My intent in creating this article is to make me accountable for progress toward the rating of 2000 on Lichess.com. My username is Pullen1961. I can be messaged on Lichess or at MarkPullen@DCDocumentReports.com. My goal is to enter one or more videos of my chess play into this article daily. I have been using my ALS as an excuse to not work daily toward this rating.
My peak rating was at 1570, however, for some period of time, I was feeling lightheaded and dizzy. My rating dropped a hundred points. I will give a brief description of each game. The games are short. I have two and one-half hours on the clocks for a just-in-case trip to the toilet.
I discovered a new checkmate pattern for the London opening. This is a replay of the game. I checked the databases and found I’m the first to find it. When the rook reaches the 7th rank, the checkmate is forced.
ALS has robbed me of my ability to speak. I became aware of an extension that has Grandmaster Dmitri Komarov giving comments on chess moves. I thought it funny. There are other Grandmasters in/on this extension. I played poorly at the endgame phase. I hung my rook and allowed my bishop to be taken. If I had moved the h-pawn forward to link with the rook, the bishop would have been safe. I was watching a movie during the game on my tablet.
I made errors in this game, however, I was able to recover.
I hadn’t seen this opening before. I had to adapt. My king played a vital role in the win.
I gifted a pawn and sprung the trap!
I made errors during the game and I was losing for half of the endgame. I should have doubled my rooks on the h-file. I saw it, but I was afraid of black’s lurking knight.
3/26/2022
The bot falls for the same trap. It is best to allow black to take your dark bishop after you backup. This opens the h-file for your rook. Then castle long-queen side. I was taught this by Internation Master Levy Rozman.
I would be lying if I wrote; I meant to castle long and allow my rooks to be forked by black’s knight. Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura played this line in Berlin just two days ago. The wisdom is the rooks aren’t used in the opening or in the start of the middlegame. I used advanced tactics I had just learned the day before to prevail. I was about to draw the game when I noticed black’s queen was opposite of my rook with my light bishop between the two. I was able to check the black king with the bishop and capture the black queen.
After bedtime chess play.
I sleep in the bathroom with door closed so my sounds from the ALS doesn’t keep my wife up all night. I was playing on my tablet in these two games. On black’s 20th move I missed a winning tactic. I should’ve taken the d-pawn with the rook. Black’s queen had to take my rook. Then my knight would have moved to f-6, forking the king and queen. Missing that put me to grind out a hard win.
I was losing my mind because of my pain and the burning and watering in my eyes during this game. I manage to let both rooks to be taken by black’s knights. I was so upset! I played on as a training exercise expecting to lose. I did manage to fork black’s rooks with my bishop. Then I did fork the queen and rook, but black found a check on my king which lost my knight. At the last second when I was about to lose, I checkmated black’s king. I did advance my rating during the after-hours chess play. I’m at 1477.
3/28/2022
More tablet play after O’Dark-Thirty in my sleeping area, the bathroom. My pain levels were down and that occurrence was reflected in my chess play in the extreme. I played two perfect games with zero blunders, zero mistakes, and zero inaccuracies. I reached 1481 in my rating. I will display the screenshots of the evaluations below each of these games. These were easy wins…go figure.
Forgive me, these games are from the day prior. I was busy playing games and studying.
I win the bishop pair. I see a tactic to win an exchange for my dark bishop for black’s rook. It was all downhill for black after this exchange.
I was about to be forked by black’s knight on my rooks. To avoid the fork, I delivered a check on black’s king. Note I passed up taking the knight…BLUNDER! Then I lost my rook to that knight in another BLUNDER! And I wasn’t done blundering. I allowed my queen to be taken by none other than by the black king! Oh, the humanity! I was so disgusted with myself. I did not deserve to win this game.
3/29/2022
Notice how long my dark color bishop lingered on g-7. The menacing rook was powerless to take this bishop because the black king was checked twice. Then on the next move after the retreat, this mighty bishop gobbled up another pawn. Then on the next move, this Will Smith of bishops bitch slaps the black king causing him to retreat….glorious. Then on move 29, Will Smith bitch slaps the black king again! However, this was wanton violence, because if I had advanced the humble of the humble of all pawns, the h pawn to h-4, the game would have been over with checkmate by a lowly pawn. But instead, the carnage continues! Otherwise, I played a perfect game according to the engine review.
