Another case of bad fortune: FIDE Invitational Rounds 6-7

Saturday, sometime in August. It was so long ago that the author can't remember. But thats fine. Here Joseph Truelson tells you a part of his journey of losing 55 rating points. After reading this we hope that you gain the knowledge to be able to lose a similar amount of rating points on your own. As always, you can consult Joseph Truelson for help.

It was the 4th day of the FIDE Junior Invitational. My dad told me that I didn't need to play and that he understood if I withdrew. He probably thought that there was a better way to spend my last weekend before school than losing a lot of games of chess. But I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't sure what I would do, other than play bad chess. So, since that was the only thing I was sure of, it happenned. 

In the 6th round, I got to play the lower rated person. This only made matters worse for me. Because if I lost this game I would look even worse, and I would regain the coveted last place. Except I was tired of being last place, so I wasn't looking forward to it anymore. Instead, I was looking forward to get a GM draw, and then going into my next game against Neil Doknjas confident. So did that happen? Find that out... now

I kind of forgot a lot of the fun things I did at this event, because it was almost a month ago. What I do remember is:

"Shh! People are still playing their games!"

"Stop talking so much!"

"Why don't you withdraw?"

So I probably don't remember the event that fondly. But it was interesting. After every round I had the opportunity to play Bughouse, or if not bughouse, blitz. When I played blitz in fact, I did really well! I was capturing kings, trying to cheat by putting 2 queens on the board (Maybe next time I should make it less obvious), and I beat one of the He brothers in an opening trap after the last round! 

I did really well at the quick time controls. I play them too much, and don't try to get good at "normal" chess, thus I fail and make lazy moves.

Anyways, my opponent was in the 1600s and I was around 200 points higher rated, so I should have won. But you'll see what happenned.

My opponent actually let me have the move in a symmetrical position after 12 moves and I was playing Black, but I couldn't make usage of it! Terrible!

So, another game, and I didn't lose! I finally managed to draw 2 consecutive games! So maybe I had hope to do so in the next round.

What I didn't like about that last game is that I can't learn anything from it! Its probably because I am not that good, but the position was so boring that I didn't know what to do. I just learned not to play that opening in the future. I guess that's something. But if I go by that logic, I'll not like any openings since I seem to do badly in every opening.

As you guys have obviously observed (You've all read my blogs 3 times each), I have made this the title to make fun of my other encounter with Neil Doknjas, a talented youthful player from Canada, ready to get revenge from my lucky endgame win against him. Such was his determination was that he beat me in the purest of endgames, a pawn endgame (Of course without the kings, just pawns). 

Neil has shown a lot of improvement in the last few months, and this tournament made it extremely obvious. He had only lost to Vignesh Anand and Karthik Shaji, and had done his share of beating on all of the players who blundered. Against me, rather than pure skill, he needed luck, as well as a trap. But, he needed revenge for my win against him. Lucky buddy. But as I've always said, I'd rather have good luck than good skill. Here's why.

Opening

Neily told me that he prepared every opening against me because he heard that I play everything. But I decided to foolishly play 1.e4, probably something that he knew better, as I tried it last time against him also. We ran into a Sicilian. 

Middlegame

Now Neily starts to play well, and I don't

Endgame

As usual, I fight my way back in the game, only to lose anyways. It happens all of the time!

Well, I learned that I better not play lazy moves! Why could I not be skeptical of the move f4? Terrible! 

After this terrible loss, I got to talk to Neil a little bit (surprising me since he's very quiet!) I told him that he has to be nice to me since I lost to him. And he seemed more interested in playing chess variants than in actual games. Oddly enough, I crushed him in blitz and all of the chess variants (Almost beating him in one that he made up!). But in the tournament I didn't. Odd. Does that mean that I'm playing too much blitz? Hmm....

I noticed that I was losing and drawing a game for the past 3 days. I hoped that I would finally be able to break that streak. 1.5/7 for one of the higher rated players in the field was really dissapointing. But I was determined that on the last day to try my hardest against Vignesh Anand and Eric Zhang. After all, I had nothing to lose... except lose.