First entry!  Had three games at Saturday Chess today: a loss and a draw with James H., and a win against Nathan M.

The first game I played black, and before the game started James was talking to me about how he had lost in the last tournament against the Scotch Gambit (a game against Ron Finegold, father of Ben Finegold, highest rated played in Michigan).  We walked through the first few moves of the opening from a book he had, and I could see right away that there would be some early complexities with such a gambit.  For those of you that are not familiar, it goes something like 1. e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, 3. d4 exd4, 4. Bc4!? ....  The standard Scotch Opening goes 4. Nxd4 instead, so in the gambit, white is giving up the pawn to gain speed on development and hopefully a quick early attack.  James thought he might start playing this opening.

Anyway, after we looked that over a few minutes, we started the game and James playing white opened 1. e4 ....  Obviously, I thought I would let him try out his Scotch Gambit, so I answered 1. ... e5.  But he then played Nc3!  I was like, hey!  "I thought you were going to play Nf3?"  He offered to let me take the move back, since he knew that I have been playing 1. ... d6 almost exclusively the last two months, but I decided to play on with 1. ...e5 and see how rusty I was. 

We did not take notation this first game, which is a shame because it ended in a really tight end game, with James being one pawn up.   He missed a win opportunity when he could forced me to trade queens (we each had pawns that had queened), and thereby creating a passed pawned and resolving his doubled isolated pawns on the b-file.  Instead, he took my pawn at b4 that was blocking both his remaining pawns on the b-file, and this allowed me to check his king until I got a chance to trade queens.  I thought I had a draw position because I had a clear path to the queening squate (b8), but I failed to realize that his second pawn would give him an extra tempo!  Just goes to show that I need more end game study.  He actually stalemated me, but we were messing around by that time, so I let him take the move back and he found the mate.

My second game, I played white and opened c4, Nf3 as I have been the last four months trying to improve my English opening.  This was a closed game, but again I ended up a pawn down after miscalculating an exchange where James made a discovered attack on my queen, forcing me to trade queens, but before taking my queen back, his knight made one more jump checking my king and taking the pawn.  I had no way to take the knight back, so  I just moved my king out of check, and James completed the exchange of queens and got up a pawn.  In the end I was able to lock the pawns in place, and had a possible advantage even with a pawn down since I had a knight and James had a bad bishop.  Unfortunately for me my knight ended up in a defensive position after James doubled up his pawns on the c-file, and this allowed him to trade my knight with his bishop removing my only advantage.  After that, I walked my king over to my own doubled pawns on the c-file, and opened the file by taking his b-pawn.  This started a rook exchange that eventually led us to a draw position with my king defending a d-e-f pawn break, and his own king having to stay back to defend against my passed pawn on the b-file.

My last game was a light-hearted, fun game with Nathan where he played the Polish (1. b4).  I played casually and quickly (time control was G30), and missed a couple of good moves (free bishop!), but in the end check mated Nate with a passed pawn (queening on g1).  Not a game either of us could be ashamed of, but not a cerebral masterpiece either.

If you live in the area and want to play some chess Saturday mornings, come join us at Burger King on the corner of River Road and Clinton in Saint Clair.  All levels and all ages welcome!