The black king has only the 6th file to retreat. Now here comes the tactic. Will Smith moves to c-8, thereby unmasking the rook’s check. The black king has to move once again, then Will Smith slays black’s last remaining rook sealing the black king’s fate. Will Smith posts himself on h-4 as a “wooden shield” in support of his fellow pieces. None of the black’s pieces can dislodge Will Smith from his post. Then the mighty rook rushes to deliver a telegraphed bitch slap from Will Smith. The Rook could only deliver this check because Will Smith had his back. The black king falls away and black’s last bishop falls.
Oh, consistency, where art thou? This game was fraught with blunders! I recovered by trapping the knight.
3/30/2022
I don’t always play bots. I don’t like hurting people’s feelings by beating them, however, when I’m challenged, I’m absolved of any harm I may do to their egos. This game is from a couple of months ago when I had little tactical training. I employed sound cycling attacks to prevail.
3/31/2022
I worked until 11:35 pm doing tactical drills. I had been up since 3 am that morning. The training is paying off. This game was an easy win. My Will Smith bishop was running amok on the board. Once I regain my winning record with this bot, I will move on to stronger opponents.
4/01/2022
This game put me within a striking range of 1500. My rating is now 1491. You can see below on the graph my play was erratic. The Stockfish engine went all Will Smith on me on move 22. I took with en passant, I thought myself as clever in doing so. The correct move was to sacrifice a rook and then mate with the queen and the remaining rook. I won’t make that mistake again.
4/02/2022
Yesterday, my suffering index was maxed out. I couldn’t do well on my tactics exams. I played this game on my tablet at O’Dark Thirty. I had committed to entering at least one game on this page a day. I could hardly keep my eyes open. In fact, I drifted off a few times during the game. I won! However, it was an ugly win as you can see from the below graph. It took me 54 minutes to checkmate the black king. I’m sure you have noticed by this point I only use the London opening. I had memorized 21 openings. I found it was hard to maintain that memorization. That was a giant task. So, I decided to become an expert in one opening for black and white.
4/03/2022
You can see from the graph below, that my play is nearly perfect. Part of chess play is pattern recognition. I was mostly on autopilot during this game. It almost felt as though I was cheating. That’s what Grand Masters do to relieve themselves from the heavy think section in the game. Grand Masters have a dizzying amount of variation lines memorized in an array of openings.
The secret to becoming a strong chess player is to drill, drill, and drill some more on the fundamentals of chess. Watching Grand Masters play chess while entertaining, that time will not greatly improve an individuals’ chess play. The brain has to be trained and that training is at times painful. My rating is now at 1499. I played this game just before lights out last night. I drilled most of the day and after lights out, I drilled some more on my tablet. I feel pretty good today, I will drill and play to surpass the rating of 1500.
When GM Hikaru Nakamura streams on Twitch, I watch him. Hikaru nearly streams every day for about 4-6 hours. I’ve watched other GMs streams too. They all say how hard chess is for them and it is incredible how often they spot blunders from their opponents or blunder themselves. I suspect the hardness of chess for these professionals comes from their opponents being able to look so much farther forward in the moves. They beat themselves up for blunders and missed tactics, as well as, missed forced mates. Hikaru is a Super Grand Master; count how many times he says he isn’t sure if his move is correct. Chess is hard!
Today, I passed 1500 in my rating. I will post the game tomorrow.
4/04/2022
I took my time in the game as surpassing the rating of 1500 was on the line. You can see I contemplated two moves with the light-colored squares bishop that would’ve been blundering blunders. I worked hard on my drills until I could no longer keep my eyes open last night. I made it to 11:05 pm. When I awoke at 03:32 am, I drilled again until 6:00 am. I realized my birthday is next month. The doctors gave me three years to live, that was eleven years ago. I’m way past my expiration date! I must therefore work so much harder.
4/05/2020
Today was horrible day for me. My head was spinning which fogged my mind. My first game I settled for a draw. The next one I won but it was the most horrid win I ever earned. I am truly ashamed to even show it. I struggled to win the next game. I used a back rank trick to win this second game. Then I lost seven games, I cried in my frustration. The next morning, I felt better. I played two games on my tablet at 3 am. I won easily.
