Welcome to OMC Weekly (formerly My Chess Week), where I write about my weekly exploits across the chess board! I was relieved to see my online ELO becoming much more balanced this week and hovering around the 1000 range. Certainly I remain a beginning player, but I have now improved from an ELO of 600 to 1000 in just a few months.
This week, I would like to examine two games played against a 900 rated player on Chess.com. Have you ever played a game online where you could feel the frustration coming from the other player? The first game was filled with emotions and although I have been known (quite frequently) to lash out after losing a game, I could feel the frustration coming off of 913 during this game, especially when he requested a rematch without hesitation.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the psychological effects of losing can have consequences for other chess games. This is apparent in 913 from the previous game, whose ELO following our previous game dropped to 817.
And finally, some news from the international scene. It was announced last week that Pawn Sacrifice, the upcoming biopic about the 1972 match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky will get its world premier at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival! The film stars Tobey MaGuire as Bobby and Liev Schrieber as Boris. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find much on the web about the movie, but I hope that following its premier that it receives more attention at the box office in the United States than Life of a King did. Unfortunately, Searching for Bobby Fischer did poorly at the box office although it was responsible for a temporary resurgence of chess interest in the country. Hopefully studios will see the promise in a movie like Pawn Sacrifice and give it a larger opening and run than more recent forays into the world of chess film.