The Saga Continues...
The Club Championship Qualifier is getting very intense. Going into the fifth round I was tied for 4th place with 2.5/4. There are sixteen players competing in a 7-round swiss for 7 spots in the quarterfinal round where there will be a series of matches to determine the winner much like the NBA or NHL playoffs. I believe that 4/7 is a good enough score to make the next round (3.5 may be able to make it on tiebreaks but that's not a good situation). I was paired against Garingo with Black. He had only 2 points after forfeiting a week earlier because he had to work. So this is how I figured things were: if I lose, I have to score 1.5/2 to get to the next round; if he loses, he has to score 2/2 to get to the next round... THIS IS MUST WIN FOR BOTH PLAYERS. Neither player could really afford to lose the game, so all week this was a nervewracking situation as I knew he probably has the best chance of anyone at the club (save maybe Straver) of beating me. Also since I've racked up 3 in a row against him I thought he would be particularly vengeful. I was nervous.
The situation between me and Garingo has certainly escalated into a full blown rivalry. He underestimated me in the past but I knew he would be ready for this game. I was so nervous about it I decided to follow lep's advice and step back from chess. I played poker all day on Wednesday. I mean all day, I played from midnight to 2:30 in the morning online, then woke up for work and played on my work computer (this may cost me but I'm so fed up with my job right now I'm not really worried about it), then went and played 3 hours in a casino. I've been reading a book that my friend lent me and it's making me really want to play cards. So that's what I did.
So come Thursday morning I was still craving some poker but I put it aside and decided to look at chess. I have played 4 games against Garingo with Black and all of them he has played e4, but from blitz games I knew he was also comfortable playing d4 so I didn't want to rule it out. In spite of this I only looked at my Sicilian and I couldn't decide between the Najdorf and my Accelerated Dragon so come game time I hadn't made much progress and it was still going to be a game time decision (I was actually leaning heavily towards the Accelerated Dragon). We sit down to play and I start the clock and he takes his time and starts adjusting his pieces...
I know in about 10 seconds he's going to play 1.d4 but he still makes me wait about a minute to confirm it. Oops... guess I should have spent the 15 minutes it would have taken to get a hold of the sharp positions that come out of the Anti-Moscow Gambit rather than deciding between two Sicilians all day. I had a sneaking suspicion he would play this but I was caught with my pants down.
So here's where I end up on move 14. I'm in deep trouble. I just moved my knight to b6 and I'm getting punished for it. The queen has nowhere to go (it belongs on b6) and my dark squares are falling apart. I feel like the Penguins going down 3-0 in Game 1 of their series against the Rangers. This is not the start I had hoped for. I am especially angry with myself for not looking at these lines even though I knew there was a high probability he would play 1.d4. It's not that I could have found his line and prepared for the actual position, more that just from looking at 4-5 games in the line afterwards it is very clear the the knight has no business on b6. This is a stupid mistake and now I'm in a lost position. We are about 25 minutes into the game and it is already over...
A mere 6 moves later Garingo tries to administer a crushing blow. It is now my 20th move. At move 14 I decided to castle into the attack and challenge Garingo to mate me. As an attacking player I know that when the king becomes the focus of the attack it is hard to change focus. I have made this mistake time and time again, I start looking at mates and I overlook simple winning endgames. I am trying to distract him from the fact that he is winning and bait him into an attack. So that worked, and I was crushed until he got eager and threw the move d7? This allows me back in the game with an exchange sacrifice. A piece and a pawn for a rook is one of the most common material imbalances and the health of the piece and pawn depends on activity, right now I am still behind although I have play on the d4 pawn so I figured that was some compensation. If Garingo doesn't play d7 here I am crushed.
Now we tune in another 7 moves later. The king looks a little safer although there are still some threats. I feel a lot more comfortable. White has sacrificed the d pawn to put pressure on my position so I now have full material compensation for the exchange although I am still behind positionally. I get the feeling Garingo is still looking to attack my king. It is my 27th move, I have been defending for 13 moves and it has been well over 2 hours since the start of the game. I am on a good pace as I have 15 minutes left for my remaining 4 moves and here I find a very strong idea to defend. I realize that the key to my position is defending the 6th rank and I decide to abandon the 7th and 8th ranks to achieve this goal. This idea ends up equalizing.
