When i was 900, i beat an 1850. that was the biggest upset ive ever made, though i make upsets a LOT
That is a HUGE upset! But did the 1850 withdraw from the tournament after you upset him?
By the way, the largest upset that I've heard of in rated competitive OTB play is a 500 player defeating a 1600 player.
Igor Kurnosov has.
i beat a IM and he withdrew
What was your rating at the time of this OTB rated game? Also, was this game in the 1st round of a Swiss tournament?
Igor Kurnosov has.
Do you have any other details?
Yes. More than once.
Can you describe it? Also, on all the occasions in which your opponents have withdrawn, do you think it's for the same reason?
People WD from tournaments all the time. In an event of 100+ people, there are almost guaranteed to be some WDs, although usually not after one round. I saw a G/45 event where GM Ben Fiengold withdrew after one round because he was dead lost against a 2000 rated player. He withdrew even after winning the game
I coached a high school kid who was stuck at around 900 because he kept trying cheap traps until he finally listened to me, played good principles, and rose quickly to about 1300. At the start of a tournament he was paired with an unrated player in his first OTB rated game, and my player cruelly decided to torture the poor newbie and see how many Pawns he could Queen before applying checkmate. My idiot got his just deserts: he stalemated the kid and lost a lot of rating points!
Yes. More than once.
Can you describe it? Also, on all the occasions in which your opponents have withdrawn, do you think it's for the same reason?
Well yeah. I think it typically happens when someone is already having a bad tournament and then loses to me as the final blow. Usually this would be someone considerably higher-rated than I am, which a few years ago meant something different than it does now. But for instance last year I was around 1800 and I beat a player rated over 2000 and he withdrew after the game, as he was already having a poor tournament.
It tends to happen when you're playing up, because when people are already having poor tournaments and then they get upset against you, their morale can be broken.
I am not one of these people. I never, ever withdraw from tournaments unless I have an outside reason. In the Philadelphia Open two years ago I lost my first five games, four of which were against lower opponents, and never even considered withdrawing. I just wanted to win a game, which I did on the last day. I just don't ever withdraw and always finish...although I understand people who do.
No but sadly its happened to me. A 800 player beat me when I was 1600. It was midway a 6 round tournament. It was round 3. I lost even though I won a knight for two pawns in the opening.
I withdrew because of depression. My mother had very recently passed and losing that game just made me more depressed. There, I said it. Like a man.
Igor Kurnosov has.
Do you have any other details?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakhriyar_Mamedyarov#Controversies
I did consider literally beating someone so that he will withdraw from the OTB tournament. In the end, I didn't play in the tournament so no, I was not able to literally beat someone to withdraw from the tournament.
Who did you consider beating?
No but sadly its happened to me. A 800 player beat me when I was 1600. It was midway a 6 round tournament. It was round 3. I lost even though I won a knight for two pawns in the opening.
I withdrew because of depression. My mother had very recently passed and losing that game just made me more depressed. There, I said it. Like a man.
Understandable. You are a man.
The tournament in which you could have literally beaten someone to withdraw from the OTB tournament but due to non-participation were not able to literally beat someone to withdraw from said OTB tournament?
from non participation?
In the tournament?
Thank you SeniorPatzer.
I don't think anyone withdrew, but I do remember a tournament for 12 year olds I went to. I won most of my games, lost a few and it was all good. But, after one of my wins, my opponent slowly started sobbing and finally he burst into tears. It was kind of weird. We were not little kids after all.
Some years back I wrote a thread on this very topic.
I will give a summary here.
I was half way through my first game in an OTBT when my opponent made a move immediately after me returning from the toilets. It was a strong move which meant he clearly had some help while I was absent.
I confronted him and he smugly denied it all. Having established that he was both a cheat and a lair I reached across the table and yanked him forward by his shirt with my left while giving a straight right cross to the nose.
The guy must have been a bleeder because I have never seen a nose bleed like that. To his credit he fought back bravely for a while even as a 60 year old until I got hold of a queen and used it to hammer fist him in the face with the crown end.
He ended up with something like 56 stitches to his face and withdrew from the tournament. The irony is I had to withdraw as well after the incident because the blood upset some chidren and it wasn't even my blood!!
It happened to me but it wasn't just because I lost the first (and so also the last) game in the tournament. I didn't like the playing hall - it was far from the centre of the city - with its plastic seats and tables; I was basically too tall for them and couldn't comfortably place my arms. I couldn't concentrate at all and lost with the White pieces in like 14 moves in a Scandinavian (that's quite an achievement) versus a Latvian player rated like 250 points higher than me. He then signed my scoresheet, which is common practice but this time we were given a separate result card, and asked me in awful English if I wanted to analyse the game. To be honest it's etiquette not to ask that if you just had a game like that, but oh well I guess he didn't mean any harm. I went back to my hotel room and withdrew, then spent the remaining days sightseeing the city.
No one ever withdrew directly after playing me.
I coached a high school kid who was stuck at around 900 because he kept trying cheap traps until he finally listened to me, played good principles, and rose quickly to about 1300. At the start of a tournament he was paired with an unrated player in his first OTB rated game, and my player cruelly decided to torture the poor newbie and see how many Pawns he could Queen before applying checkmate. My idiot got his just deserts: he stalemated the kid and lost a lot of rating points!
How did he lose a lot of points for a draw at only 1300??? I did not play tourny OTB until I was 50 but they started me out at 1200....what did they start kids out at back then???
Back 30 years ago when I first started playing tournaments as a high school kid I didn't know much about the openings. In the first round of a weekend Swiss tournament I got paired up with an 1800+ "A" player. I think I must have been a 12 or 1300. I was scared. I had the White pieces.
I assumed he was a booked-up player, and me, a patzer who just played with his high school buddies on the chess team, and who didn't know anything more than the first moves of an opening, and the name of that respective opening was at a distinctive disadvantage. I knew the General Principles of Openings, but that was it.
So what I did was this so as to minimize my disadvantage. I fianchettoed both my bishops!! (Mind you, this was in the late 1970's, or early 80's. I can't remember exactly when I played this game.)
My 1800 opponent had no idea what the hell to do. His face was puzzled. "What is this patzer doing?" I chuckled to myself because I myself didn't know what I was doing either! All I knew was that I was going to take this 1800 out of the Book and into uncharted waters. Where I figured I had a better chance.
Well, as the good story goes, he blunders, and as a result, he resigns. I think it was within 20-25 moves. He was very courteous in the midst of his great disgust and we did a post-mortem. He asked me, "What was that opening?" I told him I didn't know.
Anyways, when the pairings came out for the 2nd round, I looked for his name. It wasn't there. I found out that he withdrew!! It was the first time I was ever exposed to someone withdrawing from a tournament after just playing one game!
I asked an experienced player why someone would do that. After all, they can't get a refund. The experienced player said that unless it was an emergency, the withdrawing player probably felt that he was in bad form, and didn't want to lose any more rating points because they felt they weren't playing well.
I looked at him. Then it dawned on me. This 1800 just lost to a 1200-1300 player who just fianchettoed both bishops as an experiment! He didn't want to lose any more rating points!
I am still laughing at the memory of this episode to this day. Chess is hilarious.