A couple of pictures of the Citrine hooked up to the PC

Here are a couple of pictures of the Citrine:

Finally won a game as black, barely

Hello all my imaginary chess fans out there!! ha ha! I'm still waiting for my first comment :(

Anyway, I finally won a game as black but I almost blew it. I actually would have blown it if the computer didn't make a couple more errors later on the game. I'm posting two pictures of the game showing the first half and then the second half. I am really proud of my Nf4 move on move 31 but like Fritz 10 says in its analysis I should have captured with my bishop on move 27!

Please give me any comments and let me know if you'd like the PGN file.

More on the chess school later this week, still working on the first month.

Finally won a game at the upper level

After losing a few games I decided to hunker down to see what I can do. I did win a game as white. It was a good game and after running the PGN through Fritz 10 for analysis I didn't make any glaring blunders. Of course Fritz said there were some better moves, and of course in hindsight there always is. Right now I'm still in the first month of the chessmaster school. Right now we are going over some annotated games by Capablanca. Next comes some practice positions and some positions where I am supposed to come up with a plan based on the pawn structure and the placement of the pieces. Much better than a "find the best move" that I'm used to. I'll give a full report on how that goes probably early next week. For now I've attached a picture of the game I won. You can blow up the picture and see the moves on the right hand side. Again, disregard the time shown and the rating. Any feedback is appreciated!

Brief update on the Chess School

The chess school has 13 "modules" which consist of information given in PDF files. I am amazed at the amount of information so far. I'll edit this sometime today to give a complete breakdown of month number 1.

Above is a picture of the course outline for month number 1. I won't divulge specifics about each module but will be happy to answer general questions.

Picture of annotated game by Fritz 10

I was white and the Citrine was black. Disregard the names and the ratings! that is what is reported by Arena if it's just monitoring and you're not actually playing against it. The time doesn't move either. This was played at a level which had an average of 20 seconds per move. Rest assured at the higher levels Black does not play as poorly!

As you can see in this position black is pretty much lost. With the move I play Nxf7 (fritz gives it an exclam, but it's rather obvious). White gets two pawns for the knight and open files to the black king. It also helps that white has 4 pieces on the king side compared to blacks one! Black does manage to slither over to the queen side where all of his peices are so mate is staved off for while. With whites material advantage it's only a matter of time. Citrine actually resigns at move 28 but I played on anyway. Save a copy of the pic so you can play along at home. If you click on it, it will blow up real nice on your desktop.

Chess school report tomorrow!!

Played a few quick games against the Citrine

Played a few fast games against the Citrine to get a feel for its playing style. I must admit it made a few moves which impressed me. I was feeling good in most of the games and then all of a sudden I realized it had planned some rather deep tactical surprises for me and all of a sudden I was down a pawn or two. So far I am impressed but it does take a little getting used to how to move the pieces on the sensor pads. If you don't do it right and in a particular order the machine squaks at you.

Using an older version of the Beta Arena software I was able to flawlessly interface the chess computer to the graphic interface of the arena software. It is so nice to play over the board and see the peices actually move on the laptop chess software. This allows you to save the game as a pgn file to analyze later.

I won a game (after about 5 played) and will post that shortly along with first thoughts about the Chess Master School.

I recieved my Novag Citrine yesterday

I received my Novag Citrine yesterday. I'm having some issues interfacing it to my PC to be able to use it with the Arena software. I'm going to work on that tonight. Tommorow I plan on playing one game at the highest level against it. The entire game will be posted along with annotations from a Fritz 10 analysis. My comments/thoughts will also be included.

Later this week I will post general information on what I am learning via the International Chess School.

Check back on Thursday evening for the game results!

My Pursuit to get my USCF expert rating

I've been playing chess since the late 70's and have decided that I'm going to become a chess expert. Right now I'm a class B player.

I have ordered a Novag Citrine to play and to interface to my computer. I have Fritz 10 and Arena chess software for training. I am also getting a monthly subsription with the International Chess School. I will be updating this blog about once a week to report on my progress. I will also be commenting on the Novag Citrine, posting games I've played and give my opinions on the ICS.

Please check back periodically and feel free to leave comments!!

You can get more information on the Novag Citrine here:

www.classicchessandgames.com/NovagCitrineModel1032.htm

You can get more information about the International Chess School here:

http://www.chessmasterschool.com/