Longest streak

It had to come to an end sooner or later.

From May 22nd to May 27th, I had my life's longest unbeaten streak on internet chess. I went 16 games straight without losing, compiling a 14 win, 2 draw record in the process. From this streak, my rating shot up from 1648 to 1756, a 108 point gain.

Now, luck was certainly part of this. There were definitely some games where I was in trouble and should have lost, but my opponents blundered or horribly misplayed and lost all advantage. There was a game where my opponent just resigned in a fightable position. There was a game where my opponent had a forced draw but lost on time. So I'm not going to pretend that it was all me.

But one thing that I learned from this is that, even in 1700s, games are all too often won and lost by simple board vision mistake or good old tactic. People are missing simple knight forks. People don't realize one of their hanging piece is being attacked. People don't recognize "simple threats". My main motto while I was on this streak (and still is) was just don't hang pieces. Don't give him free stuff. I realized that sometimes, I was more concerned about advanced stuff that I was being careless about the basic stuff. I was dropping pawns and missing simple tactics while concerning myself with outposts, attack, and etc. I was getting tired of this. So I said to myself, you know what? I don't care if the game gets boring. I'm going to make sure all my pieces are safe first. 

If I play safe and he plays safe and the game is a boring draw, I don't care. I've played chess long enough that it's about time I stop dropping pieces or overlook a simple tactic. Win/Draw/Lose... ultimately, I don't control it. All I can do is try to play good moves move after move and then see what happens. 

This worked magically effectively. But then of course, in the game that broke the streak, I overlooked a simple knight fork and missed that one of my pieces was attacked more than defended. Go figure... I still need work.