Why You Lose at Chess: Second Edition

INTEREST

Introduction

Everyone makes mistakes when they play chess — but strong players do not make the same mistake twice. I hope to show you how to learn from your losses.

Three results are possible in a game of chess — win, loss and draw. This book is intended to cut down drastically on your rate of losses, by recognising the danger signals in time, and by analysing what went wrong in the games you do lose.

To let a potential win slip into a draw is a disappointment but, for most players, it cannot compare with the blow to one’s confidence that comes from losing in a serious game. The occasional loss to an acknowledged superior is no bad thing, as an insurance against overconfidence and for the lesson in technique it may give you. However, most of your losses are probably of a more painful variety.

Most of the games you play are likely to be against opponents of approximately your own standard; you win some and you lose some, yet you always feel that you could do better. By a little extra study beforehand, and more effort while at the board, you could turn that 50 per cent success rate into 80 or 90 per cent and so raise yourself into a new class of competition.

If you belong to a chess club, there is probably a higher team that you would like to be picked for, or a higher board if you are already in the first team. Or there may be a higher division in the league to which your team aspires to be promoted. If you play in Minor tournaments, you would like to win some first prizes and then graduate to the Major or even the Open where you can test your skill against national experts and even masters.

Even if you are happy with social chess, you will find yourself (and your opponents) obtaining more satisfaction if you can cut out the simple miscalculations and other silly ways of losing that mar so many games for both loser and winner — but particularly the loser!

SELF-CRITICISM

The first step on this road to self-improvement is to learn some objective self-criticism. Do not permit yourself excuses, although it is true that bad playing conditions can extenuate bad play at times.

Bad lighting and noise, whether from spectators or other distractions such as brass bands, affect some players more than other, it is true. To say, as many do in such cases, that ‘it is the same for both players’ is not entirely fair — noise does not distract the deaf nor bad lighting the blind, a smoky atmosphere does not oppress those cigarette addicts who create it. Nevertheless, it is best to train yourself to an indifference to conditions as much as possible, and if you can not then avoid them as much as possible.

One of the world champions of the past, Dr Emanuel Lasker, once said wryly ‘I never beat a well man’. He meant that his opponents always seemed to have an excuse — a cold, lack of sleep, maybe a hangover. But I can remember winning one or two good games with a bad cold — it can be worse for the opponent! If you are well enough to play at all, you should not blame sickness or tiredness for your defeat. It is much better in the long run not to make an excuse but instead to find out what bad moves you made.

POST-MORTEMS

Keep your game scores. Discuss the game with the opponent if he is agreeable. Experienced players, from regular club amateurs up to grandmasters, usually analyse each game after they have played it with the opponent or with another strong player. They often find that they thought about quite different things during the game, made greatly differing assessments and even their calculation of sharp variations do not always coincide! The post-mortem is a way of testing these ideas and confirming objectively that the result obtained was the correct one for the run of play, or of finding that the decisive combination was in fact unsound because a superior defence was overlooked in the heat of the moment.

The post-mortem can be of particular benefit to the loser of the game, who probably has more to learn from his opponent who, with the euphoria of victory in his nostrils, may be more than usually willing to give away some secrets. And if spectators want to join in the post-mortem, listen to them, especially if they are strong players who may have seen more than both of you. Do not try to ‘win’ the post-mortem as a matter of pride. Win or loss, if your opponent has other ideas about the game and cannot easily be persuaded to alter them, it is best to agree to differ, because you can always test your case in the next game you have against him!

If your opponent refuses to analyse with you afterwards, try to find a friend, or another player who is interested in the opening or ending that arose in your game, and go over it with him, taking good heed of his comments. At most chess clubs and tournaments you will find a few obsessive analysts who are only too willing to join debates with anyone about any interesting-looking position, so do not be shy!

PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS

Sometimes there are two reasons for losing — one on the chess board and another in the mind. Psychological reasons for defeat (and I am not talking about excuses now) are particularly present in certain types of player, the ones who are known as blunder-prone. They often know it themselves but find it hard to eliminate from their play, because the psychological factors that make them blunder-prone are so deeply embedded in traits of their character that they would be somebody else if they stopped blundering overnight! Other players are time-trouble addicts. Such problems are hard or impossible to eradicate entirely by just saying to oneself ‘I won’t do it again’ because when the pressure is on once more, then the pattern reappears. But gradually, by conscious awareness and training, such problems can be minimised.

TECHNICAL REASONS

Chessboard reasons for defeat, which you might call the technical reason that the game was lost, will always be present too (except in the case where you lose on time, or resign in a winning position). The psychological reason is not a sufficient cause for defeat, but manifests itself in bad moves played on the board. The greater your technical ability at chess, the better you will be able to play under pressure — the hand almost knows where the pieces should go when the brain is not reliable. Certain situations on the chess board make certain types of psychological failure likely in those players who are disposed to them. Some players play badly when time runs short, or when they have to defend while others hate endgames or positions where they must sacrifice without a clear checkmating line to follow. Others are at their most vulnerable just when they have gained a clear advantage or an equal position.

Because psychological and technical reasons for losing are so closely bound up together, I decided against having a separate chapter on psychological problems (except for time trouble, which is really a special case). Instead my advice for recognising and dealing with such failings is to be found throughout the book, interspersed with the description and analysis of the many situations in which these problems manifest themselves. Similarly, the antidotes to these problems cannot be clearly explained out of context, which is why I have adopted the procedure of dealing with the three main phases of the game.