OK, so the time control has passed at this point. It's my 34th move. This is the first move since move 14 where I feel like I can breathe. I no longer have to respond to threats. After 2 and a half hours of just waiting and waiting thinking I was going to lose. I finally get a chance. That's longer than an NBA game, with commercials and half time. Much longer than defending for 90 minutes as in soccer, which I think would have to be the closest parallel to chess in the sporting world. For instance, anyone who watched the first leg of the Barcelona - Manchester United Champions League Semifinal Match knows how exciting a draw can be and what it looks like to press for nearly the entire game and yet fail to achieve anything decisive.
It is so easy to give up in games like this. To stop looking for chances and just play prophylactic moves hoping to draw. But the defense is in vain if there is no counter attack. If you throw away the chances that your opponent gives you. In this position I have just a little bit of breathing room, and I quickly manage to equalize and gain the advantage. It felt something like this (this comes from Game 1, after the Rangers had been up 3 goals):
Before the game I was actually talking to Chris Harrington about the transition from an advantage to equality and I cited that this is a place where many people make mistakes. In this game White starts making mistakes as soon as the nature of the game has changed and doesn't quite realize that Black is in control. By the time he does, it's too late:
This is the last diagram of importance, only 6 moves later on Move 40. I will use the bishop to defend the pawn and then advance my king. The bishop and pawn are immune since I have an extra pawn, otherwise White would be able to sacrifice Rook for bishop and pawn and equality. In this case that just leaves me with a won rook ending. I savored the rest of the game and took some advice phaedrus gave me to heart. After all, if I can't win this ending what was the point?
During the last few games I have felt like people are looking at my position with contempt, as though I am completely lost and I am just swindling wins. Shoemaker even went so far as to say that in the Pearson game "If any of the A's or Experts had that same position, he would have gone home with a loss." Immediately after my game Terry Alsasua, my opponent next week, walked over and showed everybody the 'win', which merely perpetuates White's advantage but does not produce a point.
Well, for you guys who think that I deserve to lose games, allow me to shed some light on a few things. There are two ways to win a chess game: checkmate and resignation. I have been able to show, even from devastatingly lost positions, that these two things are not so easy to achieve. This is a point that I have been making for quite some time. Chess would be a lot easier if all you had to do was obtain a winning middlegame. Maybe you would suggest next time that we call Ernie over and adjudicate the round when I give up material or take a lost position. For months I have tried to explain that chess is a game of mistakes. I keep saying lost positions are only lost if you are more likely than your opponent to make a mistake. This position was extremely complicated. I'm not even entirely convinced that Garingo has a smooth transition to a winning endgame and there are many ways to slip as he did in the game. If you look at my game with contempt, I'm sure you will find mistakes, but that will not stop you from making mistakes when we are face to face.
I am REALLY tired of players who will blame a loss on one move or even worse, the opening. Sentences like "Well I blundered and then the game's pretty much over." really mean 'and then I pretty much stopped playing'. "I messed up the opening" means 'He surprised me and I stopped playing chess and watched him beat me'. A won position does not equal a win. No one loses when they deserve to win. Every point is earned. If you are not willing to own up to mistakes then you will never correct them and your development as a player will be severely stunted. Everyone makes mistakes, that's part of the game.
I'll post the full game with annotations shortly, just wanted to give a picture of how I felt during the game and how the game progressed.
The situation between me and Garingo has certainly escalated into a full blown rivalry. He underestimated me in the past but I knew he would be ready for this game. I was so nervous about it I decided to follow lep's advice and step back from chess. I played poker all day on Wednesday. I mean all day, I played from midnight to 2:30 in the morning online, then woke up for work and played on my work computer (this may cost me but I'm so fed up with my job right now I'm not really worried about it), then went and played 3 hours in a casino. I've been reading a book that my friend lent me and it's making me really want to play cards. So that's what I did.
So come Thursday morning I was still craving some poker but I put it aside and decided to look at chess. I have played 4 games against Garingo with Black and all of them he has played e4, but from blitz games I knew he was also comfortable playing d4 so I didn't want to rule it out. In spite of this I only looked at my Sicilian and I couldn't decide between the Najdorf and my Accelerated Dragon so come game time I hadn't made much progress and it was still going to be a game time decision (I was actually leaning heavily towards the Accelerated Dragon). We sit down to play and I start the clock and he takes his time and starts adjusting his pieces...
