Two Days Later

I reread the post I made last night when I got home from the Marshall Chess Club. Damn I felt like a patzer extraordinaire. I felt like I was reading a cleaned up version of one of Chess Loser's "I sucked this tournament, and I'm totally hopeless at this game!" posts. He just uses more colorful language in describing how he messed up. Suck, crap and hell are about as colorful as I will get in public writing. F-bombs and S-words may be rattling around in my head as I'm thinking about what occurred. I'm not sure what I wrote even remotely conveyed how annoyed and frustrated I was about how I played. Perhaps if one just replaced my adjectives and verbs with stronger ones of his own choosing then the idea would come across.

I think the worst part about last night was looking at the games on the computer as I was writing the post and seeing all the stuff I missed. How is it one day I see lots of good stuff over the board, and several days later I play as if I just learned the game last week? It would have been really cool to find Nxe4 and get the mate if my opponent had taken the queen. I don't think all the tactic exercises in the world would have helped me find that combination. It was there, but I had been blinded by the feeling that my opponent's move was crushing and that no matter what I did I was going to lose something.

I think what totally pissed me off was that my third round opponent got away with sitting back and watching me implode in time pressure. It was as if he was saying, "I know I have this crushing move that wins easily, but why bother? I'll just run you out of time by fiddling around . You have nothing." It would have given me great pleasure to trap the queen when I had the opportunity. The time deficit would have been meaningless with such a big material advantage. I would have been able to say to myself "Take that! That will teach you to take me lightly." I would never say it out loud, but emotionally it would have given me confidence to play the fourth round while he got to take the early train home. Instead I was the one with the 0-3 score and scooting out the out door with the proverbial tail between the legs.

I'm up in Saratoga Springs at the NY State Scholastics. There's an open tournament with two sections. I debated whether I wanted to play or not. Once I decided I wanted to play, I debated over which section to enter, Open or Under 1800. I decided to play in my own section instead of being fish food for a bunch of Experts and A players. I felt it was time to stop avoiding lower rated players, and try to win a tournament. It's too easy to keep getting pounded and accept losing game after game. Let's see what I can do against easier competition. Even as I write this I'm wrestling with my decision, but I have to get over the fear of higher expectations. "You go girl! Kick some butt! Get back the 16 rating points you tossed on Thursday."