My fourth (and final) round game of the September Thursday Night Swiss tournament at the BCC was against young Timothy Lung. I knew there was a chance he’d be my opponent, and I was happy to see his name across from mine on the pairings list. I lost to Timothy in the 2005 BU open in a game that I should have won. (The game is covered in White Belt #153, Mig Greengard’s novice level newsletter that you can subscribe to at chessninja.com). He’s my first repeat OTB opponent, and I’m happy to be able to state that I’ve never lost to the same player twice.
I was pretty sure that I was capable of beating him, but knew it wouldn’t be easy either. This game was just as tense as I expected it to be. Once again, if you believe the chess engine, I probably should have lost. It occurs to me that, until I’m better than crafty, I’ll probably make at least one move that it considers “game losing” in every game I play. This makes me wonder how to get my mind around that. I think I played an ok game, and came out on top against an opponent that pushed and pushed, but the computer says I was lucky to win.
How do the rest of you deal with this, mentally? Can I take satisfaction in this game? In any game? Are games of chess at my level always going to be lost, rather than won?
Angst aside, I’m pretty happy with this game and the tournament as a whole. I scored 2 points against a field of (roughly) 1250,1550,1920,1390 for a performance near 1500. I’ll probably bring my embarrassing 871 up to a more respectable 1000 or so, if you believe the calculator on the USCF site. I’ve also pretty much answered my question about the general worth of participating in this tournament: I can complete with these people, or enough of them to put up a reasonable score.
So anyway, here is the round four game. My Qh3 move is cover-your-eyes awful, but I didn’t give up, even when I was certain he was about to smash me. A friend of mine (who is a much stronger player) looked over my games from this tournament and after telling me a lot of the things I did wrong said that I have “much better nerves” than some of the players I faced. My two victories definitely contained positions and moments where I was on the edge: but is it a strength or weakness to be able to play your plan in the face of a strong attack by your opponent? I guess if it works out in your favor then it’s a strength.
This Thursday I get to start all over again in the October Thursday Night Swiss tournament. I think I’ll be a while before I’m coming out with plus scores, but at least maybe I have a chance of putting up an even zero again.
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