Anna, at least he found your face interesting! :)
I too get tired on the last day of a tournament, and I always have. There's no way around it. This happens whether you have a lot of energy or only a little. And as Kasparov said, chess *itself* is mental torture.
A notable favorite exception of mine, ChezzAnna (though a declining strength rule can hardly be refuted), is of course, Victor Korchnoi. Cool example of his remarkable stamina was Gibraltar in 2011! At 79 years old, he defeated 18 yo Fabiano Caruana, who was rated over 2700, at the time! Amazing, ...and thoroughly outplayed him w black! At 75, he was still on the FIDE top 100 list, coming in at 85th. He's a rare & remarkable man! :)
Hi again! great to see the thread coming to life again.
Coming back home, to brussels, things get pretty busy in ways not related to chess - but worry not, my brothers, as my debt is a debt of honor, and this thread would only be completed once the fully annotated games 8 (a herculean task! with 102 moves...) and 9 (considerably shorter) are part of it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! without a question, three days of faster games, at nine hours of play for day is trying for anybody. i understand that you are experiencing a certain decline in your concentration under these circumstances, which you attribute to age.
However, you need to consider that people aren't all the same. I'm sure that i will play tournaments in the future where i'll perform way better and without any 'forgotten' pieces - also 10, 20, 30 and more years from now. My plans are only to improve with 'age', never to decline.
another point is, that playing talented youngsters is stressful for other reasons: first, you don't want to lose to a boy..... second, because of fast improvement and intense, quality coaching (they got GMs behind them), they are sometimes heavily under-rated, as their elo takes some time to follow in the footsteps of their ability; and third - because especially in their case, and because of the way they are being trained - their game is uneven, where in some aspects of their play they may already be at master's strength (the endgame, converting an advantage).
My game 7 opponent showed a remarkable ability in this sense after i erred with 20. f4. up to that point his game was at about 1900 level.
In game 9, which you haven't seen yet, i have terminated the real part of the game when i blundered my bishop away, right when it was going to become interesting - when the game was about to enter a phase where each player would try to make his own positional strengths count.
And about last-day tiredness: i'm usually the guy who takes advantage of YOUR tiredness... not the vice-versa :-)
Man, what a wonderful chess vacation in the south of France! The photos of the site are simply beautiful. It appears Luba was an inexorable force to be reckoned with in the B tourney! Official site reports: "Luba Kopylov has easily won the tournament B, the German player has conceded only a goalless draw in the last round once the tournament in the pocket." It wasn't clear who took second, but only that "Croatian Milan Kandic and the English Graham Burton completed the podium."
What an awesome opportunity for you to experience! Time to savor the memories, as part of your chess journey.
As far as hanging pieces, like you said, you were obviously distracted else wise bro. Attribute it to the personal season of your life & landscape, which will change. When playing distracted, back to basics before moving a piece, ...look before you leap :). Add sleep and exercise to your already excellent list , (...nutrition, etc) and move on, counting your copious blessings (and pieces prior to moving :). Thanks for allowing us to share your experience. It was fun!
Literally lol, zenomorphy, on counting my blessings AND my pieces :-)
There was a heavily comical aspect to my game 9 blunder, which i'll share here as soon as i make the time to annotate and publish the game.
Now back to my piano, as some pieces demand my attention also there...
lol, you're not in debt to us, solskytz :) You've annotated several games; no one would have a right to complain if you didn't do more.
Of course, elubas :-)
But you know, i'm not really doing it for you guys - this is part of my self-imposed regime for chess improvement: annotating my games, following my thought process with its merits and quirks...
Another thing is - i'm not even sure what i like more: playing chess, or writing :-) which is another one of my passions...
Fantastic postings keep it up.
Believe it or not, but now, while waiting for my eggs to get done and for the first time since leaving French soil, I have actually continued the annotating effort on game eight - and got as far as move ten! (out of 102)
So - the long awaited game 8 is finally here!!
