A weekend of sweet Victory

Well here I am, reporting on my weekly status. I would like to start by saying that I came across a ChessCafe column which I absolutely LOVE! I'm sure most of you have heard of the Novice Nook. If you haven't, you're surely missing out! I have read all of the columns from 2001 and I have to say that I am highly impressed. Dan's articles on Real Chess and Time Management have opened my eyes a little more to chess and every OTB game I've played since reading those have been successes. Like I've said, look up the Novice Nook column on ChessCafe.com. You won't be disappointed.

Anywho, this last weekend was incredible for me! Not just for chess, but also(mostly) for my poker playing. I hit the card rooms about 2:00pm Saturday afternoon and played till about 5:00AM Sunday. I was playing the $2-$4 low-limit tables and walked away a big winner with $500 up. Doesn't sound like much, but $500 is a VERY successful night in a $2-$4 hold'em game. It's always nice to win money like that especially when you're a poor bastard such as myself. However, it sucked for Sunday because A) I had to miss church and B)I was tired during my rated game at the once-a-month Foothills Chess Club. I remembered everything from Dan Heisman's Novice Nook article "The Secrets of Real Chess" during my game and managed to come out of the opening a piece up. About 15 moves (an hour and a half) later, I was up two pieces and forced him to trade queens. He sadly resigned. The game really wasn't anything special so I probably won't be posting it up. Fritz didn't give me anything special anyway =P

I'm about half way done with Circle 2 and I don't know if it was because of my lack of sleep this weekend, but my Level 50 problems are seeming MUCH more difficult this time around than in Circle 1. So far I'm about 2% behind what I was in Circle 1. Hopefully I can catch up tonight, we shall see. My Chess.com rating has gone down nearly a hundred points these past couple weeks. I blame that on the amount of time I've put into my poker playing. I don't really care about my Chess.com rating anymore anyway. Well that's pretty much it, I've updated my USCF rating on the sidebar.