How to Think and Win at Chess

[I previously posted this at chess.com on 5/30/2008]
After winning 3 games in a row, I knew that maintaining the wins would be very hard as the opponents would get stronger. I also knew it would be fun playing higher rated players. So, the self-talk began. I suspected that the rest of players I would play [...]

[I previously posted this at chess.com on 5/30/2008]I went into my 4th game wanting to maintain the momentum I had (gained) after winning both my games the day before. I am looking at the scoresheet to see what I remember about this game, and it appears it was a pretty quick game. We had 6 [...]

[I previously posted this at chess.com on 5/29/2008]The first two games featured “Indian Defenses” and I thought they were King’s Indian Defenses. GotGoose correctly pointed out that those were Benoni Defenses. The third game was a Benoni. (Which one? Old? Classical? or…?) I am not an Opening theorist.
What I liked about this game was that [...]

[I previously posted this at chess.com on 5/28/08]After losing the first game with White, I decided to study/review the King’s Indian Defense and use it as Black against 1.d4. In the previous couple of tournaments, I had played the Gruenfeld Defense. Going to this tournament, I had not settled on any Defenses against 1.d4, but [...]

[I previously posted this at chess.com on 5/27/08]
Here is my first game in the 17th Annual Chicago Open that I played in over the weekend. I was White, and I lost to a King’s Indian Defense that I mishandled at various points. At first, I lost a bunch of tempos – (poor/inconsistent decisions). I [...]