Tournament Players PROTIP #6: Appendix A

In response to the prior post, a reader adds a particularly devious twist:

Great advice. One thing to add: if you know that your opponent will go into anaphylactic shock, get a touch of the allergen on the pieces, watch them start choking, and use your convient Epi-pen, thus saving the day.

That's the most twisted thing I've read today, and I've been reading a lot of political coverage, so that's saying something!

Tournament Players PROTIP #6

More Dark Arts of The Dark Side

If you know an opponent has a mild allergy*, you can exploit this weakness by exposing them to said substance immediately before or during the game. A particularly useful (though highly improbable) allergy for an opponent to have would be an aloe allergy. In that case you could simply apply hand lotion with aloe before the handshake at the start of the game - and watch the uncontrollable sneezing begin! He might sneeze at a crucial moment and mix up the move order of his response to your Anti-Berlin variation, and instead of your emerging from the opening with an =, you get all the way to a +/= eval instead! Maybe apply some of the allergen to the opponent's pieces before hand if you have Black or can otherwise reliably sabotage the pieces or board. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination!

(No, I have no known allergies. Why do you ask?)

* Remember, people, that we are talking about mild allergies here. If the opponent has a severe allergy, to say, peanut butter, and you put them into Anaphylactic Shock , you could well be brought up on murder charges latter - or worse, be expelled from the tournament. Sure, if it's only your fifth or sixth potential felony conviction you can probably plead it down to a littering fine, but do you really want to waste perfectly good money on a murder when that money could buy your seventh or eighth tournament worthy chess set instead? (Obviously I'm not including legal fees, as I'm assuming you're probably reliant on the auspices of a public defender, or that you keep an attorney on retainer for such occasions.)

Remember, kids, Force Choke Responsibly!

Added: Don't miss the appendix! 

Tournament Players PROTIP #5(a)

A reader makes the following suggestion:

Replace piece weights with fishing weights so they rattle. Do so only to opponent's pieces.

People have done the fish weight to me before.

Bloody brilliant!

Tournament Players PROTIP #5

The Dark Arts of The Dark Side: These are not the ProTips you are looking for....

Here's one from the Dark Side, pure gamesmanship to mess with an opponent's head.

Buy two identical sets of very heavily weighted pieces. Then remove the weights from one set. Use the weighted pieces for yourself, and give the opponent the light pieces. When he starts capturing your pieces he'll (subconsciously) realize just how solidly you've dug into your position, and his position will feel insubstantial by comparison.* It will plant the seeds of doubt in his head. And doubt leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to hanging pieces. (It goes something like that, I'm sure of it.)

Or you can give him a set of pieces some of which are weighted, and some aren't. Vary the weights of similar pieces, so that one knight is very heavy and the other feels like a feather. That won't even be too different from some of the sets I've seen in use since returning to tournament action.

Hmm, I'm starting to suspect some opponents of trying to mess with my head. Ha, joke's on them! I lost my mind years ago, so even if they get inside it, it's got nothing to do with me!

* Note: Some players prefer lighter pieces, so you'll need to reverse the weights in those cases. I'll not mention names ***cough*** Jim McTigue ***cough***