Tournament Players PROTIP #11: This one is legit

I took about five years off from playing tournament chess from 2011 until 2016. When I came back, I found that I was getting very fatigued by the end of tournaments. Part of that was that I was (at least initially) not in tournament shape, and partly that I was five years older. But it was a real problem.

It took me about 16 months before I could get through a tournament without collapsing again. Part of that was hitting on a method of energy conservation, namely STOP TRYING TO CALCULATE EVERYTHING.

In the past, I would try to work hard at the board all game long, every game. So when it was the opponent's move, I would keep calculating. But there are problems with that. Say the position is very complicated. I make a move and my opponent has five reasonable moves available, and all are complicated. Obviously I have already taken that into account before I made my move, but I can keep trying to calculate all the responses. In some sense, this is the correct thing to do. But I am not 25 anymore, and I tire more easily.

So during a hard game last June, I made my move and ... walked away from the board, thinking about nothing at all. I was already exhausted (it was the fifth round of a weekend long tourney), and I just couldn't do it anymore. I figured I would get back to work AFTER my opponent made his move, and save some energy.

I have since made this a bit of a policy, and I am finally getting through tournaments without hitting the wall at the end.

Incidentally, I mentioned this to Paul a few weeks back, and he reminded me that one of the old Soviets (Bronstein? Botvinnik? Smyslov?) had recommended something similar. Calculate variations on one's own time, and think of general considerations during the opponent's time. Also sound advice, and I was a little embarrassed because I had read it before, but had forgotten it.

Oops.

Tournament Players PROTIP #10

When starting a long sequence of mutual captures, hide the first captured piece in your hand. Just do it casually. At some point, your opponent may start counting up the pawns and pieces on the side of the board, and if one of his is missing he may lose his composure and make a mistake, thinking he's doing better than he is.

Tournament Players PROTIP #9

I may have posted this one before, but it bears repeating:

NEVER RESIGN.

Never. No matter what. More importantly still, resolve to never resign. Recently I won a game against a master after having chucked two pawns in the opening, leaving my king stuck in the center with my queen-side mostly undeveloped. However, I kept plodding along, and eventually even won the game. Yes, it was a junky quick-chess game, but I have won similar games at Game in 120 against A-players and below.

There are several reasons to not consider resigning. The first is that you can't win by resigning. It's a stupid, obvious, even trite saying, but it's true. Make your opponent prove they can win. Often they will relax after achieving a winning, or even won game, and will start playing non-optimal moves. And in slower games, especially, they will become annoyed, which usually isn't conducive to optimal chess. You are within your rights to do so, and may as well exercise them.

The second reason is that if you don't resign, you won't make a mistake by resigning an equal or favorable position. A few months ago I drew against another master. At some point, though, he played an unexpected move, and I thought I was losing my queen. I very briefly considered resigning, and then remembered my own advice. Looking at it again, I realized I wasn't losing my queen at all. The game continued and after a tough struggle, I scored the half-point. Perhaps I had been helped by the knowledge that a few months before that game, a 1900 had resigned against me because he thought his queen was trapped, even though it wasn't. Oops. Perhaps he wouldn't have seen the saving sequence anyway, but he "took me at my word" when he shouldn't have.

And finally, if you decide before a game to not resign, it saves energy. Resigning is a decision, just like any other move, and it requires energy. If you begin to consider resigning, it becomes a drain on finite reserves of energy available for the game/tournament. Thus deciding to not resign beforehand can save you energy in the heat of battle, especially time pressure. Even contemplating resigning in time pressure is a shameful waste. This is especially true as you get older and have less energy to spare.

All that said, I do resign sometimes. But it has to be really bad, and my opponent has to clearly be strong enough and have enough time of their own that I can't imagine them stalemating me by accident. But generally, I play every game out to mate. And as I've said before, you should expect your opponents to do the same, so don't get aggravated when they do so. It's their right to play on, as it is yours.

Finally, here's an example from the club last Saturday of fighting on beyond all hope, and then getting rewarded for it.

Black to move

White had been completely busted for some time, but played on, hoping for a miracle. White stated that he hoped for Black to march his king up the board and somehow walk into a knight fork, so the spite checks began. Instead, Black,with more than ten minutes left on the clock, played ...Ke6, and White instantly played Re7#. White's dance of joy was most undignified, but quite understandable.

Tournament Players PROTIP #8

[Redacted on advice of counsel. Counsel believed it was too likely to lead to fist fights and other types of grievous bodily harm. So don't do that - not that you know what that is. Seriously, just don't.]

E62: King's Indian Defense: Fianchetto, Karlsbad, Uhlmann-Szabo System

Learn it. Know it. Live it.

...

The opening moves are

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.Nf3 d6 5.g3 O-O 6.Bg2 Nc6 7.O-O e5

which takes 63 characters to write out. But

 E62: King's Indian Defense: Fianchetto, Karlsbad, Uhlmann-Szabo System

takes 66 characters to write out, and that's not including the five key strokes for the "E62: ". A full 71 key strokes! That's just wacky, and I don't mean the Japanese stand-up comedian.

Here's an online speed chess PROTIP: Playing 8. dxe5 followed up by 9. Bg5 with the idea for White of trading his dark-square bishop for a knight and then playing to make Black's dark-square bishop look stupid works quite well. White's play is easy, and Black usually has to start thinking a bit about how to arrange his remaining minor pieces  so that they don't trip over each other. It shouldn't be that hard, and this must be an old system (look at the names involved), but the Black players I face online (typically 1700-1900 on Chess.com) don't seem to know them, and consequently they burn lots of time. Plus, as often as not the opening of the center takes KID devotees out of their comfort zone. This plan has worked pretty well for me at much slower time controls, too. My favorite game I played this year came out of this opening system in a game in 120.

Disclaimer: Past results do not guarantee future performance.(cont.)

Tournament Players PROTIP: Mikhail Tal edition

Given that the Tal Memorial Tournament is currently going on in Moscow, it seems fitting to dedicate an edition of Tournament Players PROTIPS to The Great One hisownself. With no further ado, here's a collection of Tal's best PROTIPS:

1. 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.
2. In my games I have sometimes found a combination intuitively, simply feeling that it must be there. Yet I was not able to translate my thought processes into normal human language.
3. If you wait for luck to turn up, life becomes very boring.
4. Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without any errors, or as they say a 'flawless game', is colorless.
5. Quiet moves often make a stronger impression than a wild combination with heavy sacrifices.
6. Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!*
7. If (Black) is going for victory, he is practically forced to allow his opponent to get some kind of well-known positional advantage.
8. I go over many games collections and pick up something from the style of each player.
9. For pleasure you can read the games collections of Andersson and Chigorin, but for benefit you should study Tarrasch, Keres and Bronstein.
10. I like to grasp the initiative and not give my opponent peace of mind.
11. Drink your coffee only when it is your opponent's move!

And finally, this gem:

Journalist:   It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?

Tal:   Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.

And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".

I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.

After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

— Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

 * Decades later Peter Svidler would add to this, "A pawn is a pawn." Later still, either Svidler or Jan Gustaffson extended this to, "Two pawns are two pawns." Chess wisdom is extended a little further each year!

Tournament Players PROTIP #7: NFL Player Edition

Watching the UMass-UF football game tonight (a dreary affair if one is a Gator), I heard an inspirational story. The announcers were discussing Florida player Brian Cox, Jr., who is the son of Brian Cox, Sr. (What a coincidence!)

Senior was an NFL player of note back in the 1990s & early 2000s. He played linebacker, a particularly violent position. Mr. Cox had a unique motivational tool. Before games he would have someone leave a ransom note in his locker, written on the opposing team's stationary, stating that the other team was holding his children hostage.

"Well," I thought, "chess is a very violent game, mentally and emotionally. Is this something I can apply to my tournament practice?" I don't have an opportunity to test this out any time soon, so if any of our reader(s) gets a chance to put this into practice, drop us a note!

Tournament Players PROTIP: The Gold Standard

Tournament Players PROTIPs have existed far longer than tournaments in the chess world. In fact, the earliest surviving book about the game, Luis Ramírez de Lucena's  (c. 1465 – c. 1530) Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con 101 Juegos de Partido ("Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess") from 1497*, contains advice on the practical matter of how to conduct a game of chess. And that advice set a standard yet to be surpassed.