4/06/2022
Other than missing black’s hanging queen, I play pretty well afterward.
I survived the intrusion of black’s queen, rook, and knight into my home ranks. I am proud of my endgame moves with my rooks against black’s rooks. I took seven minutes to figure out that position. I would either promote my pawn to a queen or have the last rook on the board.
4/07/2022
I had thought I had played a good game. I knew I had made a few errors, but the all-seeing and all-knowing Stockfish-14 informed me that I’m an idiot. On move #5, I missed a tactic. knight takes g-5 then f-6 takes knight. Then Queen to h-5-check. The black king is forced to d-7. Queen to f-7 check. what ensues is an even exchange of material, however, black’s position is totally destroyed with the king in the open. Stockfish-14 gives me a 3-point advantage in this variation.
4/08/2022
I was feeling pretty well last night. So, I stayed up all night doing chess drills. I hit high scores in these drills, therefore, I decided to play a few games. To my misery, I lost two games and drew to other games. My last game at sunrise was a painful win. I lost my queen and I was about to resign. Then I thought this is a good training exercise. I won by trickery!
4/09/2022
I created this account to only see the games played by Hikaru Nakamura. However, I became aware of extensions to my browser that have IM Levy Rozman and GM Hikaru Nakamura yelling at the player. I thought it grand. I recorded this game; however, the yelling didn’t happen…bumper. I gave the bot every opportunity to win as I was just playing around. I lost my queen { mouse slip }, rook { mouse slip }, and I made a dubious sacrifice with my knight. I still WON!
4/10/2022
I didn’t sleep last night, I studied and played chess. I studied until 12:34 am. I won, but it was an ugly win:(
I then resumed my studies until 4:21 am. I won for a second time. This second win was by far more attractive.
4/11/2022
Black played a gambit that I hadn’t seen before. My training took over for a quick win. Black could not take my queen without getting mated. I recorded this game but the software crashed. Pitty, I was giggling because I added two more extensions of people yelling at me for playing slow, GM Hikaru Nakamura, IM Levy Rozman, and IM Danny Rensch. Fear not, there will be more recordings. Yes, I panicked and lost my rook, but I saw something happening a few moves forward.
I was giggling all the while during the game at the chess masters’ admonishments for moving too slow.
I paid dearly for not seeing the danger on black’s #8 move. My knight was pinned on f-3. I couldn’t do knight takes knight because then black’s bishop would have taken my queen! I had to take my lumps and move my bishop which the interloper knight took with glee. While it’s true both knights and bishops are valued at 3 points, in the middle game on an open board, bishops are better because they are long-range snipers.
On move #17 the engine claimed I should’ve taken the pawn with the knight instead of my queen. Honestly, I just want both queens off the board. I was right for this level of play. My knight won the game.
4/12/2022
On the tablet in the dark of hours.
The one mistake as shown on the below graph was because I did not take the free pawn on c-7. I saw the free pawn, but I was afraid to take it because of the knight coming to b-4 with the support of black’s queen. Knight takes c-2 was my fear. I played that line with the engine after the game and saw there wasn’t the threat I had feared. The dills are slowly sinking into my brain. I am bursting with pride as to how I queened my pawn.
4/13/2022
I struggle against black’s last remaining knight. I am careful to not get fork checked by the knight. I follow my rule to never ever have my king on the same color as my tower when an enemy knight is nigh. This gameplay was full of mistakes. In truth, I should have traded the knight for my tower with my pawn majority.
I have played this line many times before. I win easily. I made no mistakes or blunders. I have to be perfectly honest, the checkmate bell ring startled me. I did not see the checkmate before I moved my tower.
I have to work hard for the win because I failed to notice black’s unprotected knight. How many more times will I make this oversight! Well, at least my rating has returned to above 1500.
4/14/2022
I did really well in this game. I saw the enemy did hang its dark color bishop. Although, I did miss a pawn fork on a knight and bishop. I continue to drill, drill, and drill some more during the day and at night into the wee hours of the morning. My record against this bot is 223 1/2 to 227 1/2. When I restore my winning record, I will move on to bigger fish. My current rating at classical time control is 1506.
