Category Archives: chess

Beautiful move.

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If I write that I was very unhappy with the start of the Swedish Championship, one might automatically presume that it was due to my loss in the third round, against Thomas Ernst, but no. I did not play good chess in that game, but the worst was during those three first rounds, when I had no ideas, and only saw dead draws everywhere. It happens sometimes, but this time around it was worse than I can remember it ever being before. But, now I am out of it. Perhaps the turning point, idea-wise, was in the post mortem (after game analysis), on move 15, against Erik Blomqvist:

Two rounds to go.

Experimenting with Twitch

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Twitch was not my usual cup of tea until i found out that there are plenty of strong Go-streamers, much stronger than I am. I watch almost everything that the European Go Federation streams, and only occasionally do I get a bit depressed that such magnificent commentators have so few viewers (relativeto other games). It seems to me to be a sign of the times, and as I am getting older and grumpier, you can probably guess where that rabbit hole leads. Don’t get me started on the times.

But, I will try out streaming now and then in the next month, some Go and some Chess. Perhaps there will be Youtube videos soon thereafter. “Baby steps”, I tell myself. Hopefully I will be able to walk.

So, check on “grumpy”, but check on “evolving” too.

The Swedish Go Team managed to take second place in the B-group of the Pandanet European Team Championship, and it gave us the chance to play a qualifying match against Austria. For the second time this year I got to meet a lower rated opponent:

It is very unlikely that I would have found the kill (move 169), unless I had help from AI-sensei to analyze the game. It is a tool that I find indispensable.

Carlsbad Level 1. course coming up in August

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The first weekend in June I held a workshop on the Carlsbad structure for Swedish elite juniors, in Lund, Sweden. As usual, when I have prepared a big theme like this, I was not able to go through even half of that which I had prepared. The two days turned out to be two days too little for me to get even half the way. So, for those who attended and anyone who is interested, I will publish a few of those games that we did not have the time to go through (the one below we managed to skim, very shortly).

I will hold a Carlsbad workshop in week 32, 7-13/8, where you will be able sign up to as soon as I get a hang of the “event”-function in WordPress. The cost of attending will be 130 Euro, which includes 8 hours of Carlsbad lessons online, and a 1½ hour private session for going through games of your choice. If you are interested you can send me a message with the “contact” button on the left.

The Swedish Championship starts on Saturday, and I cannot say that I am well prepared, so I will try to reign in my ambitions and just play some good games, hopefully.

…and the two first boards,

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Tonight Sweden is again playing in the European Team Championship (GroupB), on Pandanet, at 20.00 CET, against Italy. The team is somewhat stronger this time and I will watch it from the sidelines. Again Fredrik Blomback(6d) and Charlie Åkerblom(5d) play the first and second board. Here are my own comments to their games from the last match against Finland. I did not use an AI for the analysis, so I hope they will reflect my own strength and weaknesses, and some of the awe I feel for these strong players.

Charlie did not have his best day, so I have kept the comments to a minimum, leaving more comments for one of his better days:

Fredrik played a beautiful game: