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| White has just played 48.Kh2-g2 in Bernhard Solger (1866) - Spanton (1954) |
But I played on, hoping against hope to somehow conjure up a win, during the course of which my king moved away from the pawns, and I blundered horribly to lose the game.
LESSON: sometimes you have to stop being a glass half-empty person and accept that a game is drawn.
Your comments a few days ago about drawing for the first time in about 30 games were interesting. I recall several instances over the years of winning club events when someone else in the tournament won more games than me. On each occasion it was the games that I drew that were the deciding factor. Several involved holding difficult positions. The competitors were all in the grading range 130 - 160, and you are playing at a higher level than me, but opting for some early draws, to keep fresh, might be a route forward, especially if you are playing every day. I review chess books for my club and other websites and am now advocating the benefits of works on sport psychology. Several in the pipeline and I'll send them to you as they are typed and published.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting thing about draws - I find that the tournaments I do best in tend to be those where I have two or three draws (out if nine rounds - a high percentage for me). In my case I do not think it is to do with saving energy - my draws are usually long drawn-out affairs - rather draws in my case are a sign that I am playing more solidly, or at least less wildly than normally.
ReplyDeleteIn my case, I have a higher percentage of draws. Usually, the joy of winning is not as high as the low of losing. Another factor in the past has been my regular role as a team captain while frequently playing top board. This caused me to analyