Thanksgiving is now a memory and we turn our attention to the next big holiday, Christmas! I have to admit that I am not one to go all-out in celebrating Christmas, but there is a significant amount of nostalgia associated with the holiday that I enjoy. Furthermore, it is a wonderful time to indulge with the children and go back to a simpler time when the worst thing I had to worry about was my early bedtime. As Christmas approaches, my university studies are winding down for the end of the year. Seminary work typically ends in the middle of December and resumes in January, so there will (fortunately) be some extra time to complete the OMC Yearbook as well as finish some books I am reading and spend more time with the family.

In the world of chess, the Qatar Masters Series is dominating headlines this week and there are live streams available on a multitude of sites including Chessbase and Chess.com. For me, giving up blitz chess has been a godsend like nothing I could have ever imagined. I have been playing a series of correspondence (turn-based) chess games and have been playing well into the Class E and D categories! My best win came recently against a 1400 ELO player, which is something I never would have fathomed when I began this site earlier in the year.

Today I want to show you a correspondence game I played over about a week’s timespan. I am convinced that this game could have been finished much quicker than it was, but my opponent chose to wait for 20-22 of the 24 hours allowed for each move whenever he was placed in a precarious situation. This became more of an issue as we entered the final stages of the endgame. In the end, I think that this is an exceptional little game and demonstrates how far I really have come over the last few months in my knowledge and execution of chess theory and practice.