Praxis Practice 2

One of my TeamLeague team mates was good enough to give me a training game at 30' + 30" today. I won't bore anyone by discussing the whole game, but I did find two nice tactical points that I don't think I would have seen if I hadn't been doing this excercise.

SimianChatter (1793) vs TeamMate (1673)
After 17. Ng5-e6

This is not a sacrifice at all, but a 'free hit', available because of the complete immobility of the Knight on d7 so after 17. ... fxe6 18. dxe6 followed by 19. exd7 White opens the a2-g8 diagonal and exposes d6 just for starters. I hadn't fully worked out the implications of 17. ... Be7, whether I could play N6c7, R or Qf3, or if the retreat Ng5 was necessary, but for the purposes of this game having those options was enough, later I will need to have it all worked out before entering into a line like this.

SimianChatter (1793) vs TeamMate (1673)
White to move

Finding the killer... sniffing the possibility of 37. Qd7+ Zwischenzug is what convinced me to go into the line with 32. Be6, although I expect that something like 35. ... Qf5 is at the very worst holding for Black. None-the-less, from the diagram 36. Qxe6 Qxc3 37. Qd7+ wins a Rook.

A quick progress report...

Standard Rating: 1819, RD 116.9 (best: 1920)
Blitz Rating: 1598, RD 88.3 (best: 1618)

Finally moving in the right direction, but both still meaningless until those RD's are much lower.

I've now worked through about 600 problems from Fred Reinfeld's "1001 Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" at least once. From this week, I plan to make a small modification to the method of working through this book. I'll spend more time in the first few chapters that have simpler motifs and more problems to solve, with quick reviews of the shorter, later chapters most of which I've almost completed.