Spring closed tournament, Brussels Chess Club

Brussels Chess Club is a very friendly place to play in.

Similarly to last year, I have decided to join their closed tourney, featuring eight players and seven rounds this year - one fewer than we had last year (with a bye, as one would expect with nine players). 

Stephane Tannemaat, last year's winner, is participating this year as well (in fact, I play him next week). Also Sergio Zamparo is a familiar face, and Eddy Matthys and Philippe Lombart as well. 

The other three participants - two of them close to 2100 in the ratings and the third will be presented below - are new and unfamiliar to me. We'll see how it all pans out. 

Simone Peeters, despite her modest rating (but she has credits, as will be soon explained), should have routed me in twenty moves or so, earlier this evening. 

For some reason, she showed a totally misplaced humanity, offering me a draw in a position where I was being strangled, confined to barely one quarter (!) of the board, and losing quickly my material and my king. 

Now see how this all happened:

Ah, the good old respect for the higher rated player! That has gotten me out of trouble at times as well!

I don't know... when you have a position that good and don't play it out, it makes me think, why even play chess? You want to give up the challenge of outhinking a "better" player just because you don't want a loss? Even if you do lose, there are some situations where you might as well try, otherwise it just seems more like a half game -- you show your opponent you can make a few good moves, then in an anti-climactic way don't show how you can exploit your hard-earned advantage (which is the logical conclusion of a nicely played game) just to cling to any half point you can.

Of course it's one thing to not play out a slightly better position, or if you're in big time pressure, opponent has counterplay, etc, but at a certain point when you disregard just about any advantage you have, it's like you're not really engaged in the fight.

I don't mean disrespect to your opponent of course, but I wonder if she would enjoy the game more if she came out there ready to prove her opponent wrong, tell him or her, I don't think you can afford to give up a piece and this is why, etc -- even if you still lose, at least you challenged your opponent, gave them a problem to solve. I guess I just view chess as a battle of wits :) Just my opinion though.

Indeed, if I'm playing, say, a 2300, 2400 player, and I have a huge advantage, I figure I might as well buckle down and try to win it -- maybe I'll mess up and lose, but if I have an opportunity to go toe to toe in a battle of wits against a great player, that's an awesome occasion I don't want to miss. Imagine the crowd that would gather around my board... sounds fun! There's just something about a win -- to be able to say, you're much better than me, but today I was able to outthink you and I trusted in myself -- a really powerful feeling.

Right - you learn from losses - also from painful ones which come from winning positions (unless it's an obvious queen blunder, such as Cannes game 5). 

Maybe this also accounts for a difference in ratings between ourselves and Simone - as I would also battle it against an IM if I had her position after move 19 - I would never offer a draw, and if the IM would, I would just laugh in his face. 

However, health is a concern. Where a person feels that going on would cost them in health - I can understand that they stop. Why play chess isn't really a question in this context - chess is enjoyable (although I join you in stating that I enjoy "what is" more than "what could have been if..."), it provides a subject of conversation, it allows you to meet friends on common grounds, it keeps your mind busy and athletic... the competitive, win-oriented approach is only a part of the reason why people play chess. 

Simone, with her 1709 rating, is exactly a case in point. Her rating is relevant as regards results - but if you see the way that she reaches these results, and in view of this specific game - you wouldn't think necessarily that it was played by an 1700 player (except for the draw offer!). 

I'm actually saying that the mindset of playing out a position you know is good is part of the full enjoyment of the game -- you see your idea out to the very end -- doesn't that make for a more "complete" end to a fight between two players? Doesn't it make it a more interesting, rich, worthwhile experience?

Still, maybe other people don't see it that way. Fair enough.

We were sitting and analyzing after the game - before the blitz session (in which she played well, losing only 2:1). We saw exactly how she could have finished me off in a variety of ways - helped by other willing club members. She was very happy throughout the whole proceeding - positively cheerful. You never even saw the trace of a shadow of a feeling that she might have missed something, or might have gained anything by actually winning the game. 

Different people, different mindsets, different values. We need to grant that - people aren't all the same (although my way of thinking is akin to yours in this regard. I told her so - but alas, to no avail...)

"or might have gained anything by actually winning the game."

Forget the result -- wouldn't you think she would gain something simply by finishing it?

Maybe she just takes joy in cliffhangers? :p

I guess it was up to her to decide... I'm certainly not in a position to complain. 

