WTF?
So, this happened on Wednesday and I'm already over it but I still think it's funny. The other day when I said that I was going to get on ICC and murder some people I won my first two games and then there wasn't a good standard seek so I hit that stupid green button and waited for a five minute game. ICC has separate ratings for the five-minute pool and blitz, I'm like 1800 blitz and 1550-1600 five-minute, and I get paired against a 1700 and I'm like cool no problem right. So then after a few moves I look at his name and it has IM in front of it and I'm like damn... this isn't going to be as easy as I thought. So I find out after the game that he is 2780 in regular blitz, that's only 1000 points on me, no big deal... His name is Olivier Simon, he's from France, he's a douchebag.
Here's how it went down. He played the Rossolimo variation against my Sicilian. This is a pretty popular Anti-Sicilian so I have looked at the lines in some detail. One of the themes is that the knight goes from g8 to f6 to d7 to f8 to e6 before you castle because awkwardly enough you have time and this is the fastest way to get it in. So for the first 12 or so moves my play was book. Then he says "it's easy?" which I don't know what that means, he's French so maybe he thinks it means something. Then later he says that it's easy to learn an opening but that my play after that was horrible and that I need to learn to play not learn openings. I spend very little time studying openings, I just look up lines that I'm in and continuously develop around them. That's how I found that idea in the first place. But anyways, coming from a normal player I would just shrug that off and laugh but I really don't think IMs should act like that. Then he just leaves. So I was like wtf??? And I went to Fritz to see how "badly" I played. I hold a slight advantage for the first 30 moves, and my theory definitely doesn't go that deep... Then I made a mistake and lost 10 moves later. But wtf?? He wasn't even winning. And this is five-minute, what does real play have to do with five-minute. I hope I meet this guy OTB sometime. I have made beating him OTB one of my chess goals. Then I can be like we played online and you told me to learn to play so I did! :)
Here's how it went down. He played the Rossolimo variation against my Sicilian. This is a pretty popular Anti-Sicilian so I have looked at the lines in some detail. One of the themes is that the knight goes from g8 to f6 to d7 to f8 to e6 before you castle because awkwardly enough you have time and this is the fastest way to get it in. So for the first 12 or so moves my play was book. Then he says "it's easy?" which I don't know what that means, he's French so maybe he thinks it means something. Then later he says that it's easy to learn an opening but that my play after that was horrible and that I need to learn to play not learn openings. I spend very little time studying openings, I just look up lines that I'm in and continuously develop around them. That's how I found that idea in the first place. But anyways, coming from a normal player I would just shrug that off and laugh but I really don't think IMs should act like that. Then he just leaves. So I was like wtf??? And I went to Fritz to see how "badly" I played. I hold a slight advantage for the first 30 moves, and my theory definitely doesn't go that deep... Then I made a mistake and lost 10 moves later. But wtf?? He wasn't even winning. And this is five-minute, what does real play have to do with five-minute. I hope I meet this guy OTB sometime. I have made beating him OTB one of my chess goals. Then I can be like we played online and you told me to learn to play so I did! :)
LMAO. I love it.