World Open 2010, A Tired Rambling Recap

Well, the World Open is over. I didnt win, or even play all that well! I had a good start of the tournament. Things pretty much collapsed about half way through. That gives me a lot of interesting things to talk about though, especially regarding chess psychology.

I really do wonder how I can improve at chess. I have a lot of ideas about what would be the best things to do, but many of them are conflicting.

Taking a break from chess, or at least tournament chess is somewhat top on the list. A big problem I had and have had over the past year or so has just been spacing out at the chess board. I somewhat doubt that reading chess books or doing tactics will have any impact on this at all.

At the same time, I wonder if maybe reading chess books and doing chess tactics more frequently will make playing chess less of a mental strain. If this is the case, taking a break would be the worst thing to do!

Haha, so in the end, I have a lot of data (ie, chess games, chess moves, and my thought process leading to those moves) but the analysis leads to one of two opposite conclusions.

Either I need to take a break or I need to study more! May as well add in the third option, I am doing everything fine right now and just need to keep on doing what I have been doing.

On the other hand, maybe I just needed to drink more coffee during the games.

I will be posting all my games, by the way, with some commentary. A lot of the commentary will probably be focused on my brain thinking rather than objective chess.

I am very interested in how to learn, and analyzing objective things like a chess game is one of the best ways to try and figure things out.

I ended up with 3 wins, 2 draws and 4 losses. That gives me 4 points out of 9, or a half point under even. There is nothing especially good about even, but it is nice to at least break even.

Like I said earlier, the start of the tournament went well. I drew my first game, and won my next two. I lost my fourth game, and then won my fifth game. Not an great start, but a very good start. I was pretty happy with where I was at, at that point.

Then I lost my sixth game, drew my seventh game, and lost my last two games. It should be noted, and you will see later, that I was pretty badly lost in my seventh game. Truth be told, I was probably lost in my first and third games too!

I think a turning point of sorts was my sixth game. Not just because I didnt win any games beyond that, but because I started failing at basic calculations. I mean real basic. I would miss things like, the Knight takes the Queen. Fortunately I have enough intuition etc. so I didnt drop my Queen in any of my games!

That gets to the heart of the problem. How do you solve problems like that? It is one thing to miss a tactic because it is hard to see, or screw up an endgame because you dont know how to play it right. It is another to leave something en prise.

Maybe it actually isnt different. It sure is frustrating though. As a beginner, it is pretty much the normal course of things to leave stuff en prise. For whatever reason, beginners dont see that something is under attack (that is what en prise means by the way).

As you get better at chess, though, you sort of stop looking for things that are undefended. Maybe as a positional concern, but usually you just let your brain spot this automatically. Obviously, my brains auto pilot failed me towards the end of this tournament.

That gives me a good, or at least common sense, idea of trying to figure things out. I must cut out the auto pilot.

I know some books focus on looking around the board and trying to find candidates moves, and finding all of those moves, and then going back and searching each one individually etc.

That is time consuming, and I never found the idea all that appealing. I actually dont know why I brought it up, because I am probably not going to do that.

Well, I guess I brought it up because it is a very systematic way of playing chess. Normally, I think systematic ways of playing are bad. They in effect are auto pilot, which is not going to lead to very good moves.

Maybe my lack of any sort of system is holding me back though. It is somewhat of a shame, because I did mention in one my earlier posts (or maybe a draft of a post to be published?) that it is a good idea to look over what pieces are en prise, what the pawn structure is like etc. especially on your opponent's time. Sadly, I forgot to do this!

That probably would have helped.

There is also the issue of whether or not I have sufficient passion for chess. It may be the case that I dont.

I can and still do get pretty upset about losing, but winning doesnt really excite me all that much. That is probably a problem. That is primarily where the break talk comes in. I figure I am just burned out a bit, and playing chess in this state would not be helpful at all. It would be bad for me too continue playing chess just because I played it so much in the past.

If something is over, it is over!

All my chess books sure would look silly though. So would this blog, I guess.

At the same time, I doubt anything that dire is what is needed. After all, I do tend to have extreme emotions, so if I had gotten 6 out of 9 I may be making a tired rambling recap about how I just need to study 5 days a week for 2 hours a day and then I will be well on my way to Grandmaster.

