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))

Down is up

One of the benefits of having written 1,386 blog posts about poker is that there's a lot of material there to crib from :-) Whole passages can be taken verbatim, and reapplied to chess. To wit, on November 18th of last year I wrote a post with this self-same title. Here's how it began:

Johnny Depp is one of my favorite actors. Captain Jack Sparrow is my favorite Johnny Depp character. "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is my favorite Captain Jack Sparrow movie. Johnny delivers so many great lines in it, it's an embarrassment of riches! One of my favorites is "Send this pestilent, traitorous, cow-hearted, yeasty codpiece to the brig". What does "At World's End" have to do with poker? It's simple, really. There's a great scene where Jack figures out that the way to get to World's End is to capsize his ship, The Black Pearl. He figures this out because of a cryptic phrase on the map he has to guide him. It takes him a while to figure it out; here's another great line he delivers while doing so: "Up is down. That's just maddeningly unhelpful. Why are these things never clear?". In poker, up is down and down is up. The way to make money is to lose money first. And the way to lose money is to make it first.

As I've discovered, the best way to win games in blitz is to lose a lot of games first. By the way, I never do this on purpose! However, whenever you do lose a lot of games, your rating goes down, and chess.com then matches you up with weaker opponents. That enables you to win more games than you lose, until such time as your rating goes up enough to force you to play against opponents who are your equal or your superior. Then the whole damn cycle repeats :-) This causes you to alternate between euphoria and depression; in the euphoria phase, you feel you can do no wrong and don't see why your rating can't just keep going up without interruption. In the depression phase, you feel you can do no right and don't see why your rating can't just keep going down without interruption. Of course, the truth is somewhere in between; it's just really hard to decide where :-)

neostreet: 1234 (174-169-20 (363))
monvieux: 1344 (358-295-16 (669))

The fractal nature of the imp

I had another chess debacle last night, shedding 36 points off my rating and returning to midnight on my chess VCR (the same number of wins as losses). The imp of the perverse went fractal on me, or I should say, revealed its fractal nature, which it had actually possessed all along. What do I mean by this? To explain, I'll first need to describe what fractals are. One caveat - I have only a layman's understanding of them. Essentially, fractals are mathematical entities with the bizarre but very beautiful characteristic that they resembles themselves at every magnification. One analogy I read somewhere is that fractals are like very special coastlines. When you zoom in on any section of such a coastline, what you see in your microscope is the same thing you started with. The fractal is basically telling you, "Your microscope is no good here" :-)

Why do I say the imp of the perverse has a fractal nature? Simple, really. When you're under the spell of the imp, you make bad decisions at every conceivable magnification. At the level of magnification of a single game, you make a series of bad decisions in that game. At the level of magnification of a chess session, you make a series of bad decisions in that session. The worst thing you can do at the chess session magnification level is to keep starting a new game, loss after loss after loss; that's what the imp will make you do. I know, because I did it last night, losing 6 of my final 7 games.

neostreet: 1200 (165-165-19 (349))
monvieux: 1367 (357-291-16 (664))