Chess high

[sanpaku_backup]

I don't know what it is. I have been playing at least a game or two of Yahoo chess almost every day for the past 2 weeks or so, not seeming to be getting any better. But somehow something intangible really has clicked. I started playing relatively well-ranked players and found myself in some incredibly tense games that I was sure I was going to lose. I played one tonight against a guy who was 1417. On paper my ranking is 1368 but a lot of that is from playing crappy players. Whenever someone 1300 or higher would play me I'd get beaten. This one tonight, he was up a piece on me and I was sure I was going to lose, I'm like, there's no way I can win, this is a waste of time, I should go... and yet somehow we started getting toward the end; we traded queens and the board was clearing, and he let himself lose the piece because he had all these pawns. At this point we both had rooks. Then I started moving the rook in the back and vacuuming up all his pawns by putting him in check. He did the same. It came down to a standoff where my king was next to his pawn, which was guarded by his rook, but my rook could take the pawn. To do or not to do? So I did it and we traded, leaving him with 2 pawns and me with one-- but my king was in the way of his pawns, and his king was on the other side of the board from my king. I queened just before his king could guarantee his pawns from my king, and it was all over. I got like 64 points from playing 3 games tonight.

Something weird must be happening-- I must be achieving the ability to think ahead intuitively in this game, which is pretty cool. I am still far from good-- all of these games have been marred by stupid mistakes on my part-- but I am definitely getting there.