Had an unexpected bye and agreed to a match play with this guy. I've played him a lot and always struggle to beat him with white. Interestingly, I have had better success against him with black in recent games.
This guy keeps torpedoing my rating
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then it doesn't sound like he's cheating, or even sandbagging. it's just that EVERY amateur has players whose style they just can't beat. a lot of positional players, especially hypermoderns or 1.d4/french players drive me nuts while other players can't find solutions to my relentless attacks.
it happens. the best thing to do is study the crap out of whatever line he plays and start booking up on something new to try.
someone well versed in king's indian can be a formidable opponent as it's playable against everything. does he play it as white too?
When did I say he was cheating? This was an OTB game so it would have been impossible for him to cheat. Lou has always been giving me problems since I first started playing him and I can't unlock a winning formula against him. That's not to say I've never beaten him; I've done so several times, the most recent win being a very nice positional win of mine in December. I had black then and like I said, I typically do better against him with black for some reason. Whenever I've faced him with white and go into these equalish endgames, he always outplays me. The only times I've beaten him with white is when I have won in the middlegame, or when I've gone into a far superior endgame where losing is impossible.
I think you have got an idea how to beat him yourself. Stop exchanging unless very clearly better for you, and give him a chance to show his grade in complicated middlegame. Fairly easy to stop losing the equalish endgames too, for example on move 26, if keep knight blockading, then hard to see how can ever lose. The endgame got unexpectly dicey with the outside passed pawn in the knight endgame. By luck or being a decent endgame player seemed to hit on a strong plan playing c4-c3 temporarily giving up a pawn.
Yeah I completely missed c3 after Nf1. Like I've said, my opponent is sort of inconsistent in terms of his play quality. Several years ago he drew an FM who was 2300 (he was about 1700 at the time) but he sometimes still loses to players rated a few hundred points below him. I find that the only way I can beat him is in the middlegame, as seen here-
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/positional-old-indian-defense-victory
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