A crazy horrible game: SCC Extravaganza Round 1 with a book review!
Photo by me of course. It is Anthony He, my opponent in this game, at the Washington Class Championships. I didn't get his permission, because if I did, I wouldn't put his picture here. But he likes publicity, so I think He will be fine with this. Writes me:
The 2016 SCC Extravaganza was not a very memorable event. (It's time that somebody tells the truth!) It was held on the weekend of November 12th-13th, inside the Seattle Chess Club. Last year, I had gotten a 4.5/5 start in the reserve, only to collapse and lose my last two games. This year was surprisingly similar. As usual, to try to dodge actual skill, I decided to play in the 2-day section, where it was G/45 for the first 2 rounds, so I had my hopes of error filled games. The rest of the games were in 90 minutes, also kind of quick, but that was the fun of this event, the idea that with less time the players have more fun. I did get what I hoped for, fun and bad games by both sides, but not the right results. Usually I'm the one getting lucky, but it appeared this time that wouldn't happen.
I showed up too early, I think a little bit after 9am, and waited around, and since the TD was there I was unable to rob chess books. I did bring a book that I had "borrowed" (I'll never return it!) from the SCC the week before, a book on the boring Catalan opening.
In fact, I will tell you all about how bad this book is! I will give a book review so bad that none of you will ever play its amazing novelties against me, since you won't want to read it. (Note: the following review is actually accurate, because I need some credibility in order for all of you to listen to me)
The book "Grandmaster Repertoire 1A- The Catalan" is the most boring book ever written. Not only is opening that it is writing about is boring, but the author is boring, the text is boring, and it makes me boring. And it will make you boring too! This is not a lie, because you can not prove that something is boring or not.
One of the worst things about the book is the way that it describes moves. Not only is it boring, but it doesn't do what an opening book is supposed to do. It is supposed to help you understand the moves, but how do the following quotes help me understand them?
Page 11: "White had a pleasant position against the Stonewall formation, with an easy plan of attacking on the queenside" What plan? Can't you at least tell me? I'm not a GM you know. What moves?
"I neglected to mention this option in GM 1...." Why do I care? Also, that doesn't make me understand the move! Terrible!
Page 14:
"This is another option that I forgot to cover..." How much stuff are you forgetting?
Page 15:
"As mentioned before..." If you already mentioned it, why are you mentioning it again?
Page 18:
"I should mention that 9.cxd5 is a good alternative" Well, you did mention it, so why are you saying that you "should" have mentioned it?
Page 19:
"This was played in a remarkable game" Since when do you get to tell us what is remarkable? Also, that was a correspondence game, so there is nothing remarkable about that!
Page 20:
"13.b5 leads to interesting complications that seem to favour (He spelled favor wrong!) White, but one good line is enough" I don't agree that one good line is enough!
This is all just from the 1st chapter. Wouldn't you agree that this book is horrible? I also forgot to mention (actually, I did mention it! Notice how this is similar to the comment about Page 18) that there are advertisements on the back of the book recommending e4. I thought that this book was promoting d4, and that d4 was better. But you buy this book, to be recommended to buy more books, and more books...
Anyways, let me know what you think of this amazing book interview, if you want another book review authors, send me the book, and I will criticize it so much that I can use all the ideas only for myself!
I understand that the book review was completely irrelevant to the topic of this blog, but I want to get my mind off the terrible game that I played and wasted an hour analyzing.
I remember in the morning trying to find out who I would play, and it seemed to my misfortune that I would have to play the prodigy Anthony He. Which wasn't good. In our other game together at the Seattle Fall Open, both sides played terribly, until he decided to stop playing badly and won when I didn't stop playing badly. In this game, a similar thing happened. Right when I had the draw, I decided to blunder, giving him a lucky (or at least I would like to think it was!) win.