4/15/2022
I wasn’t feeling well today. I played this game on my tablet after lights out to fulfill my commitment. On move 33, I proved it is never too late to lose from a winning position. Fortunately, black didn’t see my blunder.
4/16/2022
Move 9; d6 was best. H3 served no purpose. My dark bishop had a diagonal to retreat. I pawn grab and allow my king and tower to be forked by the knight. I battle on! Move 19; I am proud I found knight to e1. The center holds! Move 23; bishop take tower, I am back in the game. A nifty checkmate is coming.
Oof, I allowed knight takes pawn c3. Now I am about to lose my knight and my bishop in a pawn forked. I go into a think tank. I almost blundered, I come out on top, however, my king is in the open. Never too late for Mark to commit a blunder. Why did not see tower takes bishop? Move it haste makes Mark lose material. I let my guard down. I worked myself out of an impending disaster to come up on top with a winning position only to almost throw it all away.
And, of course, I passed up a checkmate! Timestamp: 15:39, All I had to do was to move the tower on the c file to the h file to win.
Timestamp: 7:21, Queen takes pawn was a huge error! I have to decide whether to lose my bishop or take the bishop and tower for my queen. This transaction would put me down by 1 point, whereas, retreating my queen to safety, allowing the bishop to fall would put me down by 3 points. In other words, what I did only put me down by 1 pawn. Timestamp: 10:15, I almost missed black’s Henry VIII {Hanging of the Queen}. Timestamp: 11:40, Naturally, I took the knight as that’s the only threat to my win {Knights are tricksters}. I allow the tower to take my bishop because it was a TRAP! Black should’ve moved a pawn to provide an escape square for the king instead of taking the bishop. Silly bot.
4/17/2022
This game did put me even with this bot. It was messy gameplay by me. I did somewhat remember what to play in this variation. I was tempted to move my queen to the a-file, but I wasn’t willing to abandon my king. When the enemy queen comes, I knew my king had a shelter to seek.
4/18/2022
Before I begin my flagellation over today’s gameplay, take a look at what Hikaru Nakamura did yesterday. Nakamura has been playing chess for 30 years. He is a super grandmaster, and yet, he moved his tower to a place where it could be captured. Even more spellbinding, Nakamura’s grandmaster opponent didn’t see the free tower capture. I will say, Nakamura is my chess hero for his niceness, gameplay, and his transparency.
I was even with this bot, I need just one more win to move on. I was feeling so-so. I should have waited until lights out to play on my tablet. I don’t know why I am stronger on my tablet, I suspect I play in haste on my tower. I had a rating of 1510 before this sleigh ride of poor chess play. I won 5, drew 2, and lost 9! The last game was on my tablet and that win was my cleanest win. I then studied until 11:39; I could no longer keep my eyes open.
This was a heavy positional game. Black blunders into my first fossil dig on move 26. My knight was between the black queen and my tower. I checked the black king and thereby unmasked a tower attack on the queen.
Hardly my finest play. I chased the towers around with my bishops and almost got mated. Thank goodness for back rank mates.
Even worse gameplay by me. I hung my bishop. Nevertheless, I prevail once again by a dirty back rank mate.
I hung my knight to a pawn; I wish I could claim I was high. Maybe it’s the brain damage from the ALS. I might be playing with half of my brain tied behind my back. Nevertheless, I hunkered down to get a win in a matter not done by me before.
This win put me back in the 1500 rating bracket. I used advanced tactics to win the knight f-6. I was leading all through this game. Move 17: Note my tower is protected 3 times, by the bishop, by the queen, and by the tower’s mate. The engine gives me a +6.2 for this position. The three moves required me to think for 9 minutes and 8 seconds to set up this tactical trap. If the knight hadn’t taken my knight, I would have pushed the d pawn forward to d-5. The d-5 square is attacked three times, by my queen, tower, and bishop.
Now that I am a piece up, I trade pieces to simplify the position.
4/19/2022
Move 14: I did a deep calculation that the engine disagreed with. I took with the bishop rather than the tower. The bishop at d-1 prevents any incursions from the knights and represents a low value target for the remaining tower. I was winning all through this game. This win put my rating at 1506. Before that horrid play yesterday, I had 1510, well, I did learn from some of those positions. Four points to go to get where I started from yesterday.