If you play at night with a single candle, place it at your left-hand side, so that it does not disturb your eyes; if you play by day, place your opponent facing the light, which gives you a great advantage. Also, try to play your adversary when he has just eaten and drunk freely. For to play a long time it is best to have eaten lightly. To avoid getting dizzy during the game, you should drink water, but by no means wine. and play only short sessions, and for a stake small enough to avoid the possibility of the loss weighing on your mind.

Gold, baby, GOLD!

* From the Wiki entry linked above: "Commentators have suggested that much of the material was plagiarised from Francesc Vicent's now lost 1495 work Libre dels jochs partits dels schacs en nombre de 100." To my surprise, Edward Winter doesn't seem to have much on Lucena.

PS The full version of the quote (translated, obviously) was hard to track down, though I've seen the quote (both in part and complete) several times. Eventually, and strangely, I found the text above on a page from the South Australian Chess Association's old website, on a list of South Australian Chess Champions.

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: Platinum Edition

The same reader that provided Tournament Players PROTIP 5(a) has also provided some other useful PROTIPs! He modestly calls them Bronze Rules, but here at Tournament Players PROTIP HQ, we feel they merit a better quality of metal.

1. Do not drink 8 cups of water per game. That is too much fluid.
2. If you feel severe nausea, notice the location of the closest restroom. This is critical if you ate food from Panda Express before the round. [ALWAYS make note of the TWO nearest restrooms! - ed.]
3. Bring a bottle on NSAIDs. This goes double if there are bright lights in the hall. Triple if it is the last round. Depending on how acute pain is, see the next note.
4. Bring Pepto-Bismol.
5. If you are sick, coffee. If that does not work, cough drops and coffee. Repeat until the end of the tournament. [Espresso is probably
6. Sleep is good. Three hours is NOT enough. Try melatonin if you need help at night, and coffee if you are not diurnal. 
7. Bring extra batteries for your clock, even if it is of the longlasting variety. [And bring the instruction manual for your clock, especially if it is a Chronos! - ed.]
8. Bring a coat. This sounds stupid in Florida, but we have our share of Ice Hotels here.
9. Don't take liquid antihistamine meds during the round. The same active ingredient is used in Zzzquil. [Methamphetamines would work in these situations, and are both Erdős and Lemmy approved, but not strictly legal. And by "not strictly legal" we mean you will go to jail, or worse, get fulminate of mercuried by an angry HS chemistry teacher. - ed.]
10. Don't let a teammate of your opponent pick up the clock and reset it if the opponent came late and had time run off.
11. Don't tell your opponent that the time control has not yet been reached. [Or that the time control HAS been reached! - ed.]
12. Most important, be honest to yourself. BCD behavior (Blame others, Complain about cirumstances, and Defend yourself) is the best way to keep yourself from ever improving.

I must be honest that I'm not sure about that last one, but to each their own!

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***

Tournament Players PROTIP #4

PROTIP #4: If you drink a lot of fluid during games (and who doesn't?), bring hand lotion.

[Insert Paul Leggett quip ... here.] [Insert Michael Scott quip ... here.] [Insert Garry Day amused chuckle ... here.] [Insert phony Todd Durham scolding about blog posting rules ... here.] [But seriously, folks, bring hand lotion. It prevents chapping from the frequent hand washing. And if you don't think the other guy is washing HIS hands after all those bathroom trips, disinfect your clock and pieces when you get home.] [Insert new Paul Leggett quip ... here. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.]

Tournament Players PROTIP #3

PROTIP #3: Do NOT eat sushi, sashimi, or spicy foods during the tournament. If you do, see PROTIP #2.

Tournament Players PROTIP #2

PROTIP #2: Keep a supply of Imodium (Loperamide) in your tournament tote.

PROTIP #2a: Be prepared to pay the price the day AFTER the tournament.

Tournament Players PROTIP #1

PROTIP #1: If you bring jerky to the tournament to snack on during games (which is a good idea), also pack a NEW roll of dental floss in your tournament tote bag. This will save you from running to the hotel gift shop in the middle of a big money game to buy dental floss.