Two blunders would change the entire course of my life!

Thinking about it, I think the best solution is just to go over master level games over the board at a slow and in depth pace. After all this introspective talk and what not, the difference between 6 or 7 out of 9 and 4 out of 9 was really just a few calculating errors.

Rather than look for big picture solutions, I should just focus on correcting the small details. I dont know about you, but I know this is something I could do throughout my entire life to improve it. It sure is fun to think about the big picture stuff, but in the end you dont get a whole lot done with that. Plus, it is a lot easier just to focus on the details.

Despite this post being somewhat whiney/depressed, the World Open was actually pretty fun. I still dont like the Valley Forge location, but it wasnt nearly as bad this time. For one, I stayed at the Scanticon which is right above the chess tournament. In between games, I could just go upstairs and nap or watch TV or whatever. Avoiding those dreaded 4 hour breaks between morning and evening game made a huge difference as far as having fun. I didnt have to just kill time for 4 hours, which can really turn even a successful tournament into a bad experience.

I also had a fairly relaxed attitude throughout the tournament. I was pissed that I was losing, especially towards the end, but I was also fairly resigned to it. Part of this was that all of my games were interesting and more or less fun, including the games I lost. I didnt get ground down in a hopeless position at all. Or at least, when I did, it took a long time and I was able to put up a good fight!

Losing is a lot easier to deal with when the game was interesting and you had your chances.

Maybe my last game I didnt have chances. Well, this wasnt so bad though because I had to take the bus home. I was pretty happy to get out at about 6:30 or so. I got home at 9. If my game went to 9 o'clock instead of 6, I probably would have gotten home around midnight or later. On top of this, I dont especially like to walk around at late night, so I may have taken a cab, which would be kind of expensive. So, even though my last game was kind of a joke, it doesnt really bother me that much.

As far as expense goes, yeah I did kind of just waste a lot of money. Haha, it was the 4th of July though, and I am a patriot! Seriously, it wasnt actually that much. I split the hotel room with a friend, which is a huge money saver. Too bad we couldnt get 1 or 2 more people to split the room. Yeah, we all sleep on the floor but 25 dollars a night would be great!

The food was pretty terrible. Really terrible. I am somewhat spoiled, though, because I have a Greensgrow Farm share. That is all good food from local farms, so when I eat things like frozen processed Sweet Potato Fries or Papa Johns Pizza I am kind of like what did they do to my food? Haha, I cam home, boiled up some potatoes and was like, mmmmmm, these are good. I just really cant stand eating the processed food, I dont know why exactly. It just tastes so weird.

The coffee was even worse. Oh man. They did have starbucks, but 3.50 for a 16 oz. is pretty crazy. There were no convenient stores nearby. I dont know if you guys know this, but convenient stores for the most part actually have really good coffee these days. It is not like sludge from a gas station. So that would have been fine, but you cant really walk to any of those places from the Convention Center.

I got a 2 dollar refill of really really awful coffee down stairs by the chess tournament. Seriously, it is the kind of coffee that gas stations give away for free! Actually, people would probably be ashamed to give away coffee like this for free.

Along these lines, I thought it was pretty funny, though mildly rude, that everybody was clapping the last round when the tournament director said the tournament would be at the Sheraton in Philly next year. Yeah, Valley Forge sucks. Oh well.

In defense of Valley Forge, though, I think the Convention Center is designed to just be an open space where various businesses or wealthy people can do their thing. It is actually very well suited for this, as it would be a nice cheap spot to rent out a huge room. If you are, for instance, having a wedding you are going to be paying for a caterer anyway, so what do you care if the Starbucks costs 3.50! Similarly, you dont really need snacks from a convenience store.

So, it is a nice venue for things like businesses and what not where guests are going to get catered meals. It isnt suited very well for a chess tournament, where the players have to buy there own food and such day to day.

Well, that is pretty rambling, which is great. I have to go now. All in all, it was an ok tournament, that was disappointing in many ways. At the same time, though, it was pretty fun and interesting.