Nottingham tournament part 1

Apologies to everyone for taking ages to getting around to putting the next bit of the Nottingham report on here - I keep meaning to and I keep forgetting.
For most of you its not new material anyway, but I need to get up to date.
This one was the very first report from that tournament where I listed my new "precepts" to try and improve my tournament performance. They didn't do much good at Nottingham itself, but did pay off in an improved effort at Grange-over-Sands and to a lesser extent at Heywood.

Thanks to Jim for sending this back to me so I could post it since I'd lost my own copy.

One more note - Russell Goodfellow is this weekend doing battle in the World Open in Philadelphia, the largest and richest chess event in the world. I don't know how he's going, but good luck to him anyway.

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Friday 24 April 2009

The launch of my one-year chess journal was rather delayed by the fact that I had to download some annoying software to be able to use Word on my laptop. Aren’t computers a pain? I am sitting in my kitchen eating porridge and listening to some Stamitz concertos, to aid concentration. The Nottingham chess tournament starts tomorrow.

The main reason for writing a chess journal is in an effort to get some better results. This chess season has been nothing short of abysmal for me – after a reasonable showing at Galway and Bury St Edmonds last autumn, I got 0.5/3 at Hull, 0/3 at Coulsdon, 0/3 at Gonzaga in Dublin. Then a minor improvement at Doncaster where after losing the first game – meaning I’d lost 10 of my last 11 games -I then managed to win two games – both incidentally after drinking 2 pints at lunchtime.

Blackpool was a tournament of mostly drawn games (and a loss) and then I sunk back down again at Huddersfield with 0/4, though the influence of a superb real ale pub I found near the venue was at least partly to blame for that. So over all those events, a pretty poor showing – I won 2, drew 4 and lost 14. At least it can’t get much worse. By writing a journal of my thoughts on each game and the preparation I do between tournaments, and sending it to a panel of expert players and ex-players, I hope to get a better idea of where things are going wrong (or right) and be able to take steps to improve.

My plan is to keep this going through all the tournaments over the next 12 months. Read on and you will hear about my adventures in all kinds of glamorous locations – Nottingham, Grange-over-Sands, the Isle of Man, Chester, Galway, Scarborough, Bury St Edmonds, Hull, Coulsdon, Halifax, Dublin, Gibraltar, Doncaster, Blackpool and Huddersfield all being tournaments I am considering playing in in that time. I will also liven things up with tales of the antics of the other players I come across and try and provide some local colour and entertainment with tales of the goings-on that go on.

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One thing I am not going to do in this journal is include full games or reams of analysis, since its something I want to make more of a readable story – something you can read in the bath or on the train and not need a chess board in front of you.I have just been going through all my recent defeats with a view to trying to find the most common reasons why I lose chess games. There are three broad categories of reasons for my defeats –

1. Pre-game psychological reasons. Most of these games are lost before they begin. If I’ve had a bad loss in the previous game I often don’t make any effort in the next one. Often I turn up to a tournament out –of-sorts or nervous and things go wrong from the start. And there’s the old problem of intra-game drinking, when I have a few pints to recover from a traumatic loss and the next game is a write-off.

2. During-game psychological reasons. There are two ways in which these problems manifest themselves. (a) If I blunder or miss something I then feel like a complete idiot and just want the game to be over as fast as possible, so that I often resign really early. I know ideally one should fight on, but after I’ve blundered I just want it all to be over. (b) The other category of problems come when I’m in a good/winning position and it all goes wrong and falls apart and I go on to lose. In one recent game I walked into a mate in one when 2 pieces up! This seems to happen a lot – I am perfectly capable of playing well against people of my level and getting into a strong position but then seemingly can’t finish things off.

3. Chess-related reasons This is the least common category – most defeats are for psychological reasons. But the main chess-related reasons for losing games are:(a) Gross blunders – just missing something completely obvious and giving away material. (b) Being too passive in the end-game – well not many of my games even get to an ending , but when they do I’m often too worried about my opponent’s threats rather than looking for counter-play. In a game from Huddersfield (before I found the pub) that I’ve just been looking at, I was a pawn up in a King, Rook & Knight ending, but I tied up the rook defending my isolated a-pawn from his King, rather than using it to attack his two backward pawns and moving the central pawn majority. It looks obvious now I see it on the practice board but obviously under the pressure of the game I panicked too much about his threats. So maybe this is psychological as well?So if these are the reasons for my defeats, how to turn things around? Since most of the reasons are psychological, finding solutions won’t be easy – sorting out one’s dysfunctional personality is much harder than learning a new line in the Caro Kann!

However, here are some things I must try and force myself to do. The only problem is I’ve tried it all before without success.

1. Not turning up drunk or drinking between games whatever the temptation!
2. Not letting one defeat affect the next game.
3. Not turning up late for games, Goodfellow-style
4. Trying to maintain a calm dispassionate air at times. I might try the Dave Stephenson approach of looking quizzically at the board at all times.
5. Not getting complacent or relaxing if the position becomes good for me.
6. Trying to force myself to carry on after a blunder – maybe going out for a little walk to calm things down?
7. Not trying to do too much or over-push when the position is good – taking a bit more time might stop me from letting opponents back.
8. Blunder checking to avoid the ridiculous blunders. I’ve been trying to do this throughout my chess career. It tends to work very well when there’s no pressure on , and I dutifully examine all checks and captures in harmless level positions in the opening and then forget when the pressure is on later on. I must force myself to keep doing this when the chips are down later on in the game.
9. Always looking for activity and counter-play in the ending and not playing passive bollocks moves that tie my pieces up.
10. Being opportunistic and remembering that most of my opponents are as crap as I am and will make mistakes and give me opportunities. Well there are ten rules I’m going to take into the Nottingham tournament. None of them look like they should be hard to put into practice – but I can guarantee you it will feel very different this time tomorrow when I will be sitting there playing my first game.