Robert (gurdonark) wrote,
Robert
gurdonark

and one bye

Last night I took a walk in our neighborhood. The neighborhood next to ours, built by the same builder, bears the name Avondale. Avondale uses a small lot size format. I noticed for the first time a house that was more up than out,  I found it an interesting study in verticality, if verticality is the word.

At 7 p.m. I went to chess.com and signed up for the US Chess Federation rated blitz chess tournament. This tournament used a time control of 3/2, i.e. each player started with 3 minutes on that player's clock, but the player got 2 additional seconds for each move. Though most of the time a player has less time this way than in a 5/0 game, the 2 second "delay" means that a player behind on time can stay in the game, so long as that player can make each move within 2 seconds.

Recently, my on-line blitz rating rose significantly. I won a tournament for players with ratings under 1450 with score of 7 wins and 0 losses. This moved my rating up higher than I expected, to 1590. A subsequent second place in a tournament with a score of 5 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw brought it down 10 points.

Last night I entered the tournament open to all strengths rather than the one limited to players rated under 1450. I had a fairly low score: 2 wins, 4 losses and 1 bye.  My first round game, against a stronger player, encountered a technical difficulty when I had to sign in again and lost nearly half my time before my first move. My play did not compensate for the time issue. In the second round, I won a nice game with black playing a triangle Slav that transposed into a Dutch Stonewall.  In the last 4 games, I won one against a weaker player who dropped a queen, but was handily beaten by two stronger players and one player of about my strength.  I was overall still pleased with the tournament, as sometimes I need to play stronger competition in order to learn.

I listened to an interesting legal education seminar about the inferior courts in Texas, the justice and municipal courts. Yesterday I also attended a matter out-of-state via a service called Courtconnect, based on Microsoft Teams. The new laptop has already gotten heavy use as a video conference device. I ran the updates to keep it current.

We watched Chicago Med and Chicago Fire last night. We recorded Chicago PD but did not watch it yet. The milkweed plants in our backyard have hosted a small bumper crop of Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Those caterpillars are eager eaters.

I am now listening to a podcast discussion of the constitutionality of vaccine laws.






from Dreamwidth, because two posts of the same text are twice as nice
Subscribe

  • Al Stewart Friday

    Friday night we drove to Dallas to see the Al Stewart concert. We arrived early enough to be able to park in its 8 dollar parking lot. The Grenada…

  • Change of Weather

    After a day or two of record high temperatures, we got some chilly, breezy and wet weather. Tonight after work we go to the Grenada Theater. I hope…

  • Paging Spencer Atwill

    I had a dream in which I was driving on a superhighway in the American South. I stopped when I saw some boxes off the road. They turned out to be…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

  • 0 comments