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Thursday, March 12, 2015

Blown Ending

     Back in the mid-1970's I was playing quite a bit of OTB chess and the other day was going through some of my old games and came across this one that was played in the state championship. Sometimes I have a compulsion to look at my old games, sort of like people have when they see some gory scene..it's repulsive, but you just can't look away.
     The scoresheets used to be stored in an old box but when I got my first engine I decided to put them all in a database titled "My Best Games." It was a horrifying experience because some of them that I thought were well played were actually riddled with errors, but there were a few good ones and this game was one of my better efforts.
     I am not sure what my opponent's rating was at the time this game was played but he went on to become a USCF Senior Master with a rating of over 2400. Today his rating has fallen off a lot, but he has a USCF Life Master title. For many years he earned a living playing chess and tutoring. What I do remember is that he irritated a lot of people but I found him to be a really nice guy when we looked at the game afterward. These days I think he is pretty much retired and lives in Texas. This game turned out to be a pleasant surprise because it was fairly well played except for my blunder at move 48 which threw away the win.

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