Your last: 4. Ng1-f3
My move: 4... c5xd4

Your last: 4. ... /c5xd4
My move: 5. Nf3xd4

What time zone are you living in, Scandium? I am in GMT+1.

Good night for today!

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/7030/pos12qr.jpg

Good job Sky. You took the spite check away. I never liked that peculiarity among the English system lines.

You guys have the nicer board. Real wood grain with a Danish Oil finish I bet. :cool:

WHAT...? No move for me...??? :hulk: :arrgh!: :hulk: :arrgh!:

:-j, of ocurse.

But I only wanted to prevent Nimzo-Indian... :(

Your last 5. Nf3xd4
My move: 5... d7-d5

I'm GMT-3.5.

Your last: 5. .../d7-d5
My move: 6. Bf1-g2

Timezone -3.5? How can that be, were are you living? I thought all time zones differ by full hours only?

So much for English! :lol:

Your last: 6. Bf1-g2
My move: 6... e6-e5

I think there are two half hour timezones... I live in one of them :)

Your last: 6. .../e6-e5
My move: 7. Nd4-f3

Newfoundland! You are a caribou-eater! :)

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/3509/pos17fl.jpg

Interesting position. Promises to become a very sharp fight.

:rotfl:

Can't say I blame you on the Nimzo-Indian. I never liked that close-quarters stuff. Give me room for my pieces to move!

You are like a computer - their preferences are the same. :lol: That's why I keep it closed as long as possible when playing computers. Else, in open positions they bring their characteristic strengths to full effect.

Nothing against Nimzo-Indian - but with Black only. ;) Obviously Scandium doesn't like English with Black. And I don't like Indian Defenses, Modern Benoni with White. :D

Your last: 7. Nd4-f3
My move: 7... d5-d4

If you've never eaten reindeer you don't know what you're missing :D

I'm not overly fond of the English no :) Interestingly I do like (and used to play it as much as I could) Benoni systems as well the Nimzo-Indian (as black for both), though I haven't had as much experience with the Nimzo.

My favourite opening with black against 1.d4 systems though is the Budapest Gambit. Unfortunately it requires a very exact move order which white rarely plays these days, so little opportunity to use it or hone one's skill with it. All the same I think I've taken one of the worst beatings ever against a skilled player of it during one of my brief forays into the realm of 1.d4 (I mostly play 1.e4).

Computers do tend to handle complex closed positions poorly, but I had one of my best upsets against one of the stronger online computers on FICS (there are a handful of bots online of varying strengths to play if the mood strikes or during offpeak hours when opponents are scarcer) in an open game. The computer had an online rating of 2200 versus my rating at the time of about 1800 (I should mention this isn't blitz by the way... they move way too quickly for blitz :)) and I drew it, with black, in a N ending with several pawns that involved a N sac to create drawing chances (many moves later I got the draw, the sac was intuitive and not calculated so I have no idea how sound it was, having forgotten any post-game analysis I might have conducted). I still have that game in my online journal, preserved for posterity :lol:.

At any rate, from that experience I concluded that they don't handle certain endings well either, due to their materialism. Unless its in their tablebase, then they will play the ending to perfection.

Your last: 7. .../d5-d4
My move: 8. O-O
If your next move: 8. .../Nb8-c6 then my move: 8. e2-e3


1800 ELO :huh: - okay, I equip my rooks with MIRVs then, and replace my King with Darth Vader. Never had a ranking myself, but I stopped beeing able to beat board computers reliably on tournament levels in the early 90s. At that time they maybe had reached the range of 1800-2100 ELOs, whichbwas too much for me. But since then I lost quite some substantial skill, and routine. So I think I must rate myself below your ranking, then.

What only means that you have more prestige to loose than me! :lol:

However, I liked to play Modern Benoni (with Black) a lot back then. Computers fell easily to it. As you said, they do not like closed, strategical positions, where as open, tactical positions favours their calculation power.