Played my first two games last night.

Won against a 1200 and lost against a 1400 player. Its interesting to note that
reading my old posts, there would be very few games in which I lost to sub-1500 players.
Clearly there is a very noticeable difference in strength between now and then.

Anyway, mostly played Italian-type games as I've forgotten opening theory. Just went
by whatever general principle I still remember. What I like about my game is
that I seem to be thinking on each move. Checking for obvious blunders, etc. I actually
almost used up all my time on the two games.

On the first game when he castled king side I still remembered to close the center,
open a file (because he took my knight with his bishop and rather than taking back with my queen,
I elected to shatter my pawn formation in favor of an open file against the king), and then later
on when he 'captured' my rook with his knight - I allowed him the gain as I judged that
the removal of his lone defending piece on the king-side would be enough compensation.
Oh, and btw castling are for wimps.. :p

On the second game, lost a piece from a two-move combination. Duh. Played to the bitter end,
but the position was hopeless and the opponent, rather than attack himself, mostly played it
safe and repeatedly tried to simplify. On hindsight, I could have avoided problems by castling
early but real men don't castle. The king stays in the center and explode in a hail of checks.