White wins a piece and the game because the rook on c8 is pinned. Lesson: don't overload your rooks!!
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AuthorNCM Vas Sladek Archives
December 2020
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