How To Not Cry When You Lose
I have a saying that my kids are sick of: You are never losing when you are learning!
(From Dirty Rotten Scoundrels... one of my favorite classics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4-GpfBnoYk )
...which I usually believe. Sometimes I do lose though and I'm so frustrated. So I better learn from it! The game below was a beautiful, joyful, painful, instructive loss.
(A timeline of the score throughout the game.)
My main takeaways from this happily painful loss are:
1. Stop seeing ghosts. In the beginning I had Bf5 but quickly dismissed it because of Nh4, which wasn't really an option at all. Look deeper...
2. Don't be afraid to make positional sacrifices. If I had played Rxb3 it would have opened him up to long-term pressure. My bishops were MONSTERS! Who cares about a stupid rook when I had those bad-boys staring at the king!
3. Open lines. I had that pawn on e3 and MANY times it was the right thing to do to just PUSH it and open things up. But it never seemed right - even though it was. I mean, I wanted to so badly! But I couldn't see the immediate benefit. And yet intuition was nudging for it.
How did this review feel? Did it hurt?! NO WAY!! (Said through tears....)
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Yes, I am the guy who started Chess.com (along with Jay, Igor, Piotr, and many others). I have 3 amazing daughters, one wild son, and a wonderful, patient wife! I learned chess when I was 8 years old. Since then I have been playing, studying, and enjoying it regularly. I prefer semi-open and closed positions that blow up tactically (like the Closed Sicilian, King's Indian, Glek etc).
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