I have a confession to make, friends.

Lately, I've become a bit stagnant. Truth be told, I haven't been actively seeking challenges much since school started back. Once upon a time, I would click the "open seeks" link and accept the first ten or twelve open challenges I could find; then, I'd slave for days to make the best moves possible across the board, doing my best to play the best chess of my life in every single game. Did it happen? Not by a long-shot, but by and large I always played satisfactorily - well, satisfactorily enough not to lose sleep over my blunders.

Since school started back, though, I've been very chill on the chess front. I'm still studying regularly - I'm even buying new books now and keeping up with Waitzkin's academy. Generally, however, I've got a few people I play on a regular basis, and aside from that - and for the tournament games I have going on - I haven't been seeking additional games. Call me a slacker, but it just isn't top on my list of priorities; as a result, however, I've steadily felt as though I wasn't being properly challenged most of the time.

That is, until this last tournament started. I signed up for a tournament that was being hosted by the Free chess lessons group awhile back; it finally started on 6 September with five groups of four players each, and naturally I began immediately trying to establish the best positions possible on each of my boards. Generally, the games were (and have been) uneventful. Uneventful with the exception of one game in particular.

Enter aldin5. (S)he was by far the most challenging player I've played in a very long time. The game was super-exciting from my end, and despite coming away with the W, I can honestly say that I was on my toes throughout. I've gone through and annotated this to the best of my ability; I've submitted it for analysis, but the annotations you see now are mine (with a little help from the Crafty engine). I hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed battling through it.

What I want to emphasize here isn't the outcome, nor is it the (very few) good moves I made throughout: I want to emphasize the mistakes. I was very liberal in scrutinizing myself here, and you'll see that there are tons of ways I could have played better. This game was about as far from perfect as a game can be; it illustrates the importance of keeping a level head, however, and I feel as though that aspect of the game was the one area in which I truly excelled.

Addendum: Here's the official computer analysis. After seeing that I literally walked into 2 forced mate situations, it makes the W all the more enjoyable.