I know in about 10 seconds he's going to play 1.d4 but he still makes me wait about a minute to confirm it. Oops... guess I should have spent the 15 minutes it would have taken to get a hold of the sharp positions that come out of the Anti-Moscow Gambit rather than deciding between two Sicilians all day. I had a sneaking suspicion he would play this but I was caught with my pants down.
So here's where I end up on move 14. I'm in deep trouble. I just moved my knight to b6 and I'm getting punished for it. The queen has nowhere to go (it belongs on b6) and my dark squares are falling apart. I feel like the Penguins going down 3-0 in Game 1 of their series against the Rangers. This is not the start I had hoped for. I am especially angry with myself for not looking at these lines even though I knew there was a high probability he would play 1.d4. It's not that I could have found his line and prepared for the actual position, more that just from looking at 4-5 games in the line afterwards it is very clear the the knight has no business on b6. This is a stupid mistake and now I'm in a lost position. We are about 25 minutes into the game and it is already over...
A mere 6 moves later Garingo tries to administer a crushing blow. It is now my 20th move. At move 14 I decided to castle into the attack and challenge Garingo to mate me. As an attacking player I know that when the king becomes the focus of the attack it is hard to change focus. I have made this mistake time and time again, I start looking at mates and I overlook simple winning endgames. I am trying to distract him from the fact that he is winning and bait him into an attack. So that worked, and I was crushed until he got eager and threw the move d7? This allows me back in the game with an exchange sacrifice. A piece and a pawn for a rook is one of the most common material imbalances and the health of the piece and pawn depends on activity, right now I am still behind although I have play on the d4 pawn so I figured that was some compensation. If Garingo doesn't play d7 here I am crushed.
Now we tune in another 7 moves later. The king looks a little safer although there are still some threats. I feel a lot more comfortable. White has sacrificed the d pawn to put pressure on my position so I now have full material compensation for the exchange although I am still behind positionally. I get the feeling Garingo is still looking to attack my king. It is my 27th move, I have been defending for 13 moves and it has been well over 2 hours since the start of the game. I am on a good pace as I have 15 minutes left for my remaining 4 moves and here I find a very strong idea to defend. I realize that the key to my position is defending the 6th rank and I decide to abandon the 7th and 8th ranks to achieve this goal. This idea ends up equalizing.
OK, so the time control has passed at this point. It's my 34th move. This is the first move since move 14 where I feel like I can breathe. I no longer have to respond to threats. After 2 and a half hours of just waiting and waiting thinking I was going to lose. I finally get a chance. That's longer than an NBA game, with commercials and half time. Much longer than defending for 90 minutes as in soccer, which I think would have to be the closest parallel to chess in the sporting world. For instance, anyone who watched the first leg of the Barcelona - Manchester United Champions League Semifinal Match knows how exciting a draw can be and what it looks like to press for nearly the entire game and yet fail to achieve anything decisive.
It is so easy to give up in games like this. To stop looking for chances and just play prophylactic moves hoping to draw. But the defense is in vain if there is no counter attack. If you throw away the chances that your opponent gives you. In this position I have just a little bit of breathing room, and I quickly manage to equalize and gain the advantage. It felt something like this (this comes from Game 1, after the Rangers had been up 3 goals):
Before the game I was actually talking to Chris Harrington about the transition from an advantage to equality and I cited that this is a place where many people make mistakes. In this game White starts making mistakes as soon as the nature of the game has changed and doesn't quite realize that Black is in control. By the time he does, it's too late:
This is the last diagram of importance, only 6 moves later on Move 40. I will use the bishop to defend the pawn and then advance my king. The bishop and pawn are immune since I have an extra pawn, otherwise White would be able to sacrifice Rook for bishop and pawn and equality. In this case that just leaves me with a won rook ending. I savored the rest of the game and took some advice phaedrus gave me to heart. After all, if I can't win this ending what was the point?
During the last few games I have felt like people are looking at my position with contempt, as though I am completely lost and I am just swindling wins. Shoemaker even went so far as to say that in the Pearson game "If any of the A's or Experts had that same position, he would have gone home with a loss." Immediately after my game Terry Alsasua, my opponent next week, walked over and showed everybody the 'win', which merely perpetuates White's advantage but does not produce a point.