Some more introductory remarks... over 3 weeks and a couple of great concerts later, Cannes seems so far again... like a far dream :-)
The trip was a dream, the way the tournament panned out (as opposed to my expectation), more like a nightmare you would say...
My opponent here was 62 years old, but didn't seem to fade out or tire at all, seeing that he had to defend throughout the whole 102-move-long game and had absolutely no chances to win at any stage. A daunting task, no doubt, and that with a modest rating of 1855 only!
But he played it very well, and held, so it would seem, easily and without an effort.
Out of over 200 boards in the three tournaments, ours was the last game (but two) to end.
It must have been lucky to have played me in this tournament!
As I was sitting on board 25 or thereabouts, playing this eighth game, to my left, where the leaders where playing, I could see EVERY player who drew or beat me up to this point (4 in total, in previous rounds), playing in one of the top eight boards!!
And best of all was our hero Vasili, who after grabbing my Q on the 32nd move, from a losing position in game 5, was totally on fire and won his next two games! He was now with 6 points out of 7, battling it out near the top!
He lost and finished fourth and prizeless (but out of 163 competitors!) with 6 out of 9 at the end... you can't say that luck isn't a factor in chess.
But speaking about the end - I ended with 50% after another "sorry accident" on game nine, which you'll see before too long - and it's interesting to note that NONE of my nine adversaries had a minus score!
I think that only Aurelien Auque, who fell victim to my attacking Q sacrifice on game 2, actually finished on 50%. Everybody else had a plus score at the end! So it pays to play me in competitions. Go ahead and give it a try!
Fine - now I suppose that within a week we'll publish game nine here (the EMBARRASSING game nine, with another horrible piece blunder before move twenty) - so that the "beef" of the thread (as opposed to responses, discussions, appreciation, etc.) will all be on the table.
Does listening to you online music count :). Grew up on "live" Jazz in New Orleans, ...but you are another kinda talented man. Unreal! Thanks for the links!!!
Lol
The Chopin Polonaise & Mazurka from 2011 are amazing bro. The Beethoven Hammerklavier and Rhapsody in Blue a simply beautiful. I also really dig that crazy violinist (a Jazz complement :), Eliyahu Shulman and the Brahms Violin sonatas from '04! That dude is mesmerizing! Unreal & lovely renditions!
True - a great virtuoso star.
In a week or two I'll be uploading a new bunch of pieces to the channel - stay tuned!
And now we complete this thread, by posting the long-awaited game nine, which was also crowned, like game 5 before it, with an inexplicable straight piece-dropping blunder, changing its course from an equally contested positional game, complete with ideas, attacks, exchanges and maneuvres looming ahead, where each player would try to better exploit the element of the position in his favor - into a simple technical conversion of a position in which you are suddenly, and through no provocation of your own - up a piece.
solskytz, First of all thanks for detailed coverage of your chess games. I have some opinion to share with you. Your queen blundering move on a winning position shows that it may be due to age factor. I am in my mid thirties and I am facing similar issues.
1. In India we have like 3 game in a day(each 1hr + 30sec increment) and 1hour gap between each game. So all 9 games will be over in 3 days.
2. I am very sharp in first few games but as the tournament progress I am not able to cope up when I have to calculate. This is like 9 hours chess each day for 3 days. I start to play only natural moves and avoid to look for some idea or calculate different variation. This is not the case in first few games :(
3. I find same problem faced by other ageing opponent in the tournament. Infact I prefer higher rated aged person as my opponent rather than lower rated teenage player.
4. In one of the recent tournament I was playing a teenage opponent and he was staring at my face all through the game. He played his first 15 moves in less than 10 mins and I took about 35 mins. After the game which ended in a draw I asked him why he was staring at me like that. He said he was confused as why I was taking so long time to make those opening moves as the position was simple and nothing much to calculate and he lost interest in the game!!!!!
5. I would say playing 9 hours of chess each day for 3 days is a mental torture. Is there any way to prepare mind to cope with this better before such tournaments?