Welcome to SquirrelChess.com!

The tournament of LEPers is in full swing and I have to say that I am already having fun despite having lost the first round. It was nice playing live chess again and 'meeting' other chess bloggers is - well - priceless. After some lively discussion of lease conditions with my landlord I arrived late for my game against Chessaholic. Luckily for me the game started relatively quiet, even though it seems that both of us had no clue about the opening (I only very recently started to experiment with the english opening). In the end, I messed up and allowed Chessaholic to get two connected passed pawns, leaving me no chances (aside from the draw by repitition I overlooked...) in the end, see my analysis below. Anyhow, I try to focus more on the good things lately: I got an enjoyable hour of chess and met another fun guy I am looking forward to meeting again for a game or two. Next round this week against Blunderprone.

A while ago, Donnie from Liquid Egg Products organized a nice chess blogger tourney on FICS. He announced the second "Tournament of Lepers" late April and I signed up for it, provided that it wouldn't start before June because I was very busy in May. Well, I am still busy at work and with private matters and totally forgot about it - until yesterday, when my trusty RSS reader notified me of the first round, and I am "in".

My first reflex was to leave a comment saying something like "sorry, I am way too busy". After all, I have already trouble keeping up with my correspondence games at ChessWorld. But on second thought, I decided to play. May be a few nice games against fellow chess bloggers are just the thing I need to relax a little. I just have to remind myself to take it easy and NOT curse myself for an hour or so after I lose. Anyway, first round this week - I will play White against Chessaholic.

As I started playing chess online I thought this would be a rather unsocial hobby. While many chess players come and go and I hardly play more than a pair of games against the same person, I am always pleased to play chess with a few "regulars". DreadPirateJosh is one of the first persons I played chess with and I still remember that some of his encouraging words helped me not to give up. Here is a game from our latest encounter. Most of the pieces came off the board quickly and I found myself in a promising endgame position, one pawn up. After a few careful miscalculations, however, the pirate managed to sneak a pawn to promotion and I resigned. I tried my best to understand this endgame better. While I have now an idea where I went wrong, I still don't have the skill to convert my one pawn advantage into a victory (I tried a few times against the computer), but may be t=it was a draw in the first place, anyway. Comments, particularly from more experienced endgame aficionados, welcome! (hint, hint, ...)