Ever felt like a complete dufus?I just did. Losing tonight to Sarkis Nabaldian (1734) sure did the trick on Round 6 of the Ford Memorial, and does little for my self-confidence.
Apologies to Vladimir and Steven who offered to have a look at my game but I declined as I didn't feel like having any post game analysis. Game was effectively over after 2 bad moves and knowing exactly where you went wrong was even more terrible.
Current score: +3-3=0 with 3 games left to turn the tide. When I first started out, my aim was to get 5 points and right now, that means having to win 2 out of my last 3 games.
Funny, I was in a bad mood so I logged onto freechess.org and proceeded to win 8 rapid games consecutively (hmm... a first for me... but it still didn't erase the self-recriminations from tonight's game).
There are times when you just want to throw your hands up in the arm and ask yourself why you would want to subject yourself to such mental torture. This is one of them.
I guess all chess players have to go through disappointments in order to improve but the journey is long, hard, laden with rocks and success only comes to those who want it bad enough.
I'll probably skip tomorrow's lightning competition at Ryde-Eastwood. I find that playing lightning and blitz chess is actually pulling my game down in the sense that I do not spend enough time working out the variations or analysing the position properly. The net effect is that it's making me make hasty moves. I didn't use to do that and I need to 'unlearn' blitz thinking and refrain from making a move too quickly. I reckon if I slow down, I would probably play a lot better.
All depends on your analyse, especially in long games. So i guess you try to find a way to have a good thoughtproces.
ReplyDeleteIf you have found it, please immediatly tell me. :-)
hello chesstiger,
ReplyDeleteusually, my thought process goes as follows:
a. find immediate threats
b. find my weak squares/points
c. create immediate threats
d. create/find opponent's weak squares/points
e. analyse properly
what i failed to do on my game was to analyse properly. between a capture of a pawn between a knight and a queen, i took with the Knight and lost it whereas if i took with the queen, i would have been slightly better.
live and learn, i guess.
thanks
Great coverage of a feeling we all know. I think a day off is sometimes in order after doing the postmortem.
ReplyDeleteAny posts that describe what your general improvement strategy is?
You weren't on my blogroll for some strange reason so I changed that.
hello BDK,
ReplyDeletefrankly, i've no idea what has come over me of late.
my chess vision has deteriorated alarmingly. i used to be able to see at least see 3 moves deep (6 ply) into a typical position but lately, my hand has started to develop a mind of its own and i was operating on a 4 ply mode.
i can get away with this facing opponents in the 1200-1500 rating levels but at 1700 levels, it's disastrous.
i don't have a fixed strategy plan as of yet so i'm still in the process of recollecting my thoughts and reviewing all of my games. i will post an update soonish once i sorted it out.
cheers and thank you
Are you going to post some of your games in the Ford Memorial with Auto Play and some analysis?
ReplyDeleteAnd can you add my new chess blog on your blog list please?
www.diamondbackchess.blogspot.com
Hello Diamondback,
ReplyDeleteI normally do not post games I play OTB mainly because I know of a number of players who read this blog may be unhappy with it so I do this out of common courtesy and respect to prevent any discords/misunderstandings.
I apologise for this omission. Rest assured that I will publish try to publish OTB games once I get the ok from my opponents.
I have no problems publishing internet games or training matches, fyi.
i've added you to my blog roll. thank you.
cheers
Maybe you've been corrupted by reading my blog to much and playing over some of my crappy games. :-Þ~ It's easy to overlook the right move sequence. Sometimes we make a recapture with a less valuable piece because we think it's safer. We have to look at each choice carefully before making our decision. "Stuff" happens. Will it happen again. Probably. *sigh* But tha's chess.
ReplyDelete