I don't want this to turn the DD into a personal blog, but the kind folks in the message boards have shown more interest than I have in my return to competitive chess at next week's World Open in Philadelphia. (Thanks for the support, guys!) After some initial confusion because of my ancient US rating and my much higher and more recent but still old Argentine rating (2300), I will be playing in the open section.
I figured that after a six-year layoff I might as well jump into the deep end and get some fodder for training. It will be painful but I decided I shouldn't worry about results until 2004. I hope that by then I'll have found time to study a bit. Either that or I'll have to start only including openings I want in my own repertoire in the Black Belt newsletters! (My "preparation" for the World Open has included trips to Seattle and now California and now my laptop is broken!)
Last February at the US Amateur Team I played my first six classical games in six years. It's a great event but hardly conducive to serious chess. My main goal in Philly will be to stay at the board for nine games and work so I have some decent material to analyze when it's all over. I'll try to post updates from Philly and also post photos and reports at ChessBase.com during the event.
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