Blogs

Shaking The Rust

MapleDanish
| 1

Living in Sudbury has it's perks.  We have the Big Nickel, a really tall chimney that you can see from everywhere in the city, a college that produces some of the most employable paramedics in the province, and a boardwalk made out of real boards (!)... 

The downside is that our chess club only has half a dozen regular attendees, and I'm the strongest by about 300-500 points.  This means that I only really get to play challenging games online (where I only play blitz), and at the Sudbury Championship, an annual event which I was able to win for the first time in 2011.  At the Championship, 2 or 3 2100's show up and I have a few decent games.

Anyways, long story short is I haven't played a long game in 6 months.  I usually travel to Toronto for tournaments during the summer, however, and so I've been trying to shake the rust off by playing casual long games with anyone (regardless of skill level) and by spending countless hours on the tactics trainer (here, chess.emrald.net, and chesstempo.com are all very different, but very good). 

I played the first of what I hope will be many 'pre-season' games today.  Hopefully I'll be ready to compete with the big boys down south in a few weeks.

Here's the game... any comments on how people like to "shake the rust" would be greatly appreciated.