4/20/2022
I was robbed!
More accurately, I robbed myself! I had played a brilliant game and I was about to win. I was up by 8.4 points when I let my guard down for an instant. Even more madding is I had watched GM Ben Finegold lecture on how to not lose winning positions that morning. Finegold’s main theme was to be even more cautious in a winning position.
4/21/2022
My knights bring the endgame hurt to the black king. Interlocking knight are an unbreakable spell in chess play.
4/23/2022
I awoke at 3:39 am. I played hooky last night watching Pluto TV last night until 11:30 pm instead of doing my chess studies. So, I did warm-up drills until 4 am. I felt pretty good and thereby decided to engage in chess combat. I had believed I had played a nearly perfect game, but upon review, the chess engine informed me of my stupidity. On move 6, I opened myself to a tactic. Knight on f-6 takes pawn, thus unmasking an attack on my bishop at g-5. Thankfully, the bot didn’t find the move. I made 7 blunders! Hopefully, I won’t make those mistakes often or at all in the future. I was down as much as 8.3 points with equal material, that’s how bad my position had become, and all the while, I thought I was winning. Just sad, to be this bad at chess. I knew every move I made after black got its second queen had to be a check against the black king in order for me to win.
4/24/2022
I spent all day watching Stargate Atlantis on Puto TV and at the same time doing chess drills on my tablet. I did 25 drills. I learned much. To fulfill my contract, I had to play at least one game of chess. So, as I sat in the dark all alone in my sleeping area, the bathroom, I prepared for mental mortal combat. I put in my earbuds and fired up my tablet just one more time for 4/24/2022. I set my tablet to play my chess music playlist and I entered the arena of mental combat on Lichess.com.
I dispatched the mala-1 bot with ease. However, Stockfish-14 was not pleased with my chess play. This engine assigned me a failing grade.
1 inaccuracy
4 mistakes
3 blunders
63 Average centipawn loss
Hilariously, I thought once again I had played brilliantly. Stockfish disapproved of my doubling of my towers on the d-file. And my e5 pawn move on move 19 was a blunder according to the all-knowing and infallible Stockfish-14. Even my bishop takes tower didn’t please Stockfish-14. That’s a mystery as this exchange is a 2-point gain in my favor.
After my review of my own failings, I looked up the 2 games played by GM Hikaru Nakamura that he had played in a tournament that day. Hikaru hardly fared better according to Stockfish-14; chess is hard for everyone it seems. My rating is at 1519 on this day.
4/25/2022
Again, I spent the day watching Stargate Atlantis and doing chess studies. Tale of the tape:
0 inaccuracy
0 mistakes
1 blunder
34 Average centipawn loss
I had to work a little harder after hours for this win. This one blunder is a REAL blunder. I committed the blunder on move 23. I should’ve moved the pawn to f-3 to prevent a check on my king from the black tower. What’s maddening is I have done numerous drills that address this issue. I’ve been trained to look for offensive opportunities. I must also guard against this tactic going forward.
4/26/2022
A quick win by me. I had seen this gambit before. In that past game, I lost. I took note as to how to counter this gambit. That was a month ago. That is a good fact, it proves my memory is unaffected by my ALS affliction. This win restores my winning record with this bot {Pullen1961 342 1/2 to bot Maia-1 341 1/2} This win brings my rating up to 1525.
The two blunders are scored against me by Stockfish-14, the infallible, because my two moves toward checkmate did pass up the possibility to capture a piece along my way to the win. Those two peaks in the graph are those two moves.
4/26/2022
Oh, my glorious knights!
My knights rode to my rescue in this game. I had spent hours at the dentist’s office. Drugs were administered unto me. Even as I got ready for my nighttime rest, I didn’t feel right. This gambit played by black I hadn’t seen before, or I didn’t remember how to play against it. I mostly made the right moves according to the review by Stockfish-14, the infallible.
A GM and an IM were watching the gameplay of GM Hikaru Nakamura and another GM. Stockfish-14 showed a winning line that no human could ever find. The GM commentator said, “Get out of here, Stockfish, nobody likes you!” I giggled like a little schoolgirl.
