New Year Tournament

I played down in Boston at the Boylston Chess Club and had a great time. I enjoyed meeting DG who writes the prolific chess blog as well as others out to celebrate the New year playing chess. There were only two categories: Open and Rated and each had high ranking players mixed in with the lower levels.

I went 1-3 in the rated section and except for blundering away my queen in the third game, I was happy with my games. I felt the first two players I played were of better caliber than the ones I faced in my first tournament. I recently started to play the Smith-Morra Gambit and had a chance to play it in my first game.

Paste game into this viewer



Jim Wuorio (takchess) vs Mike Henroid

1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Bc4 a6 6. Nf3 d6 7. Qe2 Nf6 8. Bg5 Bg4 9. Nd5 Bxf3 10. Qxf3 Ne5 11. Qb3 Nxc4 12.
Qxc4 Rc8 13. Qe2 Nxd5 14. exd5 Qa5+ 15. Bd2 Qxd5 16. O-O e5 17. Rac1 Qe6 18. a3
Be7 19. Rxc8+ Qxc8 20. Rc1 Qd7 21. h3 O-O 22. Rc4 Rc8 23. Rg4 f5 24. Rg3 Bf6
25. Bg5 Bxg5 26. Rxg5 g6 27. b4 Qe7 28. h4 d5 29. Qf3 Qe6 30. h5 e4 31. Qh3
Rc1+ 32. Kh2 Rc6 33. hxg6 hxg6 34. Qg3 Qd6 35. f4 exf3 36. gxf3 Qxg3+ 37. Rxg3
Kf7 38. f4 d4 39. Rd3 Rd6 40. Kg3 Ke6 41. Kf3 Kd5 42. Ke2 Re6+ 43. Kd2 Ke4 *


Mike had some constructive things to say about my play about the Smith-Morra Gambit
and what is normally considered to be the move order and graciously put them in an email to me. I haven't fully studied his comments yet so I will leave them out of this post for now. Note on move 34 I am playing hope chess and would like to put my Queen on the back row check of course that did not work.