Category: Personal Reflection Page 2 of 5

As if there were not enough things going on in life to worry about, I have hit a slump. These things appear to come and go just like the seasons but that does nothing to lessen the sting. In my case, March has been a very busy chess month with playing in my first-ever OTB tournament and simul event. Each of those events have resulted in goose eggs, which was to be expected. However, it is the growing struggle online that has started to ruffle my feathers a bit.

Chess.com Player Statistics on March 01. (Credit: Campfire Chess)

At the beginning of March I was resting somewhat comfortably with an 1103 online ELO with some spikes higher in the 1150-1190 range, but unfortunately never managed to break my goal of 1200. In the past two weeks I have watched as my game as gone from OK to horrific as both my ELO has taken a sharp decline from holding around 1100-1150 to an abysmal low of 1020 the other night before resting currently at 1082.

Chess.com Player Statistics on March 17. (Credit: Campfire Chess)

100 ELO points might not seem like much, but for someone who spends an inordinate amount of time studying, playing, and writing about chess…it is a big deal. Looking back, it is ironic that this month’s edition of Chess Life Magazine features an exceptional story of what its like to work incredibly hard at chess and only see minor to moderate (if you are lucky) returns. My guess is that if chess were some form of stock market investing that it would not last long. And no, that is not me on the cover of this month’s Chess Life, but it certainly could be. At least, it represents exactly how I feel at the moment.

As with all things, numbers only tell part of the story. It is easy to write about the frustrations of chess using ELO numbers, but what about the quality of the games themselves? Perhaps no other element of my current situation frustrates me more than this one, because my games lately have all been worthy of the losses I received. Simply put? I have seriously sucked at chess lately. For example, this game represents the worst of the worst:

If there had been a resign from chess button on the screen at the time I might have clicked it. The only excuse for playing a game like this is complacency and outright laziness on my part, but I felt like I was giving it everything that I had. So, what happened?

Honestly, I have no idea…

I am at a loss for words on what has happened recently. Basic principles of opening theory and tactics have seemingly gone out the window. Stamp this game under the category WTF:

What to do about it?

Part of this post is simply to have an outlet to vent. Rarely do family members of chess players understand the depths of passion and frustration that come with playing our game, so it is nearly impossible to find that kind of support in a time like this. In the past I have found solace in playing tactics trainers or reading books, but lately that feels just as frustrating as some of the games I have played recently. Then, there is the thought of a haitus from playing for a short time, but will that really help?

In searching the Campfire Chess archives I found several posts like this in the past at different times when I faced a losing streak:

Beat the Losing Streak – link
Reflections on Losing – link
The Decline Continues… – link
Coping with the Downfall – link

There are some wise words and stark reminders in those posts, but sometimes its hard to take our own advice. Perhaps it is time to simply re-focus and re-prioritize what I am studying about chess and how I play the game. If a haitus occurs, it will not be for long because, lets just be honest, the board is addicting…

What things have you done to beat a losing streak?

Ending on a High Note

By Commander Exorcist

On December 28, 2015

In Personal Reflection

This will be the last post of 2015 on this site. This has been a rollercoaster year for chess around the world and it has also been a wild ride for me as I continue to work on improving my game. 2014 concluded with my online ELO rating sitting at just around 900. This year I am excited to end on a high note sitting at 1100 with a peak rating of 1170 in early December! It is incredible how much work goes into just a few hundred ELO points but the reward of persevering through unnerving losing streaks and perilous blunders is well worth it.

2014finals

2014 was a hard year for me because it was a time of major transition. I moved from Ohio to Texas that year and was still very green when it came to learning the nuances of chess education.

2015finals

2015 was much more rewarding in that I managed to find a rhythm and method that works for studying, analyzing, and integrating my game experiences into future play. Here is the final game I am playing this year so that I can focus on my family during the New Year’s holiday. From the Campfire Chess family to yours, I wish you a very Happy New Year and much joy and chess success! See you in 2016!

A World in Mourning

By Commander Exorcist

On November 14, 2015

In Personal Reflection

Campfire Chess joins the millions of people worldwide mourning last night’s tragedy in Paris. Violence will never put an end to violence. I pray this morning for the health and safety of France and its citizens. I also pray that those responsible be softened in their resolve to cause damage and destruction to innocent lives.

Updated Nov 14 @ 1644 EST: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has published a press release on behalf of the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

Chess Players Lose at Social Media

By Commander Exorcist

On November 12, 2015

In Community, Personal Reflection

Imagine for a moment the social stereotype of the typical chess player. Is it the image of an old white guy sitting alone in his house hunched over a chessboard with stacks of newspapers, magazines, and books around him? Perhaps he is disheveled and could use a refresher on how to use the shower? Bobby Fischer did not own a computer so this guy does not have one either. This creepy stereotype continues to persist in the mainstream media, but is there any truth to it?

