Category: Publications Page 2 of 3

I am pleased to announce that Volume 2, Issue 1 (March 2015) of Campfire Chess Magazine (CCM) is now available for free download in the publications section of the site. CCM began in September 2014 as a publication of the old OffMyChess.com and was called OffMyChess.com Quarterly Review. The magazine contains some of the same features found in the old publication including annotated games and product reviews, but this year I have worked to incorporate reports and analysis from at least one major tournament per issue. Campfire Chess Magazine is chess from the ultimate amateur’s point of view. Check out the special features in this issue:

• Product Review – Kasparov: How His Predecessors Misled Him About Chess
• The Big Deal About Berlin: An Analysis of the Ruy Lopez Berlin Defense
• The 2014 FIDE World Chess Championship
• Compiled engine analysis of all eleven games from the tournament.
• A collection of endgame positions from the tournament.
• Two of my blitz games from 2014 and early 2015 with move-by-move annotation.

As always, Campfire Chess is committed to sharing the world of chess from an amateur perspective for all people. Campfire Chess Magazine is another tool that can be used and shared with friends, students, and chess enthusiasts to see how the shared love of chess can unite the world.

I still have a hard time believing that we have already reached the end of 2014. Although it is hard to qualify the entire year in a single blog post, this edition of OMC Weekend Review will be the second to last post of 2014 here on OffMyChess.com. The final post of the year for the blog will appear on Christmas Day. I have enjoyed the many tournaments and games throughout the past year and I look forward to experiencing many more years of fine chess play from some of the world’s greatest players down to myself, who could be considered the world’s worst player. :)

So, grab a cup of coffee and join me as I present the final two annotated games of the year here on Off My Chess:

The first game I annotated was going perfectly and I was on track to win the game until an accidental mouse click doomed me. This was a terribly frustrating experience considering how well the game had been going. Look for the blender on move 40.

This subsequent live game has some excellent tactical principles as I was able to make use of some key exchanges to gain momentum and advantages on space.

I was super-stoked to come home on Friday evening and find ChessBase Magazine #163 in my mailbox! It was no time before I was down in front of my laptop watching the intro video and diving into the annotated games from the Baku tournament in the FIDE Grand Prix. If you have never checked out CBM, I highly recommend it for players of all ages. The DVD (or the download option) contains the free ChessBase reader, which allows you to read the magazine without having the full version of ChessBase.

This week, I have annotated two correspondence games in which I came out with heavy losses. Some general carelessness in the first game led to my downfall, while psychological elements played a factor in the second loss. In this first game, I was up against a 1265 player and there were several times throughout the game that I felt I would come out on top. However, those visions were short-lived and ultimately White managed to exploit my weaknesses and corner me.

This next game was difficult from the get-go. My opponent was listed as UNRATED on chess.com, but it quickly became apparent that he was playing more in the 1400-1700 ELO range. I made some significant blunders in this game and I feel that my sense of his higher ELO got the best of me. The blunders I made were tactically significant and each of them were things that I should have recognized easily, but alas I took the loss and present the game here for your enjoyment.

It has been a few days since I had the opportunity to sit down and write for the blog. Finals are this week and the family has been preparing for Christmas break. This has left little time for live chess, but I have played a few correspondence (turn-based) games on Chess.com and I decided to annotate one this weekend that has usurped my previous Best Win Ever as my new highest win ever (by 3 ELO points)!

I am proud to announce that the second issue of OMC Quarterly Review has been published and is available for free download here on OffMyChess.com! This quarter’s issue features two of my annotated games as well as product reviews and articles covering Phiona Mutesi and the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis! Volume 1, Issue 2 is available as a free PDF file on the Quarterly Review page or by clicking the cover thumbnail on the sidebar.

In This Quarter’s Issue:

• 2x annotated games from Chess.com.
• From the blog…
  • Product Review – USCF Analysis Chess Set.
  • This Guy Named Fabiano.
  • Phiona Mutesi – The Queen of Katwe.
• Quarterly Chess Statistics and Review.

The OffMyChess.com Yearbook 2014 will be available for download here on the site on January 1st, 2015 and will be the first publication product offered here in both PDF and Chessbase formats! Check back for more details as the end of the year approaches.

