How to Suck Less at Chess: Gain 100 Elo with this One Weird Trick (Part II)

The second secret to sucking less at chess is:

Play like somebody who's less sucky than you

Once again, before you unfollow me, hear me out.  How many times do you think, "I can't trade queens because I can't play without my queen!" or "I won't trade my bishop for knight because I prefer bishops!" or "I am a positional player so I'm avoiding open positions!"

Would Magnus have these thoughts?  Would anybody less sucky than you have these thoughts?  The answer is a resounding, "NO!"  As stated in my previous article, the best players play like this guy:

Emotionless, dispassionate, and playing the objectively best move regardless of your fear of exchanging queens, losing bishops for knights, or playing against your style.*

So, get over your phobias and play like somebody less sucky than you.  This is the way you learn chess: by playing good moves and then proving yourself in unfamiliar, but better positions.

What if you're losing?

If you truly suck at chess, you will find yourself in this situation very often.  I certainly have.  This is not, "black is better;" this is "black is absolutely winning."  You're down a piece or your king is surrounded by your enemy and checkmate seems imminent.  You have a choice between losing move A and losing move B.  At this point, it's time to ditch Mr. Spock and replace him with this guy:

This guy cheats death at every turn.  During his time in Starfleet, he was the only cadet who beat the impossible scenario, the Kobayashi Maru.  When you are losing, it's time to make Captain Kirk your chess animal spirit.

I don't care if the guy is fictional.  In my last blog post, I mentioned that your worst move often comes soon after you think you're winning.  Guess what:  Your opponent sucks just as much as you and can fall into exactly the same pitfalls as you.  Your opponent is no better than you and can blunder just as badly as you.

Take your time, assess the situation and think of a plan.  It's important to always believe that there's a way out; otherwise, your search for a plan will be nothing more than a formality.  Watch Captain Kirk as he plays a brilliant chess maneuver in this clip.

He's in a absolutely losing position here, but he doesn't give up.  Instead, he plays a bluff in an attempt to gain the initiative.  It is not an immediately losing move because there's no downside.  The result is that his enemy is forced to react to his bluff changing the nature of the situation.

This is exactly what you need to do when you're losing.  Ditch Mr. Spock and go Captain Kirk.  In fact, the objectively best move is often not the best move at all!  Stockfish may end up recommending a move that loses material but avoids checkmate for maybe 10 moves later.  That's no good, because a (further) loss in material is a guaranteed loss.  It just takes your opponent a bit longer.  You are playing a human, and humans are not equally good at provoking threats and defending against them.  Some opponents have a glass jaw and do not react well against threats, even if imaginary. 

I'm generally not an advocate for playing for tricks and traps.  I think this leads to lazy chess because you can end up with the habit of assuming the worst out of your opponent.  However, this thinking changes once you are losing.  Tricks and traps are okay here because you may have nothing better.  Just make sure that the act of setting up your trap does not compromise your position so badly that it's immediately losing.  You cannot make it easy for your opponent.

Okay, now it's really hopeless.  Can I resign now?

Maybe.  In my mind, there are only two reasons why you should resign a game.

The first one is if you are tilting and too p***ed off to continue.  This is a good justification, because we should never associate chess with this much negativity and anger.  If you do resign for this reason, you are not allowed to play another game for the rest of the day.  Make this your solemn promise to yourself.  If you must, you can do tactical puzzles or analyze your loss, but you cannot play another game, regardless of time control.

The other time you're allowed to resign comes only after you ask the Drunk Magnus sitting on your shoulder whether he could save your game.:

Chess, with all its complexity still is played one move at a time.  In any given position, there may be at the very most, 10 reasonable moves.  Most of the time, there are less than five.  That means, there's about a 20% chance that you can play like Drunk Magnus for your next move.  Just string together some of these moves and you might just be back in business.  This is how you have to think.  If Drunk Magnus can escape your personal Kobayashi Maru, there's a chance you can too.  Keep in mind, it's not like you're playing against a 2484 player with 23 seconds left.  And if you are, why are you reading my blog?

Only after all your Captain Kirk heroics fail, and Drunk Magnus tells you to give up, you give up.

In my next article, I will go over some specific plans that you can explore when you are losing.

*Let's get this out of the way:  You have no style.  Unless you're a titled player and most likely not reading this blog for anything other than entertainment value, you don't have a style.  Despite what you think, it's not "positional," or "tactical."  Your style is playing until somebody screws up and/or takes advantage of said screw-up.  I will talk about this later in a future article.

This is part of an ongoing series called, "How to Suck Less at Chess."  It helps to start with this introduction to explain what I mean by sucking at chess and why you should read my blog.  If you like what you read, drop a nice comment.  It will help motivate me to produce more material.