A recent article on World Chess took players and fans to task for not embracing social media like other sports. The article’s title warns of things to come: Chess Players are Surprisingly Bad with Social Media. There is nothing surprising about this to chess players, fans, and the community as a whole. The author insists that professional players have not harnessed the power of social media marketing tools to boost their popularity and popularity of the sport. The whole argument assumes that chess audiences are ready to embrace social media marketing on a wide scale. History proves that this is not the case with chess.

An example brought up in the article uses the always fun and engaging WCM Claudia Munoz. The author focuses on Claudia’s 19,000+ Tweets relative to her 3,000 followers and implies that her inability to reach more people is due to a lack of cooperation from other chess masters. I would argue that it has less to do with the quality of personality or the collaborative efforts of different chess masters and more to do with the nature of chess itself. Chess is a game that has transcended the board and is readily available online. Chess players meet to play chess, not to share their favorite cat videos with each other. Quite often the focus of obsession for chess fans is not the personality or the player, but the quality of their game. There is no social media requirement to obtain PGN files of games, so the community as a whole lacks the need to be social.

I am more social than your average chess player because I run a chess blog and because I am a (way) less than average chess player. I enjoy the social elements of chess because I am interested in personality and how a player’s personality affects their style. The world’s greatest chess players have made serious efforts to improve their social media presence but the chess audience is not reciprocating. I wish that chess players as a whole were more social but chess is not an inherently social game. It is a strategic battle between two people who are not required to be friends to play. Yet, I think that Claudia Munoz and players like her are a ray of hope for a future where that mentality changes and the community is transformed.

Read the full article on WorldChess.com.

Finding Favor in the Fall Season

By Commander Exorcist

On November 6, 2015

In Personal Reflection

August was one of the worst months I have had since I began tracking my online chess results. I lost almost every game and considered taking a sabbatical from the game to regroup. September was much better but it was nothing compared to my breakout results in October! Going 7.0/12 for the month might not seem like much on a cross table, but the content of the games was far beyond my previous performance.

A key to improvement in these last few months has been Peshk@ tactics training courses including the latest edition of CT-ART. I started playing chess seriously in 2006 with Rybka Aquarium before adopting Chessbase. The quality of the user interfaces in Peshk@ and Aquarium are not up to modern standards but the chess content is exceptional for the price. In the next game my opponent’s devastating 11…Qxb2?? was a resignation in disguise.

I finished October with a 1065 rating on Chess.com which is the highest sustained rating I have had to date.

October is here…where has the time gone?

By Commander Exorcist

On October 2, 2015

In Blog Updates, Other

It is so hard for me to believe that it is October already. So much great chess has already happened in 2015 and just as quickly as it began it will soon be coming to an end. However, before that all comes to pass we are approaching my single favorite holiday of the year: Halloween! It is always fun to get dressed up and run around pretending to goblins, spooks, and other characters. Having small children I have gained a renewed appreciation for the holiday because I not only get to decorate the house but I also get to take my kids Trick-or-Treating to get candy that I can share with them.

Where to go from here?

After some careful thought and consideration I have decided that I am going to take a short break from making regular blog posts on tournaments or other current chess events. There are plenty of fantastic websites out there that cover live chess events such as Chessbase, Chess.com, Chess24, and Chessbomb. I am not quitting blogging nor am I quitting blogging about tournaments but I am down to the final two terms of my Master’s program and I am also working to finish a professional certification at the same time. Suffice to say that times are wonderful, but busy! Until I overcome some of the other demands weighing me down I will primarily be blogging about chess education, my games, and other topics that do not require me to follow tournaments with intricate detail and attention. For that kind of coverage, check out The Week in Chess, a site that is the King of tournament reports.

In addition I also have plans to add a plethora of new content to the site. My vision is for Campfire Chess to slowly evolve from a simple blog into a free resource for chess enthusiasts and students of the game to find information that can help them learn more about the game’s history, its methods, and its future. I will continue to update the Campfire Chess Facebook page and Twitter feeds as often as possible, but allowing myself some time to focus on my school and my own personal chess studies will allow me to also work on the new site content and on the greater strategic vision for the future of Campfire Chess.

In the meantime, check out this amazing video of IM Marc Esserman playing chess in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Better than August, at Least…

By Commander Exorcist

On September 30, 2015

In Game Analysis, Personal Reflection

August was a rough month for my chess studies and outcomes. I lost pretty much every game I played that month and documented those results more extensively here. Fortunately, the month of September has been much kinder to me.

