Back Again To The U1400s .... Or Not?

This Wednesday's U1400 match has Ryde Eastwood playing against North Sydney (?!). Deja vu indeed as my game last week was against the U1600 North Sydney team as well.

A quick look up shows the list of possible opponents from North Sydney (the numbers on the right are the Mar 08 ratings while the numbers in brackets are the Jun 08 ratings):

Carden, Matthew 1320 (1267)
Thippeswamy, Hareesh 1224 (1110)
Jennings, Andrew (Garry) 1172 (1263)
Smirnov, Anton 1110 (1371)
Palmer, Paul 691 (763)
Little, Nicholas unrated (unrated)

I played 6 year old Anton Smirnov last week in the U1600s. During our postmortem of the game, I could not help but be impressed by his level of understanding of positions, tactics and formations. He's fast developing into a dangerous tactical player and on his day, it can be a formidable task to face him. In a space of 3 months, his rating has jumped a massive 261 points to reach 1371. A very impressive record. Under his dad's guidance, I am certain he would break the 2,000 rating level before his teens. If he's on board 1 on Wednesday, then I get to play him again.

I have just been informed by my U1400 team captain, Greig that I have been rostered to play in the U1600s instead against Manly on Wednesday. Oddly, I've not received word from the U1600 team captain Les that I was playing in that group this week. *puzzled*

The list of possible opponents from Manly (the numbers on the right are the Mar 08 ratings while the numbers in brackets are the Jun 08 ratings):

Mejzini, Jack 1607 (1616)
Roberts, David 1605 (1565)
Miller, Gordon 1585 (1588)
Dimock, Chris 1549 (1581)
Schwandl, Hans 1505 (1477)
Roach, Owen 1479 (1458)

This group is definitely a tough challenge.

Thankfully, as the venues for both matches are at Ryde Eastwood RSL at the same time, it is just a simple matter of turning up and finding out which team I am supposed to play for. Talk about getting my lines crossed.

Yesterday, my brother-in-law Steven and I headed down to the Manly-Warringah chess club for a couple of rounds of chess. We met up with Tze Weng and had a chat with him. It was a rather quiet night with only a couple of players turning up but we still had a good time playing social chess at 10 minute time controls.

Steven and I have a tendency to start the clock at 10 minutes and allow the clock to run out of time and yet continue to play on because our games tend to lead to very interesting positions and it would be a shame to claim a win/loss based on time. As a result, our games normally runs to half an hour if not more. Never one to conform to openings, I played a huge variety of openings, including the Philidor, 2 Knights, Sicilian Grand Prix Attack, Sicilian Najdorf, King's Indian Defense, French, Nimzo-Indian, Scotch, Catalan, English Opening (phew, that was a mouthful) etc.

In at least half of the games, I noticed I have a tendency to miss stronger moves and it usually happens after I played it. This tells me that I really need to take more time and analyse more carefully before making moves.