Circle 2: Comversion of Pawn is complete.
It took me nearly three hours to solve all 60 problems. I was gonna stop at the
second hour, but thought "what the heck!" and did everything until the end.

Kings Gambit:
After solving the 60 problems, I turned my attention to continue learning the Kings Gambit fischer variation. After one hour, I was consistently displaying 100% on the practice test of CPT. So I decided it was time for me to play a training game against my favorite program "Der Bringer".

(A side note: I own a lot of programs. Fritz, Hiarcs, Crafty, Arasan, Genius. But my favorite was bringer for its simplicity and ease of use. Its not a very strong program by computer standard, crafty can easily defeat it, but for me it works just fine)

Now, Its already 3am in the morning, and my eyes are burning, so I was really tempted to lower the strength of bringer to my level. I dont enjoy being thumped, but decided against it. I wanted to see how far I can go against very best play.

First the complete game score:

[White "Nezha (1753)"]
[Black "Der Bringer (2400)"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 d6 4. d4 g5 5. h4 g4 6. Ng1 Qe7
7. Nc3 Nf6 8. Bd3 Bh6 9. Nge2 O-O 10. g3 c5 11. O-O cxd4 12. Nxd4 Nh5
13. Nf5 Bxf5 14. exf5 Nxg3 15. Qxg4+ Kh8 16. f6 Qxf6 17. Bxf4 Nxf1
18. Bxh6 Qxh6 19. Kxf1 Qf6+ 20. Ke1 Nc6 21. Kd2 Rg8 22. Qe4 Qh6+
23. Qe3 Qxh4 24. Rf1 Rae8 25. Qf3 Qg5+ 26. Qf4 Qxf4+ 27. Rxf4 Rg2+
28. Ne2 Kg7 29. Kc3 Rexe2 30. Bxe2 Rxe2 0-1

Here are my annotations:


6...Qe7:
This is a "novelty" of black. The queen is bearing down on the e-file putting pressure on my king.
8.Bd3:
This is maybe my first mistake. The move Bxf4 was better here says crafty. I considered that move, but thought that after 8...Nxe4, The exchange of my e-pawn for blacks f-pawn is to his advantage. Also, since the black queen is lined up with my king, black has a potentially problematic discovered check. With that in mind, I played this. But I should have played Bxf4 here because:

a. It prevents the black bishop from going into the critical h6 square.

b. I have no need to fear the dicovered check because of a variation I didnt
see 8.Bxf4 Nxe4 9.Nd5! Qd7 10.Bb5 c6 11.Qe2 - I didnt see the possibility
of Whites 9th move. I taught that I had no choice but to play 9.Qe2,
whereby a queen swap may follow. I didnt want a queen swap so I discounted
this line.

This move highlights a hole in my game. I saw the potential of Bxf4 but discounted it too soon without investigating too deeply. When I thought that the variation maybe be bad, my analysis stopped. This tendency will be seen again and again during this game as we will soon see.

9.Nge2 0-0
The position reached after this move is the critical moment. I've already made a mistake and doing another here would be fatal. Now, a similar position is found in the PGN file that tempo sent me. This looks like a standard KG position. So I played the standard move. 10.g3?! The purpose of this move is to undermine blacks f-pawn. Not a bad idea, but after playing this, immediately the evaluation swung heavily into blacks favor. Maybe -1.75 or something, Crafty gave Nxf4 here as the best move with a slight 0.45 advantage for white. I also considered taking the pawn, but again my preference for maintaining my central pawns reared it ugly head. Again my analysis of the line Nxf4 was too superficial.

One more thing, the elimination of the f-pawn seems to be very important in the KG? I dont know the strategic implication of this, but in this game, this pawn will serve as a strong point for black. The queen and the knight will use this outpost to coordinate an attack against white's position

11. O-O
I thought that I should castle now. Otherwise the king will be caught in the center.

12. Nxd4 Nh5
I was planning a long-winded tactical shot. At this point, I consumed a lot of time. My head was spinning in variations. I finally settled down into a variation that I Thought was good.

Technique: The variation that crafty gave is the same idea as mine, But the critical difference is that a preparatory Nd5 was given to move the black queen into a less active square. If I spot such oppurtunity to mess with the opponents position, I should do it and not rush into tactics

Ok now here goes!

15. Qxg4+ Kh8

I thought that the black knight can be taken. That was the point of my moves. But I overlooked the fact that it is protected by a pawn. Dope! Crafty shows massive advantage for black. I could now resign in good conscience here.

Darn! I didnt even last 20 moves. Yeah, I'm not yet mated, but the position is already hopeless. After this my defense pretty much collapsed. This Kings Gambit stuff is vicious.

Its already 4am when I finished all the above. I started at around 11pm, so thats about 5 hours of chess. I had to take a half-day off from work. My wife is giving me grief right now for "failing to provide family time" too. I may have to give her a new refrigerator soon. Shes been asking me for one, and at this rate I dont know if I can hold on =>

p.s.
To fraktal: I will try to add an e-mail sidebar to my template so you can contact me, but I cannot right now. I'll try within this week or the next, but if you get too impatient, try to contact tempo.