On My Great Dumb Moves

Now I realised I well and truly, ahem, am bad in chess.

On Monday, I went along to a Chess Club with my favorite older brother-in-law in tow, played a cute small tournament with 2 players on each side of the board and making alternate moves? How did I do? Won the first two easily enough. The first game came as a victory over a simple bishop sacrifice. See diagram (I am in White). I played 1. e6 My team-mate looked at me and said,"Bishop?" (hanging on h4), I replied,"Yup. I know."

Black (it was a 10min blitz game after all so it's hard to analyse fully in such a short time) took the White Bishop with ... Bxh4 and his position collapsed after 2. exf7+ Kf8 3. Rxe8+.

My next game was won but I lost quickly in the next 2 games as I continued to leave my King in check!! Talk about dufus.

Seeing as I am not in any position to lead the table, I sorta strayed from playing as some people had by then left, leaving the tournament with the odd player out.

I subsequently played another game with Mark's wife whom I proceeded to defeat fairly comfortably. But lost another game to an elderly chap. I had a winning position (or at least a drawing position) in the late stage and proceeded to make a mess of things.

See diagram on right. I played

1. ... Rxg2+ 2. Kf1 (Kh1 is losing) Rg1+?? 3. Kf2 Rhg2+... dumb dumb dumb dumb. The correct response was naturally 2... Qg7! I still can't believe how I overlooked such a simple position.

In the meantime, best of Christmas to everyone! Had a torrid time trying to find carpark space to get a DVD marker at Macquarie Centre last weekend, much to my chagrin. And stay away from frenzied mums with shopping trolleys, they're worse than P-platers.