You are not defined as a loser when you lost couple of games
How I think about the losses. Why I don't worry too much about them and still enjoy playing chess.
Returning to playing chess properly is difficult. I haven't played many games or practiced much over the last few years. During 2022, I only played about 13 games and won only one. So this year, when I return to chess and take it seriously again, is a kind of punishment (so far?) for slacking off in previous years.
In our town, there is a team competition from January to April. This year I am playing for two teams of our club and have played 8 games so far. The results? Six draws and two losses.
Looking at it a little closer, in the three games that ended in draws, I could have easily gotten a minor piece and then probably won. I lost one game due to a brutal tactical oversight in the opening. And the other due to a tactical blunder in the endgame.
So I'm not really happy with the results so far.
If I had had similar results before, I would have been very depressed. Not winning any of the eight games (and often against opponents with ELO 150-250 points lower). You would probably be depressed too.
When I was returning to chess at the beginning of the year, I realized one thing.
How much I enjoy chess!
That festive feeling when I sit down at the chess board, greet my opponent, start the clock and the game begins. I've missed it a lot, and I enjoy the feeling of finally being able to play OTB again. No online chess tournament can ever be like that.
At these days the enjoyment of the game is much more than the results for me.
I'm simply learning again by playing games now and it's one step on my journey back.
This understanding is very important because otherwise I would really get depressed after my results and chess would not offer me so much pleasure.
And all chess players should be aware of this. Bad results belong to chess. There are times when things don't go well (for example, because of work or family or no time for chess in general...). But no such period defines us as a bad chess player. As a loser.
Chess is a hobby for most of us club players. A beautiful hobby. A hobby that brings many wonderful moments worth playing chess for. And, of course, moments we'd rather forget. As Garry Kasparov says, chess just imitates life.
There's no point in leaving chess after a few bad games.
I know that if I stick with it and keep practicing and playing, the good results will come again. I'm only 49 years old and that's certainly not too old to not improve in chess.
Don't get me wrong, though. I always analyze my lost games (in fact, I analyze all my "serious" games). I want to find where I made a mistake and I want to learn from it. Or from them if there were more than one. Finding the typical mistakes in a game and working on eliminating them is one of the fundamentals of improvement.
P.S. Writing about the steps on the road to playing better chess... My next ones are practicing tactical diagrams, studying openings and playing grandmaster games. Just playing games alone probably wouldn't help me that much to get back into shape and improve.
Will you find the right plan?
I want to bring you at least one tactical puzzle in this newsletter. Because, as you know, it is VERY important to see tactical motives in games.
So let’s dive in this diagram.
White to move.
That's all for this week.
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