Marshall Weekly U1600 90+30 - Round 4

Even though I was still feeling worn out from the Eastern Chess Congress this past weekend, I played in my weekly U1600 90+30 at Marshall earlier tonight.

I lost, but I still feel happy with how I played, in that I feel I'm gaining more positional understanding with each game. This game featured an opportunity to create connected, passed pawns on the queenside (+5.5 evaluation if I had just played a4), and a bishop fork that I saw 15 moves away but didn't stop...

Again, I lost because I briefly got tunnel vision on an attacking play instead of paying attention to my opponents threats. This seems like it happens consistently to me late in the game, around move 20 - 30 (or later). Something to keep in mind, and focus on in my visualization (sports psychology) exercises.

On Losing

I have two move games to go in this current 6-round weekly tournament. With tonight's loss, my record over the past 11 tournament games is:

• 1 Win
• 2 Draws
• 8 Losses

I recently asked my coach, a USCF Life Master and FM, what he thought about my having lost 4 in a row (as of last week). I was feeling like I may never win a game of chess ever again! He replied via email:

Sorry to hear about [your losing streak]. I can tell you, however, that you still have not reached my losing streak record in rated tournaments!

Without knowing the details of the two weekly games, I can only make general comments; upsets happen all the time. In extreme cases players have pullbacks that exceed 200 rating points from their max rating (my son had more than one >200 point pullback on the way up to high 1900s; although I did not ever fall 200 from a peak, so it is definitely not a requirement.)

Sometimes you face a very unrated opponent, sometimes you get a series of games of opponents who happen to steer into your opening preparation gaps, etc. The biggest factor tournament players have to deal with is managing disappointing results. Literally everybody gets them. When your rating drops, you become more relatively under-rated. The playing ability often improves from the losses even though your rating drops.

Players rated higher than 2200 have had far many more losses than anybody under 1400.