- 1st Annual Summer Solstice Showdown, June 22 - 23, 2013 [Link]
- Albuquerque/Rio Rancho Open, June 29th-30th, 2013 [Link]
I'll keep you posted as the time nears for each of these tournaments :]
Monday, May 27, 2013
Results: UPDATE
Ok so the tournament results have been posted and my new rating is 1396! That's a jump of 262 rating points in one tournament! I'm quite pleased with this result and look forward to my future progress as a player. I have a strict study plan set up for when I finish with this certification course. For a list of tournaments that I will be participating in next:
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Tournament Results!
Well today was the day of the Denver Memorial Day Weekend G/30. I was up bright and early and ready to play some chess! I was really nervous going into this tournament being that it was my first in 5 years. I didn't let the nerves psyche me out, however, and I performed quite well! I beat an 1858, 1557 and 1550 and lost to a 2078 and a 2000, giving me a score of 3.0/5.0 which was good enough to win my section and a hefty $60 for my efforts!
Here's a list of my opponents and the score by round:
Here's a list of my opponents and the score by round:
- Jules Carter(1134P) vs. Isaac Martinez(1858) 1-0
- Daniel Herman(1557) vs. Jules Carter(1134P) 0-1
- Jules Carter(1134P) vs. Mark A. Jimenez(2078) 0-1
- Buck Buchanan(2000) vs. Jules Carter(1134P) 1-0
- Tim Kohler(1550) vs. Jules Carter(1134P) 0-1
Now I must study for a certification for work so I'll be back in about a month or so! If you need to find me, you can leave a comment here or write to me on chess.com :D
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Here we go again!
Well it's been YEARS since I've last made an appearance here and I must say loads of things have happened and changed in my life. I want to get it off my chest that this post will be about my return to chess after 5 years of not playing. I will give my story and what I plan for the future of this blog...
Where has Sir Nemo been? Oh man, I've been all over the damn world. Jumping from hobbies and obsessions like I was changing underwear. My last post was May, 2009. As some of my loyal readers remember, I had started dabbling in poker and I had a somewhat newborn I was learning how to take care of. I was also engaged to my son's mother and had plans to get married...
Well, things didn't work out with me and Brandon's mom. It ended on pretty bad terms and I won't go into much detail about it but the outcome was a major plus for me, as it meant I got my son the majority of the time. This happened in late May of 2009. Shortly after, I quit playing chess so I could focus on poker and really start to take it seriously. In June, 2009, I was invited to move to Austin, TX to live at the SNGIcons mansion with all the big name online tournament players at that time. I learned a lot about poker and I was on my grind. I managed to build up a quite impressive bankroll of around $8.5k in 6 weeks but I had also developed another 'hobby'. It's not something I'm proud of but let's just say I spent a good portion of my winnings on it and nearly cost me my life. I moved back home to Albuquerque, NM nearly empty handed... I believe I had $500 to my name when it was all said and done. I had hit rock bottom. No motivation, no ambition. Nothing. I was an unemployed father who lived with his parents, with a child of his own. I thank the good Lord my parents were there to help me raise my son as I would not have been able to do it on my own.
After a period of a couple of months, I was at a friends house and was watching him and one of my brothers playing a video game on the XBOX 360 called Call of Duty. I hadn't played a video game since Quake III Arena and this game looked appealing to me. I went out and purchased a console and the game and was quickly obsessed with yet again another useless game. I got damn good at the game and started competing on Major League Gaming's Game Battles website. After about a year, I had reached the #1 spot for best 1v1 sniper back when the Game Battles had the sniper ladders. I held that title for 6 months before I was bumped from the top. I started making YouTube videos of my gameplays and montages of my best clips. I was so hooked and looking back on it, it was [almost] a complete waste of my time and life... I say almost, because there was something really great that happened because of my video gaming that will always be important and relevant for the rest of my life. I'll get to that next...
