SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - CHESS: Undersealcpl vs. Skybird

It's a bit difficult for me to tell you without appearing to be haughty, but honestly said, and without wanting to crush you: in five moves you already made two very huge and one catastrophic mistakes. We are very wide apart in skill level, there is no way to put that any nicier. I knew that from the last match one year ago, and I hoped you would interprete my reaction as such when I showed no enthusiasm to your offer for this new match.

it is true that novices can only improve when they play against a better player, but thei player either must tutor them and train them by intentionally testing them and challenging them with invitations for gaining advantages, or by creating positions in the match that aloow the student to use in practice what they had learned in theory before in new strategema and tactical motives. The match has to be talked about and analysed afterwards, as a soldier you know the importance of debriefings. ;) Or the novice plays against somebody better, but not too strong that other player is, so that this other player unvoluntarily makes weaker moves that the student can take advantage from. In a club, a good youth trainer therefore constantly chnages pairings - but takes care that players usually are within the same skill range. Different - but not too different. that way, with constantly changing pairings, students will improve in matches - by this, and by learning together the theory.

But just to play against a superior player and getting plowed under without further comment, makes little sense, and nothing is to be learned from that. The student that way cannot understand why he has lost - how should he learn to avoid his mistakes, then? It means to always getting hit, but not knowing why, from where and how. What this leads to is frustration sooner or later. And in fact the student tends to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and make a habit of them that later is even harder to be corrected.

Please take this not as an arrogant comment, but as a constructive hint. I may be a good player in the GT forum, band yes, so far I have won all matches there have been - but that means nothing, really. "Good" is only in relation to the standards to which you compare me. Subsim.com has 30,000+ members, and if only 10% of them play chess, that means there are 3000 other players - I am very certain that there are quite some people amongst these many players who play much better than me, and chances are there are even some professionals and semi-pros amongst them. As they say, "there always is some bigger fish". It's just that for whatever their reasons are, they never found their ways to the chess matches we have had in GT over the past years, or they did not know or they were not interested in the format we use.

Regarding you, Lance, if you really want to improve your skills, beside practice and experience you inevitably need one thing, and that is massively raising your knowledge of theory. Your second move already shows a suicidal lack of basic elements of positional understanding, and you need to simply know some things regarding basic strategema, tactical motives, positional typical constellations. These things are not so much fruits of experience, but simple knowledge that must be learned. I do not wish to discourage you, but I strongly recommend you go into the book shop and get one or two books about chess basics. After just one or two books on strategy and tactical motives nad typical constellations, if that are good books, you will see your skill having been boosted many times more than even a hundred matches of the kind you have challenged me for can teach you. you will get a complete different, and better, understanding of what is important in the opening, and what not, and what to aim for with given constellations in middle game, and what not, and how to avoid typical traps in endgame instead of playing remis or loss, and how to transform that material advantage of yours into safe victory instead of running into a remis - and some of that you will even do without even needing to calculate it.

there is a reason why there are thousands of chess books, equalling many hundreds of thousands of man-hours of experience and studying. If you think you can acchieve all that just by gaining "experience" by playing, then you are talking about more time that you have in your life, and more matches than you will ever play even in 300 years or so.

I really do not wish to bash you, but this match, as a challenge, makes no sense, really. You better do not count on me loosing that massive advantage in time, space and material you already have provided me with; in table chess, when I have a bad day and had a drink too much - maybe, but in correspondence chess - sorry, no chance. From my perspective, this match already is decided. Not automatically against any player - a player being superior to me could still gain the equaliser and than defeat me and beat the hell out of me, I'm sure (else I would be a grandmaster :) ), but I honestly and straight-forward must tell you that you lack the knowledge and skill to do so. So that match can only become frustrating for you, and uninteresting for me.

Again, please take what I said in a constructive attitude, like I mean it constructive, too. I am not familiar with contemporary training literature and according CDs, and the old old classics I learned with are very likely to be considered outdated regarding didactics. Get a book that, like the classic by Tarrasch, starts with basic mates and basic endgames, pawn transformation and pawn endgames, then moves to middle game and it's typical tactical motives, and just at the end starts to reflect on the long-termed motives of openings. I know that almost every student prefers openings the most interesting and endgames the most boring - I have been like that myself. :) But what use is there to record, like a robot, opening moves ad nauseum and not understanding them, when one is not capable to score a guaranteed mate with KBB versus K, and turns into a remis a constelltation that is a sure win - because one does not understand basic elements of how pieces interact with each other in typical closed or wide opened positions on the board? First you learn the pieces, one by one, and then in small combinations - and then you start moving to middlegame with more complex stuff and more pieces. Like juggling - first you try with two balls, themn three, and then more, always one more at a time. Starting with endgames first, also has another advantage: it teaches you to precisely calculate several moves ahead. And this is a most basic skill, it is inevitable , and weaknesses in this cannot be compensated by any other means, no matter how much theoretic knowledge yo uhave. You need both: calculation ability, AND knowledge! the first is a question of gaining experience by playing matches, the second is a question of sitting down and learn with a book.

Please take this as a constructive advise, not as an attempt by me to show off. I really tried to send you a message by not being enthusiastic about your offer. but now you have made just five moves, and already have managed to mess up beyond repair. The gap in skill between us simply is too big as if any match would make much sense currently. ;) In this format it is difficult and very time-consuming to "train you" by talking with you over all variations possible and the mistake you just made - for this, chess clubs, trainign software, and books are a much better solution.

:salute: