Another one for you...
When I was 18 I was kicking everyones butt at chess in my sixth form (college).
Most of the people I played were my age... all well and good.
But then one day, this young 13 year old lad comes up to me saying he'd give me a game.
I was being all cocky like : Nah, I got better things to do with my time...
He said: go on, go on
Eventually I gave in and was thinking to myself (this'll be easy)...
Without me even moving the piece, he trapped my queen in four moves...
Taught me a very valuable lesson:
Never underestimate your opponent!
And Also:
Play the board, not the player.
Thought I'd start my first thread by asking you guys for your silly stories involving your endeavors whilst playing chess...
I'll start by giving you my inspiration...
I've been using chess.com on and off for years..., Whenever I play someone new on here there's always these statistics by their username, usually something like:
Username: (Win +7, Draw -1, Loss -9)
The thing is, for all this time I was under the impression that these statistics referred to the ammount of wins, draws and losses the opponent had had.
I couldn't work it out, I'd played hundreds of times and there were all these level 1500+s that had only played a few games.
I assumed that there was some kind of conspiracy or remarkable coincidence that every single player I played must have themselves played very high leveled players to get the points needed to reach those kind of levels without going through lower leveled players first.
I've only just realised this now after about four years using the site, but the statistics refer to the ammount of points you will either win or lose depending on wether you win, lose or draw.
This made me feel really stupid and I now know what my mate was going on about when he said he'd lose x if he lost to me and I thought he was going nuts 'cause he must've thought he could see the future...