Slowly my children get better at chess. My daughter Evelien managed to cross the 1400 elo some months ago. My son Hugo did the same with the 1700 barrier but he is playing chess already several years longer. Each coach and chess-parent will likely agree that such results make yourself proud although in the end it is the accomplishment of the children.
Clubs having many youth-players obviously want to see very often new publications of the rankings. Almost everybody wins points each time and even when somebody loses then it is just a temporary thing. However for clubs exclusively of older players each new ranking is torment. My clubmate Marcel Van Herck made recently the remark on facebook that he sees many minus-signs next to the Belgian-ratings of our clubmembers.
I am not so young anymore either so I detest to see much more often the minus-signs compared to the plus-signs next to my rating. A 5th defeat this season in the Belgian interclub pushed my rating even to the lowest level in 18 years. Or to let it sound even more dramatic, my fide-elo dropped below my starting-rating which I got in the year 2000. What is happening? Do I have Alzheimer but I thought chess is the best medicine against it?
First I need to explain that in the year 2000 you could only get a rating if your performance is above 2200 elo. Today the minimum-bar is at 1000 elo so we shouldn't compare startingratings in the year 2000 with the ones which we are used to today. Also having a rating less than 100 points below your own best isn't exceptional at all see peakrating part 2. In brief we shouldn't make a mountain out of a molehill.
On the other hand I still think I am (way) too young to see my rating slowly decrease already. Beside in the last couple of months I became again a much more active player so today I am much more routinized. In the previous years I didn't manage to play more than 10 standard-games each year which were processed for my fide-rating. In the last six months only I already played more than 25 fide-rated standardgames which is about 5x more than before (this is of course because I started recently to play tournaments together with my children).
So in my most recent games I rarely encountered serious time-troubles (can we ever speak about it when playing with increments?). However maybe exactly because of this my play has become too superficial. As every experienced player I try to divide my time properly between the moves during a game. I don't want to spend much time at moves which look forced/ natural so I save time for more complex positions. That is in most cases the right decision but sometimes this also leads to errors. I start with an example from my first game played in the Dutch interclubs for Landau Axel.
When after the game my son Hugo asked why I didn't play 37.Rc1 and I didn't know immediately what he was talking about only then I realized that I played too fast at that moment. Yes there was little time left and there was a lot of noise (Sliedrecht has a very nice bar with a lovely collection of beers but it disturbs the games as it is located in the middle of the playing-hall) but those shouldn't be an excuse.
Worse was what happened in my game of the penultimate round of the Open of Leuven in 2019. I had a won position but blew it by playing an automatic move (I put my rook on the open file at the same time winning a tempo as I attacked the queen of my opponent). After I released my hand from the piece, I immediately realized the blunder as did my opponent the Hungarian expert Pal Suranyi. However by some inexplicable event he switched the winning sequence and missed the golden chance. We both exploded into a big laugh during the game by witnessing so much silliness.
In the 2 first examples it is easy to see why the automatic played move is wrong but it is not always like that as in the next example played in the Dutch interclubs. I remember that I was hesitating briefly in the game as I felt recapturing wasn't forced.
The resulting endgame after the automatically played recapturing move was still better for me but not winning. All examples shown above still ended for me well despite I didn't play the right move. By playing fast you always put extra pressure on the opponent. However in the last example my luck finished. Against the Belgian IM Stefan Beukema you can't afford such tactical shallowness.
I started this article by complaining about my low fide-elo. If my opponents would've taken all the half and full points I offered then it would've been even much worse. Fortunately a bad streak always ends at some moment which was the case recently in the open tournament of Cappelle La Grande (France) which I played. I won back 30 elo which recovers practically all losses made in the previous months. I published a report of my adventure at the site of my club Deurne in which 3 games (draws against +2450 rated players) can be replayed with some light analysis added.
Brabo
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