Well anyway, nice post as usual :) Always interesting to get into the head of an expert.

Thx, Elubas :-)

It's really fun to get down and put everything "on paper" (if virtual) after the game, really looking into things... seems like it's already become part of my playing routine. 

Nice read. Good luck in your next games

Thanks! :-) I'm happy that you enjoyed it :-)

There are different places to play chess in Brussels. My club is located high up in Uccle, in Rue Alfonse XIII (I think it's number 66, or 68). 

A very nice area, indeed :-)

Condolensces anybody?

Solskytz is going through a dismal patch in his competitive chess career - having lost yet another game (the third out of my last five - the other two being draws - for a performance of 1632. 

Stephane Tannemaat was an opponent I really wanted to beat... but alas - you don't always get the result you want. 

The game was rich in ideas and very interesting from both a strategical and tactical point of view. I'm surely going to post it, with commentary, as soon as it's ready. 

Thought I'd first get the result here off my chest...

Busy times here in the European Capital. Can't get down to analysis right away...

Some thoughts though:

1) in chess, winning encourages you to keep playing, while losses encourage you to grow - to learn, to look for reasons why, to change thinking habits, to learn chess patterns, to tweak opening. You learn about the duel, the fight - what happens on the chessboard and what happens in the mind. 

2) chess is remarkably similar to life in general in many senses. 

First - it is a game. So is life in general. 

Secondly - in chess, you are proud of what positive things you can do - but tend to hide and deny the negative things (errors, oversights, blunders, lacunes in understanding, wrong judgments, missing knowledge) in your game. 

So it's easy to talk big - to yourself and to other, and to convince yourself that you're as good as your best moments. 

The plain truth is that you're as good as some kind of average between your best and your worst moments. Eliminating a "worst" uplifts the average considerably. Identifying and getting rid of a chess (or a life) weakness does wonders to elo. 

It is with this in mind that we embark upon such a thankless, daunting task, as annotating yet another game which we lost. Let's see what we can get from it, so that in the future our opponents won't be able to get this kind of points from us. 

"Secondly - in chess, you are proud of what positive things you can do - but tend to hide and deny the negative things (errors, oversights, blunders, lacunes in understanding, wrong judgments, missing knowledge) in your game. 

So it's easy to talk big - to yourself and to other, and to convince yourself that you're as good as your best moments. 

The plain truth is that you're as good as some kind of average between your best and your worst moments. Eliminating a "worst" uplifts the average considerably. Identifying and getting rid of a chess (or a life) weakness does wonders to elo."

I agree 100%. Those people who say things like "My rating is x, but really I'm x + 200" are only "x + 200" if they look at all of their good moments where they played higher than their strength and ignore all of the opposite (x - 200) moments.

Dear Elubas - I'm exactly one of these people who say exactly that - except that in view of my last games, it's more like "X + 240", more or less, if I calculated right. 

And this is what you should do! You ARE every bit as good as your greatest moments - provided that you have a certain number of them and that it isn't just luck. 

You are - but your rating (understandably) isn't. 

Some people have and show an understanding which is well beyond their ratings, because of that factor. Some other people work hard on eliminating the reasons why they don't perform consistantly on their "true" level - and then reach it, and often go further. 

- - - - - - - - - - - 

Still not posting the game, and within philosophical "ruminations"

This thing of winning and losing, reminds me of my days as an advanced piano student, many years ago in Italy. 

It seems that when you're really serious about getting good, you have to "run out of your system" being bad. You play amazing chess (or piano) one day - and then just fall on your head on the day after (this relates to the previous section, Elubas). 

It's the same as, when you finally put order in the house, disorder raises its ugly head and jumps at you - disorder that you've successfully ignored theretofore. 

It is very frustrating to be a "slowpoke" after you've been brilliant. 

And yesterday I remembered a moment when I made a powerful stride as a near piano master, at around age 22. 

What would happen then, was that I would have a bunch of great days at the piano, when I would learn quickly, play wonderfully, technical passages would just flow - and then the day after, I didn't feel like playing at all, I would be slow, many elements in scores just wouldn't make any sense, I wouldn't be making music, nothing sounded the way I wanted it to. 

And the breakthrough was when I learned to greet exactly these "blurry" days, and found out that I knew exactly what to do with them. I would dedicate such days to slow, careful study, note by note, of piano pieces of my choice. 

