Brief chess bio

Last post for today!

In the event that someone I do not know stumbles across this page and wonders who I am, here are some particulars:

My USCF rating as of Jan 08 is 2062. My peak rating obtained a few years ago is 2124. I actually have a FIDE rating, but it's only based on 9 games or so, of 2100+. I am 31, and played my first USCF rated game in a junior tournament in 1990. In the early to mid 90s, I was very active playing chess, but was a lazy slob away from the board. It did not take me long to get to class A (October of '92). I did manage to win the Texas Junior Championship at age 17, my last chance to do so. December of '96 saw me finally crack the Expert rating.

A funny thing: though I had beaten some players who at one time had been 2200+, it was not until the year 2000 that I managed to defeat a Master in a long time control game. I had a nice run, defeating 4 Masters in the space of 2 tournaments. That monkey off my back, the next logical goal would have been to obtain a master's rating. But my interest in the game waned, and I played less and less, and saw my rating settle back to the 2050 level.

In the late 90s-recently, I played rarely, perhaps 2-4 tournaments per year. I was more and more frustrated by how rusty I was at every tournament, and finally decided to stop playing unless I was taking the game seriously. Last year I played in a couple events at the Austin Chess Club.

Near the end of '07, I got the bug again. But this time, rather than just playing, I finally cracked the books. It is embarrassing to admit, but from 1990 - 2007, I read cover to cover about 4 chess books: Karpov's Best Games (the first edition by RHM Press), Silman's How To Reassess Your Chess (3rd Ed.), Znosko-Borovsky's How Not To Play Chess and a book on chess psychology by Benko.

Sure, I had a few shelves worth of classic chess books. I had read a chapter of My System, played through a few games out of My 60 Memorable Games, looked at some Rook endgames, etc., but I had never studied the game seriously. "Opening preparation" consisted of trotting out something I had seen in a random GM game that week (that actually worked, though: I used Bronstein's 7.a3 in the Najdorf - Fischer attack and won a game in under 25 moves :-), etc.

So this time around, I realized that to get to 2200, I would need to study the game properly, and devote the time and effort required. So far, so good: I have been playing through several book with attacking play as the theme: Vukovic's Art of Attack in Chess, Tal's Attack With Mikhail Tal, Christiansen's Storming the Barricades, and Timman's On the Attack!!. I played in the last event at ACC in 2007, tying for first and making a 2200+ performance rating.

Why attacking themes? Well, I realized I am a wuss. My strengths in chess, imo, are more on the tactical side. Yet I played in a safety first style, never sacrificing material. As White, I played such aggressive lines as the King's Indian Attack and the Reversed Philidor/Old Indian! Needless to say, any positive results I achieved were not creditable to my opening choices. As Black I did play a bit more sharply, playing the King's Indian Defense sometimes (but again, in a pretty lame interpretation) and the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon (but, as anyone who has played this line knows, it's a pretty wussy Sicilian).

I am not going to necessarily start playing the Benoni or Gruenfeld v. 1.d4 and the Sveshnikov v. 1e4. I don't believe one must play the sharpest lines to achieve active and potentially attacking positions. But one must play ambitiously, and be willing to RISK! And risk was absent in my old games. Only when finding myself in a worse or busted position would I let myself take risks, but when you're lost, it's not really a risk to start taking chances!

I don't think I am a Tal, but I sure as Hell am not a Petrosian! Maybe I am somewhere closer to the Spassky or Keres or Korchnoi points on the continuum, I don't know. But I am determined to find out, and to embrace my true chess identity.