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Miscellaneous updates

By Steve | June 5, 2006

Rating

The first time my rating crept up into the upper 1400s was last summer following the World Open. It immediately plummeted throughout the fall back into the upper 1300s. Now it’s back up around 1470, and it’s stayed about the same through the last couple of tournaments.

Trying a new teacher

I’ve been taking lessons from Dan Heisman for the last couple of years. Dan lives in Philadelphia, and I live in Massachusetts, so our lessons have via the ICC and speakerphone. Lately I’ve been thinking about trying some face-to-face lessons. Last week I met for my first lesson with IM Igor Foygel, a chess coach who plays regularly at my club. We went over a few of my games, and he gave me some tactics assessment exercises to do for next time.

Endgame practice saves a blitz game

About a year and a half ago I studied Pandolfini’s Endgame Course pretty thoroughly. I think it was in that book that I saw the technique for a knight holding its own against a king and a rook pawn. I didn’t think it was very likely that I’d see exactly this situation in one of own games. At least until this blitz game from last night.

8/2K5/8/8/5k2/7p/3N4/8 w - - 0 60
wKc7,Nd2/bKf4,Ph3

White to move

I had just enough seconds left to remember how to save the game. The knight stops the rook pawn and stays just out of reach of the king by moving around from f1 to h2 to g4 to e3.

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