A combination of family and work factors have kept me from playing or studying as much this year.

So it’s really no surprise that my rating is sagging in the low 1600s.

Since my non-chess life looks like it’ll be about the same for 2010, I expect my chess play and study time to also be about the same. It isn’t realistic, therefore, for me to set a short-term goal of improvement. If I can keep my rating from dropping too much despite limited playing time, that will be an accomplishment.

But I am continuing to study and play as much as possible, because I enjoy both.

My current study activities include:

• Intensive opening study
• Problem-solving in the new book by Khmelnitsky, Chess Exam: Matches against Chess Legends, You vs. Bobby Fischer
• Going over my own (few) games
• Thought-process exercises of my own devising

OK, I know what you’re thinking. Why am I, a middling class player, doing intensive opening study?? I should be doing tactics, tactics, tactics!

Save your breath, at least for now. How and why I’m doing opening study will be the subject of another post in the near future.

When other aspects of my life calm down and I can start playing a lot more tournament games, I think it’s possible for me to move my rating up out of the 1600s. In meantime, I’ll just try to have fun.

The mystery was solved in startling fashion when I tried to enter the game score into ChessBase the next day. I got to this position:

I was White and had just played b2-b4. Black’s next move is recorded on my score sheet as axb3 e.p.

So … how in the world did I end up with two b-pawns and two c-pawns??

Here’s my theory. I expected Black to play axb3 e.p., so when he moved his a-pawn to the b3 square I immediately looked down to write the move on my score sheet. When I looked back at the board I must have seen this:

In other words, I think he must have moved his a-pawn to b3 and forgot to remove my b4-pawn! And neither he nor I noticed. Naturally, I played axb3 immediately, resulting in this position:

That’s really bizarre!

Black to move

I played tournament chess in high school and then life interrupted chess, as it does for so many. My interest was rekindled by teaching my kids how to play, and almost seven years ago I started playing tournament chess again.

I was very fortunate to find the MetroWest Chess Club located very close to where I work. It’s pretty easy for me to get there on Tuesday nights to play a slow game. (The standard time control at the club is 40/90 SD/30.)

I started out in February 2003 with my old high school rating of 1192. I took lessons for about a year with Dan Heisman. More recently, I’ve taken a few lessons from two IM Igors: Igor Foygel and Igor Khmelnitsky.

My rating improved fairly steadily until about three years ago. Since that time I’ve been in a plateau in the low- to mid-1600s.

I believe this plateau is largely because of limited playing and study time over the last couple of years. Being an adult chess improvement seeker requires a lot of patience and a long-term view, because life continually interrupts chess.

Still, I believe that gaining another 100 points is a reasonable goal, and I think I have an outside chance of getting to Class A eventually.

Blunderprone wants ACIS to post their thoughts and methods related to chess improvement. I have few things on my mind about my own chess improvement that I will post about soon, including:

• Why I never joined the Knights de la Maza
• My current rating plateau and whether I think I can improve
• What if I fail to improve
• A surprising discovery I made about the disparaged practice of memorizing opening lines
• My experiences with a technique using ChessBase for practicing thought process.
• Why the rating system fools people about how much work it takes to improve

I’m happy to announce that Chess Imager is now available in open-source form.

I did, however, by exchanging queens into a disadvantageous endgame.

(show chess board) (hide chess board)

I added Smitty’s blog to my list of MCC blogs on the sidebar.