OK, now about that very painful, embarrassing lost Tuesday night. I got a pretty strong position early on, and I was able to improve it move by move until things looked very dicey for Black’s king. Here’s the position after 17… Rc8, for example:
Almost all of my pieces are already bearing down on Black’s king position, whereas Black’s queen and rooks have been driven to the queenside.
It still looked good later on, after 30.Rxg4 (taking Black’s light-squared bishop):
I had a serious problem, though – I was down to about a minute and a half on the clock, with 9 moves to go to reach the first time control. I thought this was OK, because I thought mate, or at least heavy material loss for Black, was coming in just a couple of moves.
Unfortunately, I panicked after 30… Rxf6+. Either 31.Bxf6 or 31.Rxf6 would have been OK, but I found myself unable to clearly to work it out with the clocking ticking away. I chose the losing move instead, 31.Qxf6. After 31…Rxf7, I was so shocked by what happened on the board, and so rattled by the clock, that I made three illegal moves right in a row. Not on purpose, of course – that’s just how befuddled I was. A few moves and a few seconds later, I resigned.
To make the situation doubly embarrassing, there was quite an audience for this fiasco. IM Igor Foygel was watching. Also, since this was the top board in the final round of the U-1750 section, several other players were standing nearby to see how the prizes were going to play out.
It was not until sometime after lunch the next day that I started coming out of my funk over this game.
So what to learn? Well, mainly it’s a question of how did I get in so much time pressure, anyway? I had made my first 7 moves without using more than the 5 second delay, because it happened to follow a line that I knew. Through the first 15 moves or so, I had a 10-15 minute time edge.
But as my position strengthened, I made my moves more and more slowly. Why? I already knew I that needed to fight a tendency to make many of my moves too slowly. In this game, though, I thought it was OK.
As my pressure grew around Black’s king, I began to look for a knock-out tactic. By around move 17 (the first diagram above), I began to think that the game would be settled within maybe just a few more moves. So I kept telling myself that it was OK to use a lot of time – this game would over well before 40 moves. And I was right, but I didn’t leave myself enough time to ensure that I would be the one getting the point in the end.
I have got to stop doing so many long thinks in my games! Thinking more than about 5 minutes on a move rarely seems to help me much, and when I do it multiple times, then I get in trouble.
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Now the bad news
OK, now about that very painful, embarrassing lost Tuesday night. I got a pretty strong position early on, and I was able to improve it move by move until things looked very dicey for Black’s king. Here’s the position after 17… Rc8, for example:
Almost all of my pieces are already bearing down on Black’s king position, whereas Black’s queen and rooks have been driven to the queenside.
It still looked good later on, after 30.Rxg4 (taking Black’s light-squared bishop):
I had a serious problem, though – I was down to about a minute and a half on the clock, with 9 moves to go to reach the first time control. I thought this was OK, because I thought mate, or at least heavy material loss for Black, was coming in just a couple of moves.
Unfortunately, I panicked after 30… Rxf6+. Either 31.Bxf6 or 31.Rxf6 would have been OK, but I found myself unable to clearly to work it out with the clocking ticking away. I chose the losing move instead, 31.Qxf6. After 31…Rxf7, I was so shocked by what happened on the board, and so rattled by the clock, that I made three illegal moves right in a row. Not on purpose, of course – that’s just how befuddled I was. A few moves and a few seconds later, I resigned.
To make the situation doubly embarrassing, there was quite an audience for this fiasco. IM Igor Foygel was watching. Also, since this was the top board in the final round of the U-1750 section, several other players were standing nearby to see how the prizes were going to play out.
It was not until sometime after lunch the next day that I started coming out of my funk over this game.
So what to learn? Well, mainly it’s a question of how did I get in so much time pressure, anyway? I had made my first 7 moves without using more than the 5 second delay, because it happened to follow a line that I knew. Through the first 15 moves or so, I had a 10-15 minute time edge.
But as my position strengthened, I made my moves more and more slowly. Why? I already knew I that needed to fight a tendency to make many of my moves too slowly. In this game, though, I thought it was OK.
As my pressure grew around Black’s king, I began to look for a knock-out tactic. By around move 17 (the first diagram above), I began to think that the game would be settled within maybe just a few more moves. So I kept telling myself that it was OK to use a lot of time – this game would over well before 40 moves. And I was right, but I didn’t leave myself enough time to ensure that I would be the one getting the point in the end.
I have got to stop doing so many long thinks in my games! Thinking more than about 5 minutes on a move rarely seems to help me much, and when I do it multiple times, then I get in trouble.