Coming to grips with the truth

This will be my final post to this blog. I've decided to pull the plug on my quest. I've taken a good hard look at the numbers, and as we all know, numbers don't lie :-) What the numbers have told me, for a good long time now, is that I'm a mediocre chess player. Not only that, they've told me that my dream of reaching 1451 is for all intents and purposes a fantasy. I have a hard enough time maintaining a rating of 1200; to reach 251 rating points above that would take a quantum leap in my ability. This is not to say that I don't enjoy playing blitz, and I'm sure I'll still play every now and then for fun. I certainly won't be blogging about it, however, nor will I be obsessing over my rating. I'll still be following monvieux's progress, and cheering him on from the sidelines; he has a realistic chance of reaching 1451. Thanks for reading!

The dreaded quatro's non-evil twin

Inherently good things can have evil twins. Looked at another way, inherently bad things can have non-evil twins. The dreaded quatro, inherently a bad thing, thankfully does have a non-evil twin. It's everything the dreaded quatro isn't, except for the number four. Let's call this non-evil twin the good quatro. Instead of being the last four games of a session, the good quatro is the first four. Instead of four losses, a good quatro is four non-losses. Last night, I had a good quatro; my results, in order, were win, draw, win, draw, and loss. Another resolution I've made is to make every good quatro session a PTYL session; this is my shorthand for Play Til You Lose.

neostreet: 1159 (229-232-26 (487))
monvieux: 1365 (409-342-18 (769))

The dreaded quatro

On Tuesday night, I set a personal worst. I lost the last four games of the session in a row. I call that the dreaded quatro. I should have quit sooner, but couldn't bring myself to. The imp of the perverse was at work yet again!

To prevent the dreaded quatro from making a return appearance, I resolve to quit any session immediately after my third loss in a row. I'm not sure the imp will allow that, but at least it's something to shoot for :-)

neostreet: 1152 (227-231-24 (482))
monvieux: 1328 (393-331-18 (742))

Dreadnoughts

Last night, for the second session in a row, I started off with a loss. I call that a dreadnought, because it adds nothing to your win total, which is clearly something to dread :-) I have a strong suspicion I have a miserable record in session openers. Let me check the archives ...

Suspicion confirmed. I'm 17-25-4 in openers. If I could only somehow skip that first game, I'd be doing pretty well :-)

neostreet: 1174 (223-224-24 (471))
monvieux: 1334 (379-317-17 (713))

One the hard way

In blitz, as in many areas of life, you can do things the easy way or you can do them the hard way. I try to embrace the easy way, but that's not always so easy :-) On Saturday night, I made things hard on myself by digging a hole; I lost the first three games I played. There was no excuse for how I lost the first game; I failed to recognize a trap I'd fallen into less than a week before, fell into it again, and lost in seven moves again. At least the game wasn't a carbon copy of the earlier one; actually, it was worse. In the earlier game, I'd gone down the exchange and was about to lose a knight with no compensation; in the later one, I faced mate on the next move. In both cases, the only sensible thing to do was resign.

I buckled down after the first three games, won the next three, and quit for the night. I gained a solitary rating point for my troubles. That's what I call one the hard way :-)

neostreet: 1174 (216-216-22 (454))
monvieux: 1334 (379-317-17 (713))

Seven to the good

In my many years of playing online poker, I discovered many different ways of looking at my results. The most valuable lesson I learned was never to compare apples to oranges. I tried out a variety of poker flavors, and quickly realized I was better at some and worse at others. It didn't take a lot of thought to conclude that it didn't make a lot of sense to amalgamate the results from different flavors; they should be kept separate. The same is true of blitz. Just as blitz is a completely different animal from classical chess, blitz played at one time control can be a completely different animal from blitz played at another time control.

With this in mind, I decided it would be a really good exercise to keep my results at the 10 | 0 time control separate from my results at the other time controls. I feel that 10 | 0 is my natural blitz time control; it's certainly my favorite, and the one with which I feel most at home. Drumroll, please ...

Here are my current results at the 10-0 time control: 196-189-20. I'm seven to the good!

neostreet: 1173 (213-213-22 (448))
monvieux: 1334 (379-317-17 (713))

The tyranny of expectations

I've been trying to figure out if it's a good or a bad thing that I'm almost breaking even after playing more than 400 games on chess.com. It might just be a thing :-) The software is essentially set up so that the vast majority of players will fall into this category. It's only the outliers who will be able to steadily improve their rating. I'm not an outlier yet, and there's a decent chance I'll never be. In order to achieve my goal of reaching 1451, however, I need to somehow morph into an outlier.

Why do I say that the software is set up so that the vast majority of players will break even? Due to two essential selection criteria:

1. it always pairs you with a player of roughly equal strength; for example, I'll never get to play a 1400 player until I raise my rating well into the 1300s

2. among the players of roughly your strength that it pairs you with, it tries to ensure that roughly half the time, you're a favorite (i.e., you have a higher rating than your opponent)

Looking at expected outcomes, in the 440 games I've played so far, I was a favorite in 235 of them, but only managed to win 157 of those games. Thankfully, expectations can be thwarted in either direction; of the 198 games where I was an underdog, I won 49. In the remaining 7 games, there was no favorite; I won only 2 of those.

neostreet: 1161 (208-210-22 (440))
monvieux: 1334 (379-317-17 (713))

When a pet opening goes south

Lately, I've been faring miserably with my pet opening, the Queen's Gambit Accepted. I haven't won with it the last 8 times I've played it, losing 7 and drawing 1. Last night's fourth game marked my third straight loss with it, the first two having occurred on February 28th. What do you do when a pet opening goes south on you like that? The answer for me is pretty simple - don't play it nearly as often :-) The good news is that the QGA loss was my only loss last night.

neostreet: 1171 (205-206-21 (432))
monvieux: 1354 (373-309-16 (698))

Demolished by unorthodoxy

Chess is a great humbler. It's hard to sustain a belief in your greatness when you keep getting crushed :-) This is not to say that I was crushed last night, though, at least not at the chess session magnification level. At the single game level, however, I was absolutely demolished in game 6. It was especially humbling due to the extremely unorthodox play of my opponent, and my utter inability to deal with it. I resigned on move 9 when my opponent pinned my queen. My opponent's first two moves were h4 and g4. I ask you :-)

neostreet: 1140 (200-205-21 (426))
monvieux: 1354 (373-309-16 (698))

Pattern recognition

You may be getting fed up with my constant comparisons between poker and chess, but bear with me, because I'm about to make another one :-) Both poker and chess richly reward pattern recognition. When you can recognize a situation you've been in before, you'll know what to do; just as importantly, you'll know what not to do.

Come to think of it, many things richly reward pattern recognition. Software engineering is another example. Debugging a program is largely an exercise in remembering why things didn't work, and figuring out whether the same conditions could be occurring again. I feel quite lucky that I ended up as a software engineer; it certainly wasn't a career I was considering while in college.

Let's put all the cards on the table and just state plainly that life itself rewards pattern recognition! Life is a fractal, and rewards pattern recognition at every magnification level.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, I had another losing session last night. My rating is now the lowest it has ever been. However, I'm not discouraged in the least. I know what to do now. I predict my rating will begin a slow but inexorable increase soon.

neostreet: 1137 (196-202-21 (419))
monvieux: 1311 (368-309-16 (693))

Career worst two bagger

Last night, despite my switching to the shorter 5 | 0 time control, my losing ways continued. I had a marathon session, playing 31 games. I lost more rating points (85) in the last two sessions than I ever had in any two contiguous sessions before. Tonight I have two goals:

1. play no more than 10 games
2. play more slowly

We'll see how I well I keep to them.

neostreet: 1149 (192-197-21 (410))
monvieux: 1311 (368-309-16 (693))

Doppelsession

I coined the term doppelsession for poker sessions, but it applies equally well to blitz sessions. A doppelsession is the twin of an earlier session. Last night, I had a dopplesession of the "lower 48" session I suffered on February 2nd. I played the same number of games (16), had the same miserable record (5-11), and lost the same number of rating points (48).

For some time now, I've been trying to convince monvieux to try out the 10 | 0 time control. Meanwhile, he's been upset with me for playing much too quickly. He claims I play faster at the 10 | 0 time control than he does at the 5 | 0 one. I have no reason to doubt him. Accordingly, starting tonight, I'm going to give the 5 | 0 time control a try. If I can't slow myself down, at least I can play at a time control which forces my opponents to speed up :-)

neostreet: 1186 (179-180-20 (379))
monvieux: 1352 (360-296-16 (672))