One evening some friends I knew in real life and myself were playing some Call of Duty: Black Ops when one of our friends invited one of his friends and his friend's ex girlfriend into our party. Now if you've never played a video game in your life you won't understand what it's like when a girl joins a game or lobby. All the horny geeky guys go goo-goo and do their best to try to get her to talk to them. I wasn't one of those guys as I typically viewed gamer girls as how girls view gamer guys... fat, ugly, full of acne and generally smell bad. I had asked my friend who invited her what she looked like and he had said she was fat and ugly. To be fair, his friend (who was her ex) was present when he said this to me.... Anywho, I digress... After a few months went buy of all of us playing together and me never really talking to her aside from making her laugh every now and then and vice versa, the gang decided to meet up at the annual Comic Con in Albuquerque. Normally, I wouldn't go to a Comic Con... but the actors from The Boondock Saints were going to be there and since that's one of my all-time favorite movies I just had to be there. Turns out, she was going to be there and even showed up at my house to pick me up with one of our mutual friends. That was the first time we met in person. We really hit it off and started talking daily. I don't want to get all mushy so I'll sum it up by saying that we quickly fell in love. She's my best friend and there's not a single person on this planet that understands me better than her. Shortly after getting together, she got pregnant and 9 months later our beautiful daughter was born.
During this time, my new loves in my life completely motivated me and gave me the ambition I needed to be a real man and get off my ass to find work. When all was said and done, I managed to get a job up in Denver, Colorado as a Penetration Tester. If you don't know what that is, it's a politically correct way of saying 'professional hacker' or 'hacker for hire'. This is by far the best job I've ever had and I'm damn grateful for having it. You can check out my main site at http://www.daftandcurious.com for random articles and tutorials on infosec stuff. Life is good now, and I will continue to make it better from here on...
Now we can get to the chess! w00t! Up until about a month ago my hobbies still consisted of lots of Call of Duty. I love the game, what can I say. However, my problem was that I was getting too damn frustrated all the time and would often let it effect my emotions outside of the game. I had to stop. I've always said that chess was my passion, and thus here we are. I started playing again about a month ago. I dabbled in a few games on chess.com on my old sir_nemo account and quickly realized that I had much to remember. But the fire was re-ignited and it was game on! I started going through whatever books I still had from 4-5 years ago and I quickly got back up to speed; nearly to the point of where I left off before I quit playing.
I've created a new chess.com account so that I could start fresh. I've also played a few slow games on my old FICS account (SirNemo) and have won every one of them. I will update the sidebar with my current stats once I've finished posting this.
There are a couple of tournaments coming up that I will be participating in:
Where has Sir Nemo been? Oh man, I've been all over the damn world. Jumping from hobbies and obsessions like I was changing underwear. My last post was May, 2009. As some of my loyal readers remember, I had started dabbling in poker and I had a somewhat newborn I was learning how to take care of. I was also engaged to my son's mother and had plans to get married...
Well, things didn't work out with me and Brandon's mom. It ended on pretty bad terms and I won't go into much detail about it but the outcome was a major plus for me, as it meant I got my son the majority of the time. This happened in late May of 2009. Shortly after, I quit playing chess so I could focus on poker and really start to take it seriously. In June, 2009, I was invited to move to Austin, TX to live at the SNGIcons mansion with all the big name online tournament players at that time. I learned a lot about poker and I was on my grind. I managed to build up a quite impressive bankroll of around $8.5k in 6 weeks but I had also developed another 'hobby'. It's not something I'm proud of but let's just say I spent a good portion of my winnings on it and nearly cost me my life. I moved back home to Albuquerque, NM nearly empty handed... I believe I had $500 to my name when it was all said and done. I had hit rock bottom. No motivation, no ambition. Nothing. I was an unemployed father who lived with his parents, with a child of his own. I thank the good Lord my parents were there to help me raise my son as I would not have been able to do it on my own.
