2001-04-29 - 11:06 p.m.

How To Lose At Chess

Excuse me, I'm a little disgusted with myself.

From time to time I give chess lessons to local players, and earlier today I had one with a fellow from the Frown Town Chess Club.

He's a nice guy, about my age, and what we decided to do was play a rated match with me analyzing the games afterwards. We had our first game today.

And I lost. ARRRGH!!! Some chess lesson!

Prior to this, my record against this guy was six wins and one loss, and the one loss should have been a win except for a stupid blunder at the end of the game.

This guy wanted some chess lessons because recently he's been losing a lot, in spite of the fact that I don’t really think he's that bad a player. In fact, my only hesitancy in playing a match with him was that his rating was too much lower than mine and I might not be able to get it rated. In fact, the differences between our ratings is so great that I could win the next nine games in a row and STILL lose rating points once the match is rated!

Prior to this he was having such a hard time with his game that the last time I played him he lost in 13 moves.

It's hard to gauge the psychological aspect of chess, but it was pretty plain that one of the reasons this guy did so badly against me was that he EXPECTED to do poorly. Not any more, though!

I say it again: ARRRGH!!!

So what happened? How did I lose?

Well, for starters, I'd have to say that he played damn well. He had many opportunities to go wrong, and he didn't take them. In fact, his only real mistake he made, besides a slightly weak opening, was at the end of the game when I was practically lost anyway.

Okay basically the game went like this. He played an opening that I'd been looking at only a few days before and I felt that I was better after the first ten moves. However, subsequent analysis showed that my initial confidence was a little misplaced - I only had a slight advantage. Still there was no reason why I shouldn't have continued to improve my position and eventually win.

Unfortunately, I was affected by a couple of non-chess factors. First of all, I was hungry and that had a negative affect on my play. When you're a diabetic, low blood sugar can turn your thinking to mush. It was especially damaging at the end of the game when I was running out of time. I simply was not able to move quickly enough in a situation where I had a difficult draw ahead of me.

The second non-chess factor was the goddamn noise.

We played the game on a Sunday afternoon, and the neighborhood was incredibly noisy. Yeah, I know it's Spring and the weather was nice and everyone was having Spring Fever but do they have to be so fucking LOUD about it? Two nearby houses were cranking the tunes at window-shaking levels, kids were outside screaming, and two local idiots were having a stupid argument at top volume.

However, noise doesn't usually bother me when I am playing. I think this was a side-effect of the low blood sugar.

Here is how I was undone. I was in the middlegame with a good position when the doorbell rang. For some reason Lily didn't get up to answer it, so it kept ringing. I saw a move that looked plausible, made it and went to answer the door. The move turned out to be a mistake, and my game went downhill from there. I lost a pawn, then I lost the exchange.

However in spite of all that I could have drawn if I hadn't run out of time at the end. As my time was drawing short he nervously sacrificed a rook for a bishop and a pawn, leaving me a pawn down in a rook ending. It was probably a draw, a very tough one, but I had no thinking time left and was simply not able to move quick enough.

I guess the lesson for me is: take the game more seriously and make sure I have something to eat before sitting down to play.

I'm now seriously concerned that this guy may think that playing me will not be sufficiently instructive enough and he'll cancel the rest of the games. Therefore, I'm going to have to bounce back and start winning some games. The next game is next Tuesday night, so we'll see how that goes.