University of Chicago Shout Out

I played a complicated and ultimately successful game last night, but I'm still processing what I think about many of the key variations. In the meantime this post is a tribute to a college friend of mine, Jason Cigan who has accomplished something few adults can manage. The last time I saw him in person, just about two years ago he was rated somewhere around 1600 and a year before that just 1200.  Since then he has worked hard on his play and consistently improved, recently breaking the 2000 barrier. For children, hard work tends to pay off at rates like this, but for an adult with classes and jobs this is a very impressive rate of improvement. For some perspective, I am paid to think about chess most of the time and I have gained about 80 points in the last two years.

Jason demonstrated his attacking style in a tournament game yesterday. He missed a path to an advantage early, but even after slipping into trouble he kept causing his higher rated opponent problems until that opponent slipped into a cute mate at the end. If you don't want to click through the whole game, I suggest at least solving the checkmate puzzle below.