Well we had to win to ensure we were not relegated. We lost 6-2. I tried my best but could not bring down the defenses of my opponent. The end result was a draw.

This game wound down to free pawn on either side of the board. I wonder if my 40th move (Kg4) was actually a losing move. Anyhow my opponent did not play b5 and the game resulted in a draw. De Wachter won 4,5 to 3,5.

Perpetual chess. I liked my knights. Black should have won though.

Well another swindle… I was in a clearly losing endgame after a mistake on move 37. Well it was pretty hard to calculate. I just wanted to protect that double pawn. So I was losing and somehow won again. Just a3 instead of b3 on move 41 would have won the game for white.

So what can you do to get a swindle:

• You have already lost. Your opponent needs to work hard. The hardest is to win a win. The worst that can happen to you is that you lose.
• Try and keep the queen on the board. The more moves you have the more complicated it stays for your opponent.
• Sacrifice if you have to. Keep the position complicated.
• Look confident.
• Build a fortress, worst that can happen is you lose
• Look for trickery like mate on back rank or wild knights attacking multiple pieces
• Perpetual chess works
• Look for stalemate
• Its not my style but this happened to me: my opponent kinda slammed his queen on the board. I somehow did not take his queen then ended up losing my queen to a rook (and still drew the game). So some kind of little play to just throw your opponent off balance. I have no idea if this actually allowed…

Better an ugly win than a beautiful loss I suppose. De Wachter won 4,5 to 3,5.

This match ended in a draw. Could not really see how I could win this one. We lost 2,5 to 5,5.

This was the first match I played with the Dutch Central Bank team in the Schaakbond Groot Amsterdam league. This win feels very stolen. I should have lost but tried everything to keep going. I tried to draw by perpetual check and even won in the end…

Well my blog was really gathering dust. So I decided to pull it and start anew. Most content was really old (SharePoint 2007 ish old). So a new blog, a new start and new content.

Yup new content. Just concentrating on what I find fun:

• Computers
• Books
• Music
• Guitar
• Chess

I hope you will enjoy and yup this also for own benefit as I just need to take notes to learn from what I am doing.