Welcome to My Chess Week, where I write about my weekly exploits across the chess board! As we will see, things did not get much better for me as I concluded two more correspondence games and struggle with the psychological effects of chess disaster. However, some redemption appeared later in the week during live online play on Chess.com.

The first game was nothing short of a complete disaster. As you can tell by my liberal use of dichotomous adjectives, this is the game that forced me to rethink my play entirely and, in a sense, to return to my starting point to assess what is going on. 1272 played a great game of chess, but I was simply unable to match his play in a way that was effective for winning the game and maintaining my own self-confidence, which took a hit as I watched my ELO drop from a high of 1437 to 1269. I played White.

In my opinion, the following game is the stuff of nightmares. In fact, I actually had nightmares about this game the night that it was played. I am not a member of the Internet Chess Club (ICC) and although I have no problem with the site’s format, I find the resources of Chess.com to be more suitable to my skill level and general chess interests. However, I decided to test drive the ICC one weeknight and played two games against 1051, who surprised me with incredible comebacks in both endgames. I was coming off of a shocking recovery from the first game and was watching him closely for some form of trickery or blunder on my part that would cost me the game. Post-game analysis by Fritz shows me up a full 25 points going into the final three moves of the game, but this player was quick-witted and managed an incredible, nightmarish finish. Here we go:

Things were not all doom and gloom this week. Live chess treated me much better than correspondence chess. This game was played on Chess.com and was a joy to play (and win). I actually played this one while eating one of those stuffed grillers from Taco Bell, so I was impressed by the level of concentration I was able to devote to my burrito and to the chessboard…

And finally…this little gem…