Crushing disappointment? No, a ray of sunshine!

Last Saturday, November 19, 2016, Paul Leggett and I trekked over to Daytona for the November Chess Challenge, put on by Stephen Lampkin. It was a good tournament for both Paul and me, as we both picked up about 70 rating points on our regular ratings. Additionally, I finished second, and beat my first master in a rated game. Woo hoo!

But I'm not here to write about any of the good stuff. I'm here to write about my sole loss from the tournament, against FM Jorge Leon Oquendo, USCF 2473, FIDE 2380. The game started kind of strangely, as you will see, and became very complicated. Mikhail Tal once wrote, "You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." This I did! And though the balance swung a little this way and that, it was my opponent who eventually stumbled and fell! But two moves later, in a fit a utter carelessness, I missed the winning move and lost in turn. Yes, I lost a game I should have won against a player rated almost 2500.

But rather than feeling crushing disappointment at this missed opportunity (this is only the second time I have even played a senior master in a rated game), I feel quite good. After all, I did play mostly well enough to win against such a good opponent, and it gives me hope that I am once again starting to get better at the game. It has been many years since that was true, but circumstances have given me the means and opportunity to improve my game even at the advanced age of 48.

I've placed the game, with my hand-written notes, below the fold. I have partly supplemented them with a few computer suggestions. I'm not going to put it in the ChessBase viewer this time, so this post will be long. I will include plenty of diagrams so that the game can be followed. (The time control was Game in 45 minutes, with a five second delay. Numbers in parentheses after the moves show time remaining in minutes, and later in minutes & seconds.)

Low energy. Sad.

Ever since hitting 1900 on Chess.com, I have completely forgotten how to play a decent game of chess. Therefore I have nothing to report, chess-blogging-wise. Hopefully I will remember how to play a decent game of chess again sometime soon. I did finally remember my brother-in-law's best friend's name today, so there may be hope for me yet. Maybe.

Ivanchuk does everything better

He even suffers at the board better than we do.

Ivanchuk expressing the stress of chess! 👏🏼😆 pic.twitter.com/s6ztYBcJZ9

— Johan Salomon (@JohanSalomon) July 8, 2016

Hmmm....

Maybe we should start out own 'Agony" column. I'm sure we've got (or could easily get) the material.

Perhaps that should even be a separate blog, in order to lift some of the restrictions.

Agony

ChessBase has hired English GM Jon Speelman to write a weekly Agony column. Readers are invited to submit their own personal horror stories for Speelman to analyze. Some may remember that Kingpin Magazine has had an Agony column, and that once, long ago, Michael Wilder wrote such a column for a now extinct magazine. (An example can be found here.) I have this belief that Joel Benjamin also wrote such a column at one point in time, but that's probably my mind playing tricks on me.

Apparently, people like to suffer, and then like to add public humiliation on top of the suffering. I can't really offer any censure of such behavior, given that I publish my own games....

Howard Staunton on Twitter

Ouch.

The young player is so apt to suffer a victory, within his reach, elude him. https://t.co/xVV1gfGxyY pic.twitter.com/VHFCf4opp9

— Howard Staunton (@HowardStaunton) May 17, 2016