I hate excuses in chess and readers of this blog will note that I never explain away losses, because that's a practice that makes training rather pointless to my mind. In this particular case, the playing conditions were a lesson to take away for the future. This and the previous game had been played at a much more rapid time control than standard - not my strength - and my opponent this time was allowed to arrive close to a half-hour late without penalty, so I was very unhappy with the situation. It's worth noting that the above is no excuse for poor understanding of the position early on, however, and analysis provides some other useful lessons besides the fact I will never play again under similar tournament conditions if I can help it.
03 March 2017
Annotated Game #167: As bad as it gets
This game followed after Annotated Game #166 and showed that the only thing worse than a frustrating short draw in a tournament is a frustrating short loss. While my play was a little sub-par in the previous game, in this game it was simply atrocious on a positional level. I failed to grasp the essence of the unfamiliar position and relied on a rather facile understanding of it, starting with 6. Ba3!? - not a bad idea, but only if followed up with the key move c4-c5. Instead I focused on trying to target the diagonals pointing towards Black's kingside, which was not enough of a threat, and made a poor decision on development of the king's knight via e2 (and a severely weakening pawn move) rather than f3.
I hate excuses in chess and readers of this blog will note that I never explain away losses, because that's a practice that makes training rather pointless to my mind. In this particular case, the playing conditions were a lesson to take away for the future. This and the previous game had been played at a much more rapid time control than standard - not my strength - and my opponent this time was allowed to arrive close to a half-hour late without penalty, so I was very unhappy with the situation. It's worth noting that the above is no excuse for poor understanding of the position early on, however, and analysis provides some other useful lessons besides the fact I will never play again under similar tournament conditions if I can help it.
I hate excuses in chess and readers of this blog will note that I never explain away losses, because that's a practice that makes training rather pointless to my mind. In this particular case, the playing conditions were a lesson to take away for the future. This and the previous game had been played at a much more rapid time control than standard - not my strength - and my opponent this time was allowed to arrive close to a half-hour late without penalty, so I was very unhappy with the situation. It's worth noting that the above is no excuse for poor understanding of the position early on, however, and analysis provides some other useful lessons besides the fact I will never play again under similar tournament conditions if I can help it.
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