Miscellaneous chess stuff

My friends and I play OTB on Tuesday nights at a (sorta) local Mexican restaurant. I say sorta local because it is a long drive for me but local to everyone else. Anyway......

Our Tuessday nights are more casual and fun and social than serious chess. But we do have some fairly serious games - considering all the noise and people and laughing going on. Anyway.....

If I get into a close game and it goes long, after an hour or an hour and a half, I am ready to call it a draw even if I think I can win. When I see some good friends sitting around laughing and visiting and I think I can decide to either play that same game another 30-45 minutes and win, or offer a draw and go on over and join the fun, I offer a draw. 

You got a chess story that doesn't fit anywhere else? Please share them here!  

Have you ever played with a blind player? I did 3x: 0 - 1 and 0,5. I admire, how they can play just to feel pieces on a small chessboard. the first time I underestimated my blind oponent and made a risky sacrifice and lost. The oponent "saw" the defence. The next time I beat the same oponent in a serious game.

Wow Cedrik, that is a gooood story. I have never played against a blind player. 

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At our Tuesday night OTB games, us older guys get a lot of satisfaction from seeing the younger people enjoying chess.

Cool stories, nice idea for the forum!

I had an interesting encounter just yesterday night:

I got back from my martial arts training. The bus was around 3/4 filled with people and I took a seat at the window, leaving the space next to me more easily available for others. At the next bus stop a man got in. He smelled as if he has had more than enough alcohol for some days in a row, and I guess nobody in the bus wanted to be too close to him. After taking a look around he spotted the empty place next to me and hurried to occupy it. I myself didn't mind too much, since I was busy working on the daily chess puzzle of chess.com on my mobile.

Suddenly I got interrupted from the eastern european voice of the guy next to me: You're playing chess? I agreed and soon got driven into an interesting philosophical discussion about how decision making in real life and in chess does fit together. It turned out, that he was playing a lot of chess 15 years earlier. Mostly in bars and parks, often for money, often for drinks sometimes for food. He did something bad, went to prison and played there even more. Chess meant a lot to him and was the thing that let him live a better life, which he apart from that found disgusting.

When we had to part at my bus stop, we shook hands and said thank you to each other for that very nice ride together. 

Cool story Pierre!

I guess that's what chess is all about. Wonderful stories.

@Dude, brilliant forum! ;-) 

f_b *handshake* I hope you are well! 

I did some deep thinking about my preformance in a recent tournament. Backgroud first.

My personal life had been very busy and a little bit chaotic lately. I am in the process of changing jobs. For the past three weeks I have been in the process of interviewing for the new job.

Every Tuesday night a group of 7-10 of us play chess a a Mexican Restaurant OTB. It is fun and very casual - not serious chess, well at least not real serious for most of us. My friend Tony takes it a little more serious than most of us. Tony had never played in a real rated USCF tournament before this past weekend. Tony wanted to play a tourney in Huntsville, Alabama this past Saturday and wanted my to play also. I agreed to do that months before the job search came up.

So I committed to play this tourney (just my second tourney ever) partly because at one time I thought it would be fun but also to sorta guide my friend along and show him the ropes. A few days before the tourney a friend asked me if I was ready and I replied, "Well not really. I have had too many things on my mind. I will probably lose every game."

So on Saturday, I did play. I did lose every game - 3 of 3. Most of the games were close. I put two of the games into my computer and have looked at them in detail. You might be interested in my conclusions.

Attitude.

I had the wrong attitude all day. Rather than fighting hard to win, i was too cautious and trying not to lose. I looked at a key bad move in both games and asked myself why I made those moves. I decided that I was simply not confident in making what would have been the right move.

In addition to that I think our casual Tuesday night games build bad habits. As noted in a previous post above, I really don't like to play long games. After an hour or so, I am ready to do something else. That is a bad attitude to take into a tournament. I had a good position after 12 or 15 moves in all 3 games. I lost all three. I didn't have the killer instinct. The opponent wanted it more than I did.  

And BTW, my friend Tony won 1 and lost 2. 

Tournament chess and friendly casual chess sorta look alike, but they are NOT alike. They are totally different. 

For sure it's difficult to win, when you not concentrate on doing so....

...but I like the part where you tell us, that you actually analyze your games. Imho that's one of the key factors in getting better. Nice that you still got something out of those losses!

I would like to play in a "real-life"-tournament myself, but I don't have the time to regularly visit a chess club, since my other hobby already takes some of my evenings away (and I think it is necessary in Germany to be in a chess club to visit a tournament). I'd love to feel the "air" again, it's been a long time!

Yea another thing. In the two tournaments that I played, you might as well accept the fact that some kids less than 14 years old are going to be good players.

In the tourney that I play a few days ago, there was a 9 year old girl who is rated over 1900 USCF. That is VERY good. I lost to a ten year old.

Foreword: I am a highly talented procrastinator (highly talented referring to my procrastination skills...) who has to write a paper at the moment.

Well, I managed to do basically nothing during my past holidays and even after the holidays I had a difficult time focussing on my paper. And guess what? - I've got more and more pressure, as I have to hand in the paper on the 20th.

Clever as I am, I decided to go to my workplace today in order to avoid being distracted. On Saturdays, that place is usually empty and last week it worked out pretty well. So I got up early and arrived at 8 am.Turned on my computer, read through everything I've written so far and typed a few lines.

After about 1 hour of work, I decided to deserve a break so I strolled around and got myself a drink from the vending machine.(Hi Mr. Gratification Monkey!)

And what did I spot a few meters away? ... A chess tournament. Gone were my hopes of achieving anything and I joined the players to watch a few matched and play a friendly - a wee bit later it turns out that it is already 6 pm. Time to get home and prepare dinner...

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Please note: Some parts of the story might be altered; it's up to you to decide which ones.

Lol, great my friend! I deeply understand how you are feeling.

And just in case anyone else does not understand what the heck he is talking about:

Watch this video and you will understand.

My OTB game in our friendly Tuesday night games has been pretty good lately (last 3 weeks). That is happening at the same time my Tactics Trainer scores on chess.com are running much higher than normal. I wonder what is going on? 

But it sure is fun to be winning against my friends on Tuesday nights. 

Congratulations!

For me that doesn't seem to work: I lost the last 3 important otb-games due to tactical mistakes. I wonder if there is an option to flip the board in the tactics trainer. It would be important for me to see the opponents tactics to avoid mistakes, the perspective in the trainer just helps with my own tactics...

There is one surprising thing about the Tactics Trainer program here on chess.com. Once you get up around 1800 or higher, the pass rates on most puzzles gets to be very low.

Seems that at that level the majority have pass rates less than 45% and many aaround 10%. I have seen at least 5 or 6 puzzles in the last two days that had a pass rate less than 10%.