Activity & Pressure Drops
Submitted by
Samuraipawn on Wed, 11/07/2007 at 1:22am.
I ran to catch the tram with only ten minutes until the battle was scheduled to commence. I sit down and breath a huge sigh of relief. After traveling for about ten meters the tram abruptly stops and the tram driver announces that "Due to technical problems I will have to ask you to please step off the tram. Another one will arrive in fifteen minutes".
Fifteen minutes! I don't have fifteen minutes! I ran back home and jumped on my bike and pedaled like a madman all the way to the club. I arrived fifteen minutes late and did the best to psyche my opponent by taking it really easy; I took of my hoody, I sat down and gave my opponent a handshake, I brought out my bananas and water bottle and filled in the score card. The whole game can be seen here.
I would like to thank two people for this victory and hopefully future ones. The first one is Temposchlucker who after my last game with the Leningrad Dutch gave me the advice to not make so many pawn moves. My first thought was: "Wow, that's some really good advice! So you mean that all I have to do is make less pawn moves and I'll win?"
I tend to be a bit moody when I've lost. But after a while I understood that was Tempo was talking about was activity. I noticed that whenever I played the Leningrad I had a tendency to do a lot of passive pawn moves instead of active piece moves. So in the game above I had that piece of information at the forefront of my mind at all times and tried to find more active responses to my opponents plans.
Thanks Tempo!
The other one whom I would like to thank is Likesforests. He and Loomis are some of the best analysts in the blogosphere, and if you ever get comments from them, consider yourself lucky. They always have profound things to say and are very generous with both their time and knowledge. Likeforests commented my last game and reminded me that it is often better to keep your pieces and the pressure when attacking. So i tried in the game above to increase the pressure instead of exchanging pieces when I didn't have to. Thanks man!