Monroi Personal Chess Manager

Today, I looked at getting a Monroi device.  For those of you that don't know, it's an electronic device that allows you to notate your chess games instead of pencil and paper.  I thought they were ~$150.  I was wrong; they are $359, slightly out of my price range.  It would certainly be nice for analyzing games after a tournament.  Maybe I'll get one when I'm out of college.  Until then, I think I'll hold off.

Behind schedule

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't posted in a while.  I have been playing in tournaments, but have been a bit busy with graduating and everything.  I've recently played in the Great Lakes Open, as well as the May Aquinas.  Things are clearing up, and hopefully, I'll be able to catch up soon.

May Calvin

Last Saturday I played in the monthly Calvin tournament.  The tournament is much better than I remember.

I got 2/4 with basically three draws.  In the fourth game, my opponent resigned in a drawn position.

In the first game, against Andrew Schremser, I made a few mistakes, and then compounded those mistakes by trapping my queen.  I was able to trade it for a rook and a bishop, and was able to hold a draw, as   although down a pawn, our pawn structures were both very good, and he couldn't find a way to break through.

In the second game, against Bill Ignasiak, I went up a pawn, but then lost the exchange into an endgame.  I had a slightly better endgame, and my opponent offered a draw.  I played a few more moves, and then we agreed to draw.  I had just made a large mistake, throwing away a good portion of my advantage, (my opponent never saw it) and I had six minutes left on my clock, to my opponents fifteen.

In the third game, against Andy Catlin, I lost.  I don't exactly remember what happened.  I'll analyze it later.

In the fourth game, I played a poor middlegame, and was down a couple pawns in the endgame, fortunately, I was able to get a passed pawn in the middle of the board, and was eventually able to promote.  My opponent was pretty upset about a move she had missed a couple moves ago, and just resigned.  The thing she didn't see was that my rook and king would've been unable to stop all three of her remaining pawns, and we should've drawn.

The reason I don't have these games analyzed in full is that I've been having computer troubles, and since I need to use my computer for things, it took a slightly higher priority.  It's working, but I still need to some cleaning up.  I'm not sure when I'll analyze these games, because I'm going to the Great Lakes Open today!  This will probably be my last chess tournament for a while, since I'm trying to get a summer job.  It'll also might be the largest chess tournament I've played in.  Certainly it has the highest prizes.  These games will probably be analyzed before the Calvin games.