Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Rough stretch lately...

I've been on a loosing streak as of late. I guess that I haven't made as big of a jump as I once thought. Of course, I was not playing much over the last week may have had the effect of slanting my memory as to how many games I was winning.

I've requested the weekend of Feb. 17th off work to attend the Valentine tournament. I don't think that I'm going to play, but it will be the first tournament that I am going to even see in person. I think it will be a good chance for me to see how things work and get some of the nerves out of the way in my preparation for next year. Hopefully I will be in the 1300 range and have the possibility of being competitive.

I've made it half way through "Chess Software User's Guide" and have a fair understanding of exactly what a chess database program can do for my game and how to use one. I have downloaded "ChessDB" which seems to be a pretty powerful program for being free and comes highly recommended.

I've also made it to the tactics section of "The Complete Idiots Guide to Chess". Nothing overly new in the book so far, which I think is a good thing. It proves that I have at least been playing the game correctly!

L8R

Raths

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve, it's Ma.
From what I've read here life is good with you, the Mrs and the kids! We are still in the States, and are still enjoying every day with the kids, although I do miss the lot at home. What is this Fritz 10 you are talking about so much? Enjoy your Valentine tournament and the very best for you and yours!! Ma

Raths said...

Hello Ma! Happy to hear from you! I thought sure that you would be back on SA by now.
Yeah, things are going good on the home front. The kids are growing like weeds (especially the little ones!) and the dog has even settled down and got into a routine.
Fritz 10 is the "latest greatest" chess playing program out there. It recently won a match against the world champion and has become a great tool for analyzing my games.
I'm so happy that you found my blog and left a comment. I try to post a couple of times a week so check back often!

Steve