Chess players of all skill levels experience winning and losing streaks. It might have something to do with the phases of the Moon, the tides, whether The Walking Dead is on its mid-season break, or any other of the countless variables that affect chess outcomes.

In the month of September I won 29 out of the 35 chess games I played in various modes on Chess.com and games not played online. By far, my favorite win of the month came in a slow-move game with a 24-hour time control against a player rated 1057. It was an excellent tactical battle throughout and at one point I thought I had been lured into a trap before I managed to avoid making a huge mistake on move 38. Here is the game:

In addition to this victory and the others, the losses I suffered were each a learning opportunity. Of course, every loss is an opportunity to learn something new, but many of the losses in August were simply beyond my ability to reason on and off the board. The game above was both fun and frustrating because I felt at times that I had it wrapped up and wanted my opponent to resign but then I would see another attacking line and the game would continue.

In addition to these games and the subsequent analysis I also started digging deep into the book Fighting Chess, which is a collection of GM Bent Larsen’s best games with his own annotations. Playing each of those games through on my travel board and reviewing them in Chessbase is a great way for me to learn about his opening methods, explore tactics, and create a comprehensive collection of games. This game, which is reviewed thoroughly in the book, is one of the best attacking games that I have ever seen. I hope to annotate it for a future post and/or Campfire Magazine:

I was also happy with the results of this month’s work largely because it concluded with the premier of Pawn Sacrifice. When I am losing badly at chess I have trouble concentrating even on chess movies and books so I was worried that a lapse in play advancement might ruin the movie experience. Fortunately this was not the case and going 29 out of 35 for the month was enough to maintain my confidence in learning and advancement. Here’s to moving on to October and starting a brand new month with brand new challenges both on and off the board.

The Sad Reality of Cheating in Chess

By Commander Exorcist

On September 6, 2015

In Famous Players, Personal Reflection

In his recent Chess.com column, chess legend Bruce Pandolfini explores the phenomenon of cheating in chess and how technology has evolved over time to make it easier for cheating both online and in tournament games. The point of the article is to explore the community perspective of cheating in chess. Does it happen as often as we think it does? What is the community’s experience at large with such cheating? As I read through the article and perused the comments left by the Chess.com user community, I wondered how the world of professional chess has dealt with the rising prevalence of technology and its affect on tournament culture throughout the years.

WGM Mihaela Sandu: One of the more recent high profile cases was the accusations of cheating surrounding WGM Mihaela Sandu at the European Women’s Individual Championship. Her perfect 5.0/5 score led 32 people to submit a letter to FIDE claiming that she was receiving outside assistance for her games. WGM Sandu’s performance in the tournament suffered significantly after the accusations, which prompted some to believe was an indicator of her dishonesty, but the psychological difficulties with being accused by so many participants in a tournament like that would have devastated anyone person’s performance.

WGM Anna Rudolf, who is a huge chess crush of mine, was accused in 2008 of receiving hints in her game against GM Christian Bauer at the Vandoeuvre Open. She scored a WGM and IM norm during that tournament and drew the ire of three Latvian players: Oleg Krivonosov, Vladimir Lazarev and Ilmārs Starostīts. The Latvians accused her of receiving messages in her lip balm, which was confiscated during the tournament to satisfy the complainants. The fallout from the incident was well documented on Chessdom featuring interviews from GM Bauer and WGM Rudolf. There was no real evidence that Anna was cheating and few (if any) people believe that she was cheating even today, but it was just a precursor to other instances of cheating that would appear in the coming years as technology continued to advance. Here is the Bauer-Rudolf game from Round 2 of the 2007 Vandoeuvre Open in which WGM Rudolf was accused of receiving messages in her lip balm:

Dhruv Kakkar: Cheating is an audacious behavior anyway, but this case was particularly disturbing given the brazen methods employed to cheat. Dhruv Kakkar basically came to the game wired with two Android smartphones strategically placed on his body to help improve his moves. However, when he missed some basic opening lines and paused at unusual points in the game, it gave away the fact that he was receiving outside help. The phones were linked into a tiny speaker tucked away in Kakkar’s ear (pictured below…the speaker, not his ear).

