Status

I figured I'd update everyone on the goings-on in Chateau fussylizard:

• I just finished Chernev's "Logical Chess: Move by Move" tonight. Overall an interesting book. Chernev chose games where everything looked so easy. If I could only win with such natural moves.
• I'm looking forward to moving onto Snyder's "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" (basically another book of games).
• I got a copy of Bain's "Chess Tactics for Students" which is highly recommended by Heisman and other instructors. Overall it looks like a great book that "builds" from one position to another (i.e. you see a simple one-move motif, then you see the same motif except that it requires a preparatory move, etc.). Unfortunately most of it looks far too easy, but I will probably go through it anyway to ensure all the patterns are firmly burned into my brain. 434 problems should be about 3-4 hours, right? :-)

I also played a couple of games on InstantChess.com the other night. I won the first game when my opponent overlooked a pin that would win the exchange. We were playing G/15+5 and he had over 12 minutes left. The jerk just let his clock run down without making a move. This sort of thing really hacks me off. Or the people that just disconnect when they are losing since on InstantChess they get five or six minutes to reconnect before the server declares you win by forfeit. If you are losing then either defend the position or resign. Sheesh.

My next game ended abruptly after my opponent cancelled it after move 2. I guess he didn't like the way things looked after 1.e4 e5 2.d4 (he was playing black). After this I set my game seek settings to only play class B and higher players (I'm rated a low class B) so as to hopefully avoid some of the riffraff.

My third game was against a 1700-something player which I lost on the black side of the Ruy Lopez. I can't remember the last time I played against the Ruy, and I got into trouble early. I sacrificed a pawn to stir things up but to no avail. Needless to say I now have learned a line against the Ruy for future use.

I'm still working on my summary of my MDLM experience. I can be a bit long-winded at times, but I hope everyone finds it interesting when I finish it.