I outplayed a 2200 player OTB

and wound up losing on something which I should have seen pretty easily.  This is not the first time something like this has happened.  Do any of you have troubles with blowing easily won games against higher rated players? 

And no I don't remember the game.  It was just a 10 min game that I played for fun.   

Highly rated players got there for a reason, they find a way to win games. Here is a tournament game I lost against a 2300. I had a winning position, but that isn't the same as winning the game. The game doesn't end with a winning position, it ends with checkmate.

cool. good point loomis.

I'm not saying I'm a great player (because I am not), but I do seem to have a knack for escaping from dodgy positions against lower rated players. Sometimes they seem to lack the killer instinct, or they don't want to sacrifice material when it would gain them a clear, and sometimes winning advantage. I guess this happens higher up the chess evolutionary ladder too. If I'm playing someone 200-400 points above me I'm going to be overly suspicious of what looks like a blunder and just might not take the advantage that has been handed to me.

winning won games is not super easy but can be learned. I have a few pieces of advice of how to play when you are up 1-3 pawns or even a piece.

1. Trade Pieces

2. Centralize your pieces, if you do this it will be hard for the opponent to get good play

3. Prevent counterplay as much as possible. Don't make the game sharp when that puts you at serious risk instead of keeping things easy.

4. Don't miss tactics. This is where most people lose won games. If you miss anything, your material advantage could go away very quickly. It's the most important because a complex strategy is probably not necessary with more material.

5. Study the endgame. People may get excited when queens get off the board and they're up but knowing endgame theory is quite important and really most intermediate stuff only takes a few days or weeks to learn.

6. Don't get into time trouble. This can easily happen if you are over cautious of losing your material or if you don't know what to do. If you can't think of much, just do something simple. You should make your opponent try to do something but of course you need to limit his counterplay.

If you can do all of this, material advantages will be your best friend.

Great game Loomis other then your late blunder.  You should try and get a rematch.

RN9, I've had the opportunity to play that player again. And lost again. I feel like I always put up a strong fight no matter who I play, but there is a reason players are higher rated than I am -- they're better at winning! (Put another way, they make better chess moves than I do.)

 lol, great quote..and yes I agree with your point.  Maybe I should state it another way though.  I think I tend to miss rather simple stuff which I wouldn't miss against a lower rated opponent.  Have you had any issues with this? 

The guy did tell me I completely outplayed him and that he "couldn't believe I missed that" 

I know what you mean, psychology plays a huge role in chess.  Often times a much higher rated player can make catastrophic blunders and the lower rated play won't notice them not because it's difficult to see but because they simply don't expect it from the better player.  Their mind becomes so occupied with trying not to lose that it prevents them from seeing a win if and when it does arise.

I see this a lot for instance on ICC when a grandmaster will be playing an untitled player in lets say a 10 minute game and hang his queen by accident.  The lower rated player in many cases will just assume the queen is defended and not even analyze the consequence of taking it.  It's easy to get overwhelmed by someone's higher rating and simply forget to play chess.  I fight with this problem too.  It's tough to stay objective when you subconsciously or consciously feel inferior to your opponent in terms of skill, but when you can figure out how to get through this and stay mentally solid in these situations the sky is the limit.  So yea just play chess and try to be as objective as possible, play the position and not the opponent... easier said than done though. 

Even in a ten minute game, how does a GM hang a queen?

It can happen more often then you think especially in a time scramble but I agree it would be more common to drop a minor piece than a queen of course.  I'm certainly not saying this circumstance would happen often with a GM but of course the shorter the game the better the chances.  The point is a weaker player would often times never see the win even if it was a fairly obvious tactic because they simply weren't mentally prepared to expect/find it.

wow!

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