Saturday, August 23, 2008
Starting to catch up
I've been playing a lot, but not taking any time to analyze or post my games. Let's see if I can get back in the swing of it.
I've only lost a couple of games in the last three months. Here's one of them. FM Ilye Figler is a guy who really has my number. It's not just that he's a much better player than I am--IM Jay Bonin is at least as good as Figler, for example, but I nick Jay for a draw one out of every three or four games--but something about Figler's style makes me feel defeated before I even push my first Pawn.
This game is a pretty good example of how not to play against the "problem" opponent.
What happened here is that I talked myself out of playing one of my normal openings, because I'd lost with them to Figler before. But it's not like I got horrendous positions; at least one of those games, I had a winning attack until I blundered.
So I played a bad variation of the Modern Defense, and then I went nuts trying to find a way to open the game up for an attack, and so I went down in flames.
I wish I could say that I've learned my lesson, but when I get to my other recent loss, you'll see the same sort of problem in the opening, though at least in that game I didn't flame out so badly.
Here's the earlier Figler game, which I don't seem to have posted before:
Another entry in my rather large collection of "almost my best game ever, but..." games.