The two biggest holidays of the year are upon us: Thanksgiving and Christmas. For those of us here in the Surber household, it means lots of food and family time remembering the things that we are grateful for in our lives. For this issue, I have chosen a single game to review from my recent expriments with correspondence chess. At one point in time I was playing six games at a time, but I have recently restricted myself to playing two at a time to better develop my concentration skills.

In other news…

• The FIDE World Chess Championship continues in Sochi, Russia. As of today, Magnus Carlsen leads Vishy Anand by one point heading into the final two games of the match.
• The Saint Louis Chess Club is hosting a unique tournament between GMs Nakamura and Aronian for a share of a $100,000 prize. The tournament includes four rounds of classical chess followed by 16 blitz games to determine the winner.
• OMC Quarterly Review (Volume 1, Issue 2) will be available for free download on December 1st, 2014 here on the site.
• OMC Yearbook 2014 will be available for free download on January 1st, 2015 here on the site.

It has been a very exciting week here at OffMyChess.com! Of course you might know that I finally managed to break through my plateaued blitz rating and pass into 900 ELO territory! This is very exciting for me because the last time I had a 900 ELO was back in the summer as my ratings dropped rapidly to equalize from the standard 1200 ELO given to all new players on Chess.com. Once I broke through the barrier I have had relatively little trouble maintaining a 925-940 ELO range. The game below is an example of some of the interesting and competitive play I have faced recently.

Of course, this week was not without its scares, which I guess is appropriate for the Halloween season. The next game was a heart stopping affair in which I managed a dramatic comeback with the help of some blunders by my opponent and sheer blessings from the chess gods.

In addition to this week’s ratings rise, there are new wallpapers available on the newly renovated Downloads page. The official pages for OMC Weekly Review and OMC Quarterly Review have also been moved out from underneath the downloads section and now have their own link under Publications on the main navigation bar. This is to facilitate the growing number of publications and related activities coming down the road.

The chess world has been very busy this week! The Millionaire Chess Open in Las Vegas is underway, the FIDE Grand Prix rages in Baku, Azerbaijan with everyone’s eyes on the new world #2, Fabiano Caruana and his continued domination on the board. Each of these tournaments have provided some exceptional kibitzing opportunities on Chess.com and Chessbase. I have some reservations about the concept of the Millionaire Chess Open and that is why I have been reluctant to cover it in depth. I might post some thoughts on it later, but for now…on to the amateur stuff.

In OffMyChess.com Land, the chess successes have wavered through successes and failures. This upcoming week will be my first night at the San Antonio Chess Club and I am very excited about it! I was supposed to go two weeks ago, but life got in the way and I had to postpone it until this Thursday. Now, let’s take a look at some of this week’s games…the good, the bad, and the ugly:

Of course, not everything this week was rose pedals and victory dances. The following game demonstrates the depths of despair I experienced in some brutal losses.

Welcome to the third name change for the weekly installment of chess news, reviews, and my personal game annotations here at OffMyChess.com! This column began earlier in the year as My Chess Week and soon morphed into OMC Weekly, which in-turn gave rise to the Off My Chess Quarterly publication. Unfortunately, after a few weeks of giving it a serious try, I am not certain that OMC Weekly catches the essence of what I am trying to do with the column. Therefore, I have renamed the weekly entry OffMyChess.com Weekend Review, or OMC Weekend Review for short. The format and intent of this column will remain the same.

This was a very busy week and chess playtime was at a premium. Work was exhausting, so there was little time at the end of the day in which I felt that I could effectively devote to playing. However, the nights that I was able to sit down and play some blitz games were much better than my previous efforts. I hit a blitz ELO high of 890 recently, but that was briefly before I watched my ELO plunge to a dismal 715. Fortunately, it has been slowly rising back up as I seem to have found my niche again and continue study my openings and work on my tactics.

In Other News…

♟ The first issue of Off My Chess Quarterly Review is out and available for free download.

♟ The FIDE Grand Prix is taking place this week in Baku, Azerbaijan this week as Fabiano Caruana remains dominant and continues to climb his way to the top of the chess world.

♟ Chessbase Magazine #162 is out!

♟ New In Chess has some amazing articles on the Trosmø Olympiad and is available from their official website.