The anti-kid strategy in action: Challenger's Cup Round 2
I think this paragraph is really unnecessary. Who cares about who took the photos! Obviously I took them. Do you see that evil kid looking at the camera? That's right, I have a anti-Anthony strategy! I can't believe someone like him actually won the tournament! Photo credit of me, but I don't have a credit card, so I don't think I'll get much credit for it.
I've heard everywhere that young chess players only play for attacks. And that is 100% true. I'm gotten tackled by multiple young players when I tell them that I don't watch football. And even if I don't tell them that they attack me anyways. But that is real attacks. Since this is chess.com, we must discuss fake attacks, so we don't break their rules of what we can focus on, and I can't describe in detail the gruesome details. But back to fake attacks over the board. Young chess players are stereotyped as players who study tactics, Sicilians, and any attacking openings, and they hate defense. This is a stereotype, so it is sometimes true. Although I think that it actually applies more to all lower rated players, since they haven't learned the basics of positional chess well. In other words, me. Anyways, my so-called anti-kid strategy is that I trade down into an endgame, more often than not drawn, then I proceed to do nothing, they give up a pawn, and then I win! Yes! This works against lower rateds, so if they play well and don't hang a pawn I will just cheat and take one off the board anyways. If only that worked every time. I remember when I started playing in scholastic tournaments. Once an endgame appeared, I always did well since I knew that checkmate was not possible, while my opponents would still sacrifice everything and try to checkmate me while I go and promote my pawns. Then they would tell me how it is illegal to have 2 queens since there wasn't a second spare queen on the board. Unfortunately, even the youngsters now realize that checkmate is hard in the endgame. Still, I think that it is true that younger players play worse endgames. And that includes me. The only exception is Vikram, at least of far as I'm concerned. (I don't want to admit that everyone is better than me!)
Why does this apply to this game? My opponent was younger than me, at least I think so, so I figured I could force a few blunders out of him. I don't win games by playing well, but by not not playing well. I know that that doesn't make any sense, but that's how I win reserve sections. And I don't want you guys to win reserve sections, so I will make the process seem as difficult as possible, and try to convince you that you don't have to play well, when in reality you do. But after winning a reserve I proudly go into the next tournament and the higher rated chess players show me the real truth... I hate good chess players!
As usual, I brought my iPad to take some pictures of players and see how they were doing. And I wanted to see how they were doing forever. Most of them seemed to be having a good time. Believe me, if they weren't a picture was guaranteed to be taken, so they made sure to act happy.
2 Chess players doing something. Since I can't think of a fake story of why they are doing this I will just present the picture.
A player has just started running toward the camera right when I took this. A lot of people do that and many of my pictures are of someones hand.
Anyways, at around 11:45 last Saturday, I had just finished my first round, and I heard the next game would start around 12:50, 20 minutes later than initially scheduled. Although I really doubted it. Since I am a player, I have a right to criticize the local events. So let me do so. After all, don't I have a right to write, as long as I'm right? One problem with every Washington Chess Federation is that the rounds always start late! As I would say, expect the expected, which is the unexpected, but since it is expected, then the unexpected as well as the expected is the unexpected, and well then I confused myself. So I better complain about somkething else. Aha! As for more complaints, the worst case of late rounds was at the last year's Vancouver Open, when one of the rounds was around 2 hours late. That was probably why this year they had half the attendance of the previous year. Terrible! Actually, the only reason that the Vancouver Open was terrible was because I played so badly, but I need to come up with an excuse for losing, so here it is. Late round starts led me to play worse. Always come up with excuses. Why? Then you will not try to improve, and as a result when I play you I will win! So keep up the excuses chess players, as long as it helps me win I'm fine with it!
Another thing that always happens is that half the chess players never know when the next round starts, even though it is posted in the skittles room, the tournament room, and a flyer that is given weeks before the event. So I was bombarded with questions of when the round started. If they were in the Open, I decided to be honest, and told them that it was at 12:50, the supposed start time, so that they would like me and agree to draw me if I played them in the future. But when people in the reserve asked me, I said that it started at 1:51! Why? Because if I was playing them, they would arrive when I win on forfeit. Isn't it great to win on forfeit? I don't really care about rating much, so I gladly will take the free point.
Unfortunately, I've never seen my 2nd round opponent before, so I wasn't able to try this lying about the round times. I didn't say a single thing to him before our game, and I had no idea who he was. So he didn't show up late, in fact he was at the board early. Usually I would have confused him by saying that I would scare him so that he would play worse, but unfortunately the Open section games were going on as the next round started, and I didn't want to get kicked out of the tournament. Not yet anyways. But if I lost this game, maybe I would have loved to use getting kicked out of the tournament as a good reason for withdrawing.
Anyways, to my surprise, the round actually started on time, at 12:50, 20 minutes later than scheduled, but at least they notified us of the reschedule. So at least they improved a little bit. But I have more complaints. One of the players in my section, Dan Matthews, was from the Washington Chess Federation and beat me in the Washington Open in a critical last round game, so that is a good enough reason to hate the Washington Chess Federation. Also unfair was that they didn't raise the prize fund, even though they had 60 entries, the prize fund wasn't increased by 20%. Now normally I wouldn't care too much about this, but since I was trying to compete for a prize, I wanted them to be as high as possible! So, should I request a boycott of the Washington Chess Federation? By the way, I know that all you members of the WCF are reading this, so if you don't back into my sensible and outrageous demands (I should try to be like Bobby Fischer), then I will issue a boycott and -10 players will attend the next WCF event, the Washington Class Championships. I will get someone else to run a substitute event. Careful, chess establishment, I'm coming after you! That's right, FIDE, US Chess, and WCF are terrible! Of course, I expect them to mail me my winner's check this week.
The Washington Chess Federation also doesn't cater to my every need. During the game, being on the top board in the reserve section, I expected that I would have a name card. Did I? No. I wasn't paid an appearance fee (If I didn't come they would have had to cancel the event due to lack of participation), I wasn't allowed to distract everyone and be noisy, and I was told to stop playing bughouse. Also Terrible!
I think that just like the news that I've done a pretty good job of being negative (No news is good news). The first thing news channels do these days is make sure all the news is bad. News is terrible too! Chess News is better than normal news in fact. It is a lot more boring, but at least it is always the same: Someone is happy by winning, someone else is not happy by losing, and I am feeling neutral. Boring.
Well, the game finally came, and noticing that my opponent was a kid, I decided to see if my anti-kid strategy would work. I think it worked to perfection, both sides played badly, which is what I was hoping for. It was more important for me to make him play bad moves than for me to find good ones.
For those of you adults hoping to beat kids your rating, the following game will inspire you and make you realize that kids are the worst at endgames!
