The weekend

My wife and I started our weekend with a short day trip to Portland. It was one of those things we do just to get away and fortunately we made it very productive. We went to Powell's as usual and we both came home with something. My wife got a foreign language book and a couple of travel books to Brazil since she is going there in May. Myself, as usual I hit the Chess section pretty hard and got what I needed. One book on the Caro-Kann (I really should have picked up two), and one book on the Pirc Defence. I only got that as it looked interesting for a hyper-modern defence and it looks like a good alternative for me.

On other news... Allen started off our second match with the English Opening. I'll give hime credit for trying something new, but I used to play it a little and found it a tough fight. So I'm forcing him to transpose into a QGD since I'm starting out with the Dutch Defence. I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I should play the Stonewall or Leningrad variation.

I've only played the Leningrad Variation once and lost but it was a good result as I learned something from it from an aquaintance of mine at the Tacoma Chess Club. Stephen played the English as well and told me that my opening was extremely strong, but that I only missed on a tactical issue that lost the match. He walked me through it and stated that if I moved the queen to a better location (f7 instead of f8) I would have been okay. It's something to remember anyway if the same position comes up. But in the end I'm relishing another fight on my terms this time around.

On Sunday, we never got a chance to work on my wife's history as we did a few chores that needed to get done. The cars got washed and cleaned. The tubing in the basement got rerouted, and the garage was swept out and rearranged. And once we were done with all of that... I read a little on the Caro-Kann. I'll say this much... I have a lot to learn.