The Finest Games I've Lost: Episode 1

You're up against a player 200, 300, 400 points higher than you. A tussle, a hussle, and after a stroke of fate, somehow you are on top. You are winning. The feeling, if you have felt it, is like winning a wrestling match with an elephant. 

If you are anything like me, not all of these struggles end in a win. Sometimes the miraculous attack against a grandmaster dissipates into a draw... or worse. Up a piece, up a rook, somehow the same miracle that elevated you to heaven now lands you down in hell. You lose and you spend days, weeks, months, thinking about it.

This is the first of a series of the finest games I've played against (much) stronger opposition and lost. I hope you may learn, perhaps relate, and ultimately improve your own chess from my mistakes. I hope it gives others peace of mind that even a titled player can be as knuckleheaded as anybody else in the heat of a game, when the pressure can cause blunders you never thought were possible. 

In the following game, which I have not shared anywhere for some four months until now, I missed multiple simple wins after earning the easiest opening advantage I've ever had against a 2400+ player. Just when things started going crazy in time trouble, I was given yet another chance to win the game. Instead of even drawing, I lost a game that would haunt me until now, and sharing this with you now does, truly, relieve some of the pain I felt then.

I was not yet a titled player when I played this game.

Can you relate to such a game? Did this inspire you?

Leave a comment below.

Hit "Follow" if you'd like to be notified when I publish, and thanks for reading!