everything has its “giveaways”

everything has it givaways.  I will explain.  I have been a competitive pool player for nearly 40 years. I don’t even need to see you shoot to know what I am up against. All I need to see is how you approach the table…how you hold your cue, your stance during the shot,  and how you actually stroke the shot.  These 4 things tell me everything I need to know.  

Turns out, it is the same for chess. I was outside on my patio, running some famous games out on my board, when a girl visiting next door saw me, and stopped by. We chatted a bit, and she suggested a quick game. Well of course, a sexy little Chinese woman is hard to say no to!  Her first few moves, showed me that she didn’t just make the trip across the yard to lose a game of chess. She stopped by to kick my ***. 😂  She was called back before we finished, but as it turns out, she has been an assistant tournament director in Beijing, and is rated 2100.  😳

I would not have won that game, but it got me thinking about how every sport (passtime) has it’s  “giveaways”.  a good tennis player…easy to spot. A baseball player? how effortlessly does he swing the bat?  Golfer…there is a good one…good golfers are the easiest to spot, from the very first shot. 🙂

moral of my story….stay on your toes folks! there may be someone visiting your neighbor that knows more than you!  🙂  Happy chess playing!

I am guessing that would be because my iPad did not show the first one going through. Thank you for your diligence, I will need delete one. 

no patience left tonight to figure out post deletion.  if you have a relevant response, feel free. if not, move along.  sorry for the duplicate post. Mods, delete one please, I have upset someone. 😉

Whenever I start an anonymous unrated blitz game on lichess, sometimes, within 10 seconds, I know it will be almost impossible for me to lose, and it's something a casual observer would probably not even believe... for example if they take 5 seconds on their 2nd move, and again 5 seconds on their 3rd... first of all that pace (5 seconds per move) will only get you to move 36 (an average game is 40 moves long, so they'd lose on time even if they were beating me) and in general it just shows a lack of experience to not be able to play the opening.

And this is online when I can't even see the person

In other cases... I was playing this guy, and it went into an obscure line I have experience in, and we're both playing moves in less than 1 second... and it's move 12 and I threaten a 3 move tactic... he slows down half a second but that was enough to correctly respond to my threat... sometimes things like that happen and I know I'm probably outclassed.

I could ramble on about this a little longer, but anyway, you get the idea.

Physical cues are only relevant to certain sports...@Limey-Johnson pointed out certain "tells" involved in his competitive sport of choice (pool), and examples of other "tells" in other sports. But, this system is not truly applicable to CHESS...regardless of how confident a chess player appears, or even in the 'first few moves' of a game with a given chess player, can truly indicate how good that person is. After all, multiple good Intermediates know many Opening lines and vsriations of said lines; this is not the sole domain of 2000+--rated players. I once played an IM (International Master) 25 years ago; got to the endgame with him in the first game and well into the midgame in the second game. Had I not known he was an IM to begin with, there still would not have been a definitive way of discerning his skill level just by his opening play. So, unlike other sports, thete are NOT necessarily any "tells" involved with Chess...

In Poker, they are called "tells". A tendency to pause for half-a-second when you've drawn an unexpectedly good card, for example.