GM Gaioz Nigalidze: For one final example: at the 2015 Dubai Open, GM Tigran Petrosian faced a Georgian GM who held a strong attraction to a particular bathroom stall. After some investigation by the tournament staff, it was discovered that GM Nigalidze was using an iPhone hidden away behind a bathroom trash can. Prior to being discovered in Dubai, Nigalidze had won the Georgian Championship in 2013 and 2014 despite being ranked #9 and also won the Al-Ain Open in 2014 which netted him an $11,000 prize. In the official record of Round 6 between Nigalidze and Petrosian, the game ends at 23.Rf4, but the screenshot from the cheating device shows the game proceeding beyond move 24. Nigalidze learned quickly that cheaters will be caught and that it will stop them dead in their tracks:

Unfortunately, cheating is alive and well in chess. Technology continues to advance at an incredible rate and with those advancements come temptations to skirt the rules to gain an advantage in tournament play. Anti-cheating measures can only go so far. The rest of the effort will always come down to the personal integrity of chess players to remain true to themselves and to the game that we have all come to love.

August, A Rollercoaster Month

By Commander Exorcist

On September 4, 2015

In Game Analysis, Personal Reflection

August was a month of anticipation. Several major projects at work were due at the end of August and they created a great deal of stress and anxiety for me and for my family. Additionally, the Sinquefield Cup began at the end of the month and was a source of anticipation throughout the month. I went into following the tournament with the intention of publishing daily tournament recaps but life’s demands eventually took priority and I was unable to publish the final recaps leading up to Levon Aronian’s victory.

Now that September is here and August is a distant memory, reflecting on it has really shown me what an incredible roller coaster ride it was. The life challenges, victories, and losses were physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausting. Unfortunately, this is reflected prevalently in the quality of my chess games and the results of my online play throughout the month. Throughout the month of August I played 27 games on Chess.com and only won 9 of them. The other 18 losses were incredibly frustrating because they were not hard fought victories like some of my previous games. Instead, these were games that suffered from basic tactical blunders and obviously reflect the fact that something was distracting me during gameplay.

The game above is a perfect example of the struggles I have experienced on the board this month. I knew that 5…Nxf3+?? was a terrible move and after the Knight was captured by 6.Qxf3!, my reactionary move 6…e5?? was made almost immediately. If I had taken a moment to consider the position and identify the absurdly simple defense 6…e6!, there is no promise that I would have won the game, but could have definitely given myself a better chance than losing in an 8-move checkmate.

In this game, 8.Qxf7+! is the move that caused me the most pain. As with the previous example, I once again find myself guilty of ignoring basic tactical principles and reacting to my opponent’s moves before developing and executing a clear plan of my own. The response is a forced move, but 12.Qxe5 is not. Yet, I became so frustrated with the quick loss of material and decided to give up. As August entered into its 3rd week especially, right before the Sinquefield Cup, I struggled the most. Games like this became the norm and it became increasingly difficult to play games or to focus on my regular studies. But alas, not all was lost…

After working through the month’s many challenges I started to see results like the one above. This particular game was a lot of fun to play and I will probably annotate it at length in Campfire Magazine or in a separate post in the future. Those basic tactical principles that were seemingly lost on me in the previous examples seemed to come roaring back as the pressures of the month subsided.

Time to Change Focus?

One thing I have been considering is my recent focus on tournaments and tournament results. It is always nice to follow tournaments because the expertise of the great players is inspirational for me and countless other chess players. However, Campfire Chess is primarily concerned with learning about chess and experiencing the chess culture through more of an educational lens. So I am going to try to focus more in the coming months on my studies and sharing some of the harder lessons learned as I work to improve my skill set.

As a final example, this was a fun one that ended suddenly for reasons I still don’t know. It could have been that his dinner was ready and he needed to go set the table, but I might never know. In any case, it was a welcome victory that helped me to springboard back to a balanced win-loss ratio heading into the Fall and Winter months.

Happy Independence Day!

By Commander Exorcist

On July 4, 2015

In Campfire Chess, Personal Reflection

On this day in 1776, fifty-six men representing thirteen colonies in the new world signed the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States of America. At the time, the colonies were under control of Great Britain’s King George III, but war was raging and Britain’s grip on the colonies was finally starting to crumble. The declaration was written in response to new tax laws levied on the colonies by the British government. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, which ended the war and recognized the sovereignty of the United States.

Since that time, the core of what the United States has stood for is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These tenets comprise the basic beliefs of the Founding Fathers that all men have certain rights that cannot be compromised. Though I spend much of my time these days watching in disappointment as many of those tenets are undermined by the efforts of overzealous government, I praise God that I was born into a country that has enabled so many to pursue their dreams to the fullest. I blog about chess because it is a love of mine, but there are places in the world where playing chess is a decadent activity punishable by death.

On this day, Americans everywhere take time not just to remember the sacrifices of service members, but to be thankful for the men and women who had the vision of a nation dedicated to the justified treatment of all people under God. Happy Birthday to the United States of America. Every year I hope and pray that it is not the last.