End of the first half - 157

It's quite a long time since my last entry. Since then I've played 7 games, and now have a gap of almost a month until the club games resume in January. The first half of the season has gone pretty well in terms of performance rating - approx. 157 (i.e. about 1850 FIDE), and I've met some pretty strong opponents.

During this time I've continued lessons with WIM Vita Chulivska on ICC, on average one hour per week. I was pretty ambivilent for the first few, but ever since we've started analysing games (my own, and some GM games) it has been interesting, funny, enjoyable, and very informative. I would definitely recommend her as a coach and look forward to increasing that schedule at some point in the future. In the mean time however I think I need to set chess aside for some weeks.

With it being 7 full games I can't really annotate them all in one go, and may start getting a bit more selective (maybe I should start only including the ones I don't lose!?). Here are the next couple.

Play chess online

Well that game certainly supported the 'secret to club chess' entry about simply avoiding blunders. At the same time, it was quite an interesting game. White also believed too much in blacks ideas on the queenside, and fell too much into passive defence. He had some strong ideas (e.g. Bh3, Bh6 etc.), but didn't follow them through. The move f2-f4 also arrived rather late.

Play online chess

A pretty odd game. I didn't quite know how to respond to his rather off-beat opening choice, and got carried away. Still, it's quite impressive how my centre crumbles. It reminds me a little of the french defense.