Well, for you guys who think that I deserve to lose games, allow me to shed some light on a few things. There are two ways to win a chess game: checkmate and resignation. I have been able to show, even from devastatingly lost positions, that these two things are not so easy to achieve. This is a point that I have been making for quite some time. Chess would be a lot easier if all you had to do was obtain a winning middlegame. Maybe you would suggest next time that we call Ernie over and adjudicate the round when I give up material or take a lost position. For months I have tried to explain that chess is a game of mistakes. I keep saying lost positions are only lost if you are more likely than your opponent to make a mistake. This position was extremely complicated. I'm not even entirely convinced that Garingo has a smooth transition to a winning endgame and there are many ways to slip as he did in the game. If you look at my game with contempt, I'm sure you will find mistakes, but that will not stop you from making mistakes when we are face to face.
I am REALLY tired of players who will blame a loss on one move or even worse, the opening. Sentences like "Well I blundered and then the game's pretty much over." really mean 'and then I pretty much stopped playing'. "I messed up the opening" means 'He surprised me and I stopped playing chess and watched him beat me'. A won position does not equal a win. No one loses when they deserve to win. Every point is earned. If you are not willing to own up to mistakes then you will never correct them and your development as a player will be severely stunted. Everyone makes mistakes, that's part of the game.
I'll post the full game with annotations shortly, just wanted to give a picture of how I felt during the game and how the game progressed.
That was probably the most interesting conclusion of the night. I think there may be reasons that people are looking at your games with contempt that you haven't considered yet. I for one have tried to learn a bit from all of you guys at the club.
Oh and post the Straver game man.
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 dxc4 7.e4 g5 8.Bg3 b5 9.Be2 Bb7 10.O-O Nbd7 11.Ne5 Bg7 12.Nxd7 Nxd7 13.Bd6
Except here the text continued 13...a6, and some play 13...Qb6 (when e5 can be met by c5), but your game went 13...Nb6 14.e5.
>>Sentences like "Well I blundered and then the game's pretty much over." really mean 'and then I pretty much stopped playing'. "I messed up the opening" means 'He surprised me and I stopped playing chess and watched him beat me'<<
Excellent comeback! A good example for the rest of us. Aye, many of my opponents put up little resistance in losing positions--acquiescing to trading down, for example--making me wonder why they don't resign and save us both some time. A rare few put up a good fight to the end.
likesforests - I played 10...Bg7 so you're wrong, hehe. But yes you found the game... Radjabov-Anand played this position twice with Anand playing a6 and winning both times. Another move that you didn't mention is Bf8.
dk - I'm still learning... thanks.
And it's truly a blessing to be working from a position of apparent weakness!
I am REALLY tired of players who will blame a loss on one move or even worse, the opening.
Sometimes it's an excuse, but sometimes it's very, very real. Simple tactics that instantly lose heavy pieces or lead to checkmate happen frequently enough at the class level.
"All that matters on the chessboard is good moves".
There are no guarantees, no won position is truly won unless you continue to play better chess than your opponent. If you have a "won position" and lose the game, it's simply because you played worse than your opponent.
Actually, the most appropriate quote here is the one from Tartakower:
"The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
ernie - there is no doubt that Qf8 is correct and the strongest move. but to say that any move wins instantly in this position is extremely flawed, that's the only point i wanted to make at the board. i still do not see how i was 'lucky' to swindle, and this really was my point. All that has to happen to win a game is to play better than your opponent. If you are going to say that I am lucky then why is he not lucky that I made a bad move in the opening? He is the lucky one that got a winning position in the first place. That statement seems just as valid as you calling me lucky.
That being said, I absolutely agree with your other point. If we can minimize our mistakes that is a big step forward. I'm going to write a post on this because this is going to be a lengthy discussion I think.
LEP - You told me to get into poker, so I studied poker instead of chess. And played poker. And it was good.
I'm not really worried about 'haters' I just think it's really silly. I do need to go back to just playing good chess though. I have started getting a little mouthy hehe.
I agree that sometimes it is very real, but oftentimes it is not, or the loss was really evident earlier and it is being blamed on one move. I do not like when players simplify a game into one move where they went wrong. I think if these players spent more time on their games they would find many other places that were important. Also I do not agree with players acting like they are immune to mistakes except for this 'one' that ended the game. Where there's smoke there's fire.
chessaholic - Yes that Tartakower quote is some words to live by. sorry for leaving so abruptly the other day btw i shut my computer off cause i was leaving and i didn't want to open it back up just to say 'gotta go, see ya later'