Out of curiosity, I decided to try the quiz link posted on Greg's blog. The quiz was linked from Farbror's weblog. And this is my result:
The Rolls Royce of chess openings.... hmmm... :)
I lost last night to 11 year old Peng Yu Chen (rated 1624) in the U1600 NSW Grade Match playing on Board 2 v St George Saints.
We transposed into a French like position (I was White) and a mistake on my part allowed him to capitalise and break through on the Queenside. During the game, I felt that I should have created better counter chances and this is one game where I would have to slowly go back and look where I went wrong.
Chen's youth belies a strong maturity in his playing ability and I'm not ashamed to have lost to him. He played a great game from start to finish.
Peter played on Board 1 and drew while Roger lost and David won so that leaves our group with a 1.5-2.5 score.
Speaking of losing to kids, while talking to a few older chess players in the club, one of them remarked to me on how he takes a little bit of comfort that he once drew with an extremely strong kid some time back. The kid has since surpassed him by leaps and bounds.
One thing I do realise about kids' playing style is their fearlessness.
When I see some older players playing against kids, I find that some of them have a propensity to seek "safe" lines for fear of being caught short in tactical play. I'm not entirely certain if that is the way to go. I myself have held the belief that one should always play to one's own personal playing strength and style. I myself am more inclined towards tactical play and will not hesitate to resort to tactics or sacrifices (if the situation warrants it). It would be a mistake for me to play in a more conservative and positional style (building up slowly etc.) because I am just not accustomed to it. I am at the stage in my playing where I favour dynamic play and tactics over positional play and I love playing to the edge of my seat at times.
In addition, rather than facing them with apprehension, I've always advocated to play to the best of your playing ability and not be afraid to tackle them on. Some of the kids I've come across are very good tactical players and with the aid of coaches and more resources like time, they can often raise their game to a much higher level and more rapidly than mature adults like me can ever do in a comparative period.
I am indeed happy to see them improve because it is a good image for chess if more kids take up the royal game.
Speaking of child prodigies, here's a very interesting excerpt about Illya Nyzhnyk below. In the video, he was only 10 at the time and already had an ELO rating in excess of 2200!
Here's an interesting position I just played on FICS.
Hint: Black to move and win material.
Answer can be found by highlighting between the brackets
[1. Bxe4 Bxe4
2. Nxe4 Qxe4
3. Re8 Qf3
4. Rxe3! and White cannot take the Rook back because of Bd4 pinning the Queen]
Here's some food for thought.
As chess players, what do we regard as really important ?
I for one have no ambitions of ever attaining any titled rank. The amount of effort required to reach the highest echelons of chess involves an enormous amount of time and resources which I currently do not possess.
But is it possible that chess players suffer from status anxiety in one form or another?
IMHO, the more engrossed we are in chess and the more emphasis we place in chess, there is a chance that the level of our dissatisfaction with chess itself arises.
We start to compare with other people, be it other players of the same club or with people who we perceive to be our
"equals". And when our peers start to get better or rise up the ranks quicker than us, we feel resentful. We may even starting cursing ourselves for our own inadequacies and our failings.
Chess is a rather strange beast.
Much like the secular world we live in, we largely perceive the chess world as meritocratic. In chess, everyone is more or less granted the same in terms of equality with regards to the various rights, opportunities and methods to improve our knowledge and understanding of chess.
And herein lies one of the problems with this meritocracy. If as chess players, we believe that those at the top merit their success, then by logical reasoning, are we also inclined to believe that those at the bottom merit their failure? Does this also not mean that those at the bottom brought it upon themselves? Are they - as Ben Kingsley so coldly call them in the movie, Searching For Bobby Fischer - losers?
The oft quoted modern punishing mantra in the chess world is "We make our own luck."
So why is it that when winners say they were lucky, we are more inclined to believe it. But for the defeated to blame it on bad luck, why are we less inclined to believe the opposite?
I didn't fare so well in my game last night and lost after making a positional blunder vs Gordon Miller. Oh well, I will just have to take the lumps as it goes. Fritz had a look at the position this morning and spotted something (strangely enough, a purely positional move) that I would never have considered. :)
My team overall put up a decent performance.
Fellow team-mate Brenton beat my brother-in-law Steven in a tense game on Board 1.
Lorenzo lost against Oscar Wang on Board 2.
David French drew with Marek Baterowiz on Board 3.
So that effectively puts us at 1.5-2.5 for the overall result.
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