Street Chess | April 6th, 2025
WOO! Today was a very eventful chess day, there is SO MUCH to talk about!
Firstly, just so I can include this section (it probably violates all the rules on how to write a good blog, and I don’t care). I was spectating the FIDE Woman’s World Championship Match, Ju Wenjun lost her previous game, and after both players took a break, game 3 was on.
And right after a decisive result was reached two days ago, another one was reached today: something exotic in the grandmaster level. Ju Wenjun proceeded to showcase her magnificent endgame skills, maneuvering the king, promoting her extra pawn: there was so much I learnt from this match alone on endgames principles.
Anyways, back to the present. As I’m writing this blog for the day, I just came back from a street chess session hosted by the local city’s chess federation, and now probably munching on some chicken feet. It has been so long since I’ve played chess casually, over the board, with adults and a bunch of kids. Beating kids is the best feeling ever.
These kids are some prodigies, well not yet, but definitely talented. I played a kid who is eight years old, he’s 1900 rated on chess.com, and dude proceeded to beat me quite a couple. We played level to level. I also played some foreigners who came by, and some parents of the kids. I beat most of them with the power of the Bird’s Opening, though some really gave me a headache.
Chess is supposed to be fun! I remembered my old days when I would get too competitive, stressing over tournament results, frustrated over tilts, and my mental would take a deep toll whenever I hit the play button. But ever since I tried to play more OTB, going on clubs, tournaments, and now my first time playing chess on the street, I discovered my love for chess again.
Alright, enough with the positive comments and me being overly optimistic about how I get to play street chess. Yesterday I set myself a limit to only play nine games, for a variety of reasons. I lied, it was eleven: 9 blitz games, 2 rapid games from the Improvers Sunday Swiss Tournament. I plan to play the late Sunday too, though it happens at 11pm, probably not going to do that.
Starting with the blitz first: if we considered my blitz grind as a tournament (as I played nine games), I had a relatively unsuccessful tournament. With six losses and only three wins, I dropped from 2008 to 1989. That is a discrepancy of 19 elo. The tilt was to be expected, I’m just glad I didn’t lose too much elo, thanks to the limit I set myself.
And with so many losses, I can guarantee that over half of it will be something idiotic. After a not-so-thorough analysis of my blitz games, I came to a conclusion: I am an imbecile.
Oh you think that was just a fluke? Think again. This miniature will make you vomit.
Yup. You really should stop playing chess when you’re doing stuff like this. The games that I won were not enough to remedy: and even if it did, it still can’t cover the stupidity some of these moves imply. That being said, I had a bad chess day, and tomorrow, when I get my daily allowance of nine games, I’ll concentrate and make use to it as much as possible.
I believe the problem persisting here is I’m not thinking consciously upon every capture. The first game showcased was a very simple blunder of a “remove a defender” tactic, but the second one was me being overly flashy, and I had to pay a harsh price. I remembered telling somebody: what’s the point of being boogie if you’re not going to win? But I am my own hypocrite.
However, I also said I played two rapid games? Yeah, since this blog is getting too long and the rapid games span until the next day… I’m going to talk about it the next day. It is too depressing to get into this blog.
Anyways, that’s it for the day. Today is my last day of vacation, I am flying home tomorrow. Once school starts, blogs might not be as long as this, which is probably a good thing since I “yap” so much, but I’d have to balance school and chess, which sucks. I enjoy having a myriad of time in my hands.
🍮