This would be a lot easier to do, a lot less challenging, and a lot "safer" than to try to "play big". 

Many times, a "dull" day, through this training routine, would gradually turn brilliant, as the fog would lift!

And yesterday I have just realized that exactly the same is now happening to me in chess!!

I won? Wonderful! Balloons and champagne bottles!

I lost? Wonderful! Let's analyze it and see what exactly happened. No biggie. 

Especially now that I have this rather regular blog here, which is collecting readers by the thousands (amazing! The Cannes thread has already 6500+ views. My "first ever FIDE tourney" is at 4993 (!!) viewers. 

Viewers keep gathering at my threads, in many cases, long after they have ceased to produce new content. 

I have more readers than several other PROFESSIONAL and PROMOTED writers in this website - where I'm neither one nor the other.

Even the best writers (amazingly deep and entertaining people such as Silman and Brian Smith) only arrive on occasion to readership figures that are double or triple my own - not more than that. 

How this came about is really a mystery to me - but it's a fact. 

So having this blog, almost creates a feeling (after I lose, or even after I draw a game I "should" win - because of rating if not because of position) that - ok, here - so I lost. So I lost badly. So I lost embarrassingly. So I lost like a patzer. Fine!! Now - let's write about it already!!! :-)

- - - - - - - - - - - 

A word about "games that you should have won because of rating" - you remember I told you last week about 1709-rated Simone Peeters? Yesterday she gave a lesson in "the positional crush", or in "how to dominate the b-file with your doubled rooks, penetrate on b2 and neutralize any hopes to counterplay" to another opponent in the mid-1900s. It was horrifying to watch, what these 1700 players can accomplish!

You should have seen the glow in her eyes - and this time, she offered no draws and no excuses! You could say that I was lucky to be her first...

If I calculated correctly, she's now leading the tournament, together with the infatigable Stephane Tannemaat, with 1.5 out of 2. The game itself will follow soon. 

I take beating lower rated players very seriously. I try to get upsets to raise my rating when I can, but first and foremost I have to avoid dropping points, especially to people who would of course love to get an upset against me. Of course, I could play carelessly against lower rated players and just point to wins against higher rated players to say "see, when I actually try look what I can do!" But I find that, while not totally illogical, to be a pretty cheap excuse. I play a chess game for a fight, not for easy points where I don't have to exhaust effort, otherwise where's the thrill in chess?

I guess I tend to view a tournament as a performance (for myself, not so much for other people, as who cares about me? Maybe when I'm a master? lol), and I feel satisfied when I can say for 8 hours, I played some thoughtful chess, had some interesting struggles, came up with some cool ideas, etc, and that doesn't change much when playing a weaker player -- after all, I have to prove why I am the stronger player.

You're right that rating is not just a measure of understanding, but also of consistency, how you apply the knowledge, having good form, etc. But for me the "performance" aspect is a huge part of the experience; it's where I use the tools I learned to beat my opponent in a back and forth battle of wits. If I can do that well I consider that a good achievement (and ratings reflect this in particular). For others, maybe they're just ok with playing one really nice game even if they did badly on others. And that's fine -- who am I to tell them what to be satisfied with. Anyway, I have maintained my 2000 rating so far, even pushed it up a bit -- hopefully I've left 1900 for good!

"And the breakthrough was when I learned to greet exactly these "blurry" days, and found out that I knew exactly what to do with them. I would dedicate such days to slow, careful study, note by note, of piano pieces of my choice. 

This would be a lot easier to do, a lot less challenging, and a lot "safer" than to try to "play big". 

Many times, a "dull" day, through this training routine, would gradually turn brilliant, as the fog would lift!"

That's awesome. I agree with you on how to handle losses. I basically do the same thing as you, but probably not as well -- you seem to be a grandmaster of handling your losses!

lol Elubas - I guess that the trick is simply to exteriorize from whatever has happened, and lose that "personal" viewpoint of "it happened TO ME". As soon as you can do that, you can probably draw whatever benefit the game has in store for you. 

I've re-read the whole post, and I'm still not seeing it honestly. But again I get people are different, although you should too.

Is it paragraph 2? Am I arrogant because that's what my goal is? Am I somehow implying any other approach is stupid? I'm just not seeing it; many approaches to the game can co-exist with mine expressed in paragraph 2.

Is it because I like a battle of wits? Does my enjoying this hurt other people? I'm not seeing it.