GAME PHASES

The opening and endgame both have a special character, with many types of loss that can be directly attributed to a weakness in those phases which may well be accompanied by strength of play in the middle game. The middle game is less easy to define — three chapters cover it, including the ones on the special types of error associated with favourable and with unfavourable positions.

Before dealing with those three phases, however, readers should study the illustrative games in the first chapter, especially those kindly contributed by three international masters. Their views may be compared and contrasted with the approach adopted by me in the rest of the book.

You should also not neglect chapter two which deals with losses of material. A very high proportion of games of chess, especially those played by novices, are lost chiefly because one player or other loses pawns or pieces in ways that more experienced players would recognise at a glance and avoid. One’s chess education in other matters can hardly proceed at all until this source of defeat is virtually eliminated.

TIME TROUBLE

Finally, I discuss the special cases of time trouble and playing against computers which are, of course, not subject to the psychological problems that afflict you and me. Their accuracy and consistency in avoiding short-range tactical blunders makes them ideal for helping novices to cut down on stupid losses of pieces and the stronger computers make valuable training partners for experienced players too.

When you have completed studying this book, I believe that you will have a much greater awareness of why you lose chess games and will be well on the way to turning a high proportion of your losses into draws and wins. The general thread running through this book is — before you can play well, you must stop playing badly. Once you have largely cut out the silly ways of losing, and are on the way to guarding against the subtler problems too, then you have a sound foundation on which to build your chess development. Moreover, you will enjoy your chess more as your results improve.

Writing as one who has probably lost more good (if not won) positions than almost any other player of my acquaintance of equivalent strength (currently 2250 ELO) I think I am specially qualified to write this book. Forgive me if I do not often name players involved in the examples — some secrets of the confessional must be preserved!

1 My Most Instructive Loss

Games you see published in books and magazines are almost invariably annotated from the winner’s point of view. However, there was a second player; the winner could not have won if the loser had not made a mistake or two, maybe more. Yet how often do game notes concentrate on the loser’s thought-processes? Not very often, I think you will agree.

Yet as viewers of BBC television’s annual chess series The Master Game know, the loser’s comments can be most illuminating. (In that programme, both players try to reconstruct their ideas and calculations afterwards and are recorded ‘thinking aloud’; the loser’s change of heart from optimism to pessimism to despair is sometimes amusing, when the loser is a good actor.)

There is a well-known saying, and a largely true one, among chess players: ‘You learn more from the games that you lose than from the games you win.’ Of course, to learn from your lost games you have to have the strength to face up to them rather than trying to forget that they ever happened.

Let us look at how some masters analyse their defeats and seek to learn from them. I persuaded three British holders of the International Master title to ‘abase’ themselves by contributing notes to ‘My Most Instructive Loss’. They are Cenek Kottnauer, George Botterill and Bob Wade. But first it is my own head on the block...

I had some difficulty deciding which game to give as my own most instructive loss. Part of the problem was that in the 1970s, when I averaged about one hundred match and tournament games a year, I did not preserve more than the best ten or so each year — mostly wins. In the years when I did preserve all the games, by copying them into a scorebook, I found few candidates. Most of the losses of this period seemed to be due to blunders and misjudgements which will find their places as examples later in the book, but the game as a whole would not be worthwhile.

In the years when I had the honour of losing to such masters as Sosonko, Tarjan, Speelman, Basman and Chandler (all on their way up to greater things) I managed to lose the records of most of those battles, some inglorious, others more interesting. Due to vanity, I tended to preserve rather those encounters in which I succeeded in drawing or (rarely) winning.

No doubt because of the eminence of my opponent I did inscribe the following loss in one of my score-books. The lesson was short and salutory:

T.D. Harding-J. Penrose

Oxfordshire-Essex, 1972

1 e4 c5 2 f3 e6 3 d3

Although Jonathan Penrose in 1972 was nearing the end of his international career, he was still one of the strongest players in Britain and, at that time when the new crop of younger masters were still seeking their titles, he was one of the few International Masters in the country. In fact, FIDE subsequently reviewed his performances from the 1950s and 1960s and made Penrose a grandmaster; moreover, he later earned the title of correspondence grandmaster too.

It was therefore somewhat surprising to encounter Penrose on board two in a county match. However, the Vienna-born Ernst Klein, British Champion in 1951, had at this time briefly emerged from retirement and Penrose modestly conceded him top board.

Faced with Penrose, I avoided 3 d4 because forms of Open Sicilian, such as the Kan or Taimanov variations that would then have arisen, were certainly much better known to him than to me. I opted for a King’s Indian Attack formation since I had played this, on and off, for a few years and hoped to feel more at home in it.

d6

e7 was what I had hoped for since I had played it quite often with both colours. Now I was in a position which I had not previously played, although I had studied it a little.

h4

c5+ 14 White had obtained a winning attack. Penrose found, or already knew, a superior plan for Black.

8 ..d7 9 f4 f5!

df3.

10 b3!? b5 11 ef

I cannot remember why I played this move. Simply 11 Bb2, keeping the centre tense and the e-file closed, would be more consistent.

11 ... ef 12 b2 b6 13 h1 ae8 14 h5!?

h6 puts the queen on a good attacking square from which she cannot easily be driven. However, White has no immediate threat.

14 ... b4! 15 df3! (I)

xal would at least keep White a pawn ahead, so Penrose was right to reject this course of action. He told me after the game that it looked too dangerous to take the pawn and he did not attempt to analyse the line to its end — good judgement and economy of effort characteristic of a strong, strategically-orientated master.

15 ... d4! 16 f2?

f6. Then, at least, there would have been a lot of play left in the position.

Now the