{"id":1523,"date":"2012-09-19T08:25:02","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T12:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=1523"},"modified":"2012-09-19T08:25:02","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T12:25:02","slug":"chess-hannifin-vs-casazza-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=1523","title":{"rendered":"Chess &#8211; Hannifin vs Casazza 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><div class='chessboard-wrapper'><textarea id='pgn4web_eb0db0e3' style='display:none;' cols='40' rows='8'>   [Event \"VA State Championship\"]  [Site \"Fredericksburg, VA, USA\"]  [Date \"2004.03.13\"]  [Round \"3\"]  [White \"Hannifin\"]  [Black \"Casazza\"]  [Result \"1-0\"]   1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 dxc3 4.Nxc3 e6 5.Bc4 d6 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.O-O Be7 8.Qe2 Nf6 9.Rd1 Qc7 10.Nb5 Qd8 11.e5 Nd5 12.exd6 Bxd6 13.Bxd5 O-O 14.Bxc6 bxc6 15.Nxd6 Qc7 16.Qe4 Rd8 17.Bf4 Ba6 18.Ng5 g6 19.Ndxf7 1-0   <\/textarea><iframe src='http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/plugins\/embed-chessboard\/pgn4web\/board.html?am=none&amp;d=3000&amp;ig=f&amp;iv=0&amp;ih=s&amp;ss=26&amp;ps=d&amp;pf=d&amp;lch=F6F6F6&amp;dch=E0E0E0&amp;bbch=E0E0E0&amp;hm=b&amp;hch=ABABAB&amp;bd=c&amp;cbch=F0F0F0&amp;ctch=696969&amp;hd=j&amp;md=f&amp;tm=13&amp;fhch=000000&amp;fhs=14&amp;fmch=000000&amp;fcch=808080&amp;hmch=E0E0E0&amp;fms=14&amp;fcs=m&amp;cd=i&amp;bch=FFFFFF&amp;fp=13&amp;hl=f&amp;fh=420&amp;fw=p&amp;pi=pgn4web_eb0db0e3' frameborder='0' width='100%' height='420' scrolling='no' marginheight='0' marginwidth='0'>your web browser and\/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard; alternatively your wordpress theme might suppress the html iframe tag from articles or excerpts<\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I mostly wanted to try out this nifty WordPress Chess plugin.  I haven&#8217;t played any serious tournament chess since my senior year of high school in 2004.  So here&#8217;s a game from the 2004 Virginia State Championship (where I placed 38 or something terrible like that).  I never became that great of a player, but for scholastic high school tournaments, the standard game time is 30 minutes.  I&#8217;m a slow analytic thinker, so I performed much better when I had at least an hour, as I did in the state tournament.<\/p>\n<p>(I&#8217;m analyzing this game eight years later after having played hardly any chess, and I wasn&#8217;t that great to begin with, so take the following analysis with a grain of salt.)<\/p>\n<p>In this game, I play white, and defend against the Sicilian opening with the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Smith-Morra_Gambit\">Smith-Morra Gambit<\/a>.  I was rated 1030 and my opponent 1559.  He really shouldn&#8217;t have succumbed to the gambit, but he was, fortunately for me, having an off-day and must not have been very familiar with the gambit.  Typically higher players will not go for it.  But it&#8217;s what I had studied against the Sicilian, so I probably would&#8217;ve played it against anyone.<\/p>\n<p>The opening is a gambit for white because I sacrifice my d4 pawn immediately.  Black takes.  I&#8217;m down a pawn.  I offer up my c3 pawn as well.  Black takes the bait.  After <strong>4. Nxc3<\/strong>, just look at how open white&#8217;s position is compared to black, who has only moved one pawn so far.  Is it worth sacrificing a pawn for such position?  Of course.  That&#8217;s the point.<\/p>\n<p>Black makes small moves, trying to build up a defense, while I prepare for an attack on e5.  When black tries <strong>9. &#8230; Qc7<\/strong> to try defending against the attack, <strong>10. Nb5<\/strong> quickly puts him back in his place.  And with <strong>11. e5<\/strong> the attack begins, and it&#8217;s pretty much all downhill for black.  After <strong>19. Ndxf7<\/strong>, black resigns.  Both his queen and rook are under attack, and he&#8217;s bound to lose the exchange no matter what.  My pieces are breathing down his neck and his demise is only a matter of time.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I was very fortunate with this game; I don&#8217;t think a 1500&#8217;s player would typically take the gambit.  But not only did my opponent take the gambit, he allowed me to setup my attack exactly as planned.  It&#8217;s definitely one of my greatest victories with the Smith-Morra gambit, but the victory was more a matter of luck.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I think this chess plugin is quite nice.  Perhaps I&#8217;ll post some other old games; it&#8217;s fun to look back on them, even though some of them are a bit over my head now that I&#8217;m so out of practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mostly wanted to try out this nifty WordPress Chess plugin. I haven&#8217;t played any serious tournament chess since my senior year of high school in 2004. So here&#8217;s a game from the 2004 Virginia State Championship (where I placed 38 or something terrible like that). I never became that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[243],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-oz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}