After a period of a couple of months, I was at a friends house and was watching him and one of my brothers playing a video game on the XBOX 360 called Call of Duty. I hadn't played a video game since Quake III Arena and this game looked appealing to me. I went out and purchased a console and the game and was quickly obsessed with yet again another useless game. I got damn good at the game and started competing on Major League Gaming's Game Battles website. After about a year, I had reached the #1 spot for best 1v1 sniper back when the Game Battles had the sniper ladders. I held that title for 6 months before I was bumped from the top. I started making YouTube videos of my gameplays and montages of my best clips. I was so hooked and looking back on it, it was [almost] a complete waste of my time and life... I say almost, because there was something really great that happened because of my video gaming that will always be important and relevant for the rest of my life. I'll get to that next...
One evening some friends I knew in real life and myself were playing some Call of Duty: Black Ops when one of our friends invited one of his friends and his friend's ex girlfriend into our party. Now if you've never played a video game in your life you won't understand what it's like when a girl joins a game or lobby. All the horny geeky guys go goo-goo and do their best to try to get her to talk to them. I wasn't one of those guys as I typically viewed gamer girls as how girls view gamer guys... fat, ugly, full of acne and generally smell bad. I had asked my friend who invited her what she looked like and he had said she was fat and ugly. To be fair, his friend (who was her ex) was present when he said this to me.... Anywho, I digress... After a few months went buy of all of us playing together and me never really talking to her aside from making her laugh every now and then and vice versa, the gang decided to meet up at the annual Comic Con in Albuquerque. Normally, I wouldn't go to a Comic Con... but the actors from The Boondock Saints were going to be there and since that's one of my all-time favorite movies I just had to be there. Turns out, she was going to be there and even showed up at my house to pick me up with one of our mutual friends. That was the first time we met in person. We really hit it off and started talking daily. I don't want to get all mushy so I'll sum it up by saying that we quickly fell in love. She's my best friend and there's not a single person on this planet that understands me better than her. Shortly after getting together, she got pregnant and 9 months later our beautiful daughter was born.
During this time, my new loves in my life completely motivated me and gave me the ambition I needed to be a real man and get off my ass to find work. When all was said and done, I managed to get a job up in Denver, Colorado as a Penetration Tester. If you don't know what that is, it's a politically correct way of saying 'professional hacker' or 'hacker for hire'. This is by far the best job I've ever had and I'm damn grateful for having it. You can check out my main site at http://www.daftandcurious.com for random articles and tutorials on infosec stuff. Life is good now, and I will continue to make it better from here on...
Now we can get to the chess! w00t! Up until about a month ago my hobbies still consisted of lots of Call of Duty. I love the game, what can I say. However, my problem was that I was getting too damn frustrated all the time and would often let it effect my emotions outside of the game. I had to stop. I've always said that chess was my passion, and thus here we are. I started playing again about a month ago. I dabbled in a few games on chess.com on my old sir_nemo account and quickly realized that I had much to remember. But the fire was re-ignited and it was game on! I started going through whatever books I still had from 4-5 years ago and I quickly got back up to speed; nearly to the point of where I left off before I quit playing.
I've created a new chess.com account so that I could start fresh. I've also played a few slow games on my old FICS account (SirNemo) and have won every one of them. I will update the sidebar with my current stats once I've finished posting this.
There are a couple of tournaments coming up that I will be participating in:
- May 26 - Denver Memorial Day Weekend G/30+5s
- June 22-23 - 1st Annual Summer Solstice Tournament
- June 29-30 - Albuquerque Open
I also plan on starting the 7 Circles again on July 15th. I've dabbled a little with the CT-ART program and got a 100% on the problems with difficulty level 10. I know this is not that impressive of a result as I'm sure most of you can do that by now, but the fact that my tactical abilities are still present after 5 years of not playing really shocked me.
I will let you guys know how the May 26th tournament goes this weekend. As we all know, I usually go into a tournament overconfident and wind up playing terribly. Lets see if the mature version of my prior self can overcome this obstacle and prevail finally!
Until next time!
- Sir Nemo
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