Stockfish-14 disapproved of my trading off my towers. I knew with absolute certainty I could not lose with all of the towers off the board. I used the unbearable interlocking knight spell to win this game.
At all costs, I had to preserve one pawn for queening because I wasn’t certain I could checkmate the black king with my knights and my king.
4/28/2022
I played a human in a ten-minute game.
I was just fooling around in that I did not use any recognized opening for the black pieces I was playing in this game. The opening order I used was a hybrid of three different openings for black. On white’s 15th move he/she tries for a quick checkmate. This was the first game I played on my tablet against a human.
I had intended to push my f-pawn to f-3. To my delight, lunal78 pushed the g-pawn forward. Of course, I took the g-pawn. lunana78 blunders the retake. Almost always, take toward the center of the board. My final move would have delivered checkmate with my light-colored bishop. White resigned.
5/15/2022
Forgive me for not keeping my pledge to post a game a day. I was hurting so badly. I did my chess studies, however. This first game is an ugly win. I had two blunders.
Even worse, I committed six blunders!
I was licking my chess chops by playing delaying moves to play my self-discovered checkmate line. Thus, Stockfish-14 assigned me with one mistake.
Oh, my stars!
6 inaccuracies
1 mistake
3 blunders
52 Average centipawn loss
I had never seen this line before. After the game, I looked up the proper response to black’s moves, b6, bishop b-7.
I played this flawless game after lights out. I had been doing chess puzzles all day while watching Stargate Universe on Pluto TV. I’m bursting with pride in the accuracy of this chess play.
5/18/2022
The night before, I had watched IM Eric Rosen’s live stream of him playing his viewers. Rosen mentioned there was a bot that had been modeled off his chess play. The next morning, I played it. I took the bot down 700 rating points! Up until move 10, I was relying on my memorization of opening theory. On move 23, I sprung my tactical trap and force black’s queen from guarding the black bishop. It was a matter of trading down from this point for the win. My heart was racing from move 23 until move 42. What a gyp, I only received 4 rating points for this win!
5/27/2022
I tried to get the Hikaru Nakamura bot to play me, but it’s only programmed to play bullet { 3 minutes} games. I had been studying, so, I once again went to the Maia bot-1 well. This game was like taking candy from a child. My rating has climbed up to 1547 in classical time controls. I only used 27 minutes to win this game.
I errored on move 26. I should have checked on c-8 and then taken the tower on a-6 on the next move.
5/28/2022
This is my first 3-minute game win. I realized today that I could practice my 3-minute gameplay on my Chess.com account. I didn’t want to break my winning streak on Lichess.com. To be sure I did make a huge error, I hung my queen, but I still won. I took the black queen by forcing the king back which I learned in my training. I shook after the game from the stress. My mind has a hard time working at this pace. I played this game on my tablet. Another problem for me is my ALS hinders my hand and finger movements to play at this pace.
Flush with my win on Chess.com this day, after lights out, I played the highest rated Maia bot.
6/1/2022
Oh no, my QUEEN!
I was feeling pretty good this morning, and it was reflected in my morning training score. I played a game on chess.com last night and lost on time in 5-minute time control. I was winning big time until I ran out of time. That loss was due to my ALS impaired hand movement. This win raised my rating to 1561. This was an hour control game. I used 28 minutes.
6/22/2022
I had tried to play 3-minute games. My effort ruined my play for a week at all levels. The below games are in 10-minute time controls. I played these games after I had been up for 30 hours. I played 21 games in total in 3 tournaments. Lichess informed me of the fact that two players had been cheating and refunded the rating points I had lost to them. That was 10.5% out of 21 players were cheaters.
From move 22 and onward, it was a forced checkmate.
My dark square bishop takes a tour of the board.
7/5/2022
I have been playing in Swiss tournaments and my rating for classical play has taken a beating. The below game is a rapid game of 10 minutes. I’m playing the black pieces. I won with only 22 seconds to spare.
I am playing the black pieces. I am attempting to play the Hippopotamus opening. Larry is trying to win with a chess gimmick. Larry moved his queen too many times trying to give me trouble. Those wasted moves were a cause of Larry’s lack of development of his pieces. I made small improvements to my position during Larry’s queen attacks. The game was for 60 minutes. I had 32 minutes left while Larry had just 11 minutes left to play.