Sunday, March 30, 2008

Tug O' War


Einstein's Equivalence Principle begins with a thought experiment that a scientist enclosed in a box which is affixed to a rope and tugged by a "being" at constant acceleration cannot prove the difference between his constantly accelerating situation versus a constant gravitational field such as if that same box were at rest sitting in earth's gravitational field. In his thought experiment Einstein does not speculate on the nature of the "being" pulling the rope, but I imagined this divine being as a combination of the mighty Atlas and his grandson Hermes.

Game three of Far West Open 2008 was against an expert player a little closer to my age, although I suspect he was probably a little older than me, maybe 45-50. Right out of the opening, my opponent gave me some rope in the form of initiative against weak pawns and squares. Sometimes winning is a little more unnerving than losing because when you're winning, you have something to lose. Anyway, I didn't lose my grip or hang myself with the rope he gave me despite missing some stronger continuations. Instead, it was pretty much a wire-to-wire crush with me keeping the initiative and him remaining off balance the entire game.



I was already at 1.5 points which was what I expected to score for the whole tournament. I only needed a half point in the next three rounds to reach my pre-tournament goal of 2.0/6. I find disappointment too painful, so I tend to set expectations low. More than that I get to consider gravy. Being a pessimist has some rewards. It's probably also why I tended to overread optimistic confidence and overconfidence as hubris.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Ernie, I'm not questioning your move "d4", but this looks he was trying to use a "Closed Variation" against your Dragon set-up. In that case, "g6!?" was okay as long as he puts the Knight on e7.

But a better idea if he was going to try this system with a move behind against White would be to play ...f5 and then ...Nf6. White of course, would be a move up the defense and the "Knight" at "f3" is not now the best line.

As I reflect on this, since Black is trying a White System normally used against the Sicilian a move down, I do not see how it can be used to stop "d4." In fact, since he would probably have to take at "d4", he would be playing a Sicilian but mixing two systems having already played "d6" and "e6" thereby creating those "holes" you were talking about on the dark square complex.

Nice exploitation, and a nice strategic ploy. One of the many finesses of a Reverse Set-Up such as the English and Reti offer.

Unknown said...

Hi Ernie, by the way, I wanted to comment on this because I feel it's important. Your opponent, according to his rating is a little better than I am at the present time.

This "Model" serves nicely, although I do not recall having made that exact error before. I might have, but I usually do not mix systems.

My system of study was tedious, but I learn a lot from the mistakes of others. This was instructive, although it turned out badly for Dominguez.

It isn't necessary to learn only from my own games, but it is necessary to learn from games I find like this and others lurking about out there.

transformation said...

my blog roll is so enormous, that instead of adding folks, must instead for now, add them to a list of folks to add, so that i can renovate my swelling ranks... in a large format in a way that is meaningful, not superficial.

i am adding you to that, and this note is to say welcome aboard. email comment back at my blog, for those greatly appreciated files.

warmly, dk

Robert Pearson said...

Really enjoyed playing over that one, though probably not as much as you enjoyed pummeling him...

transformation said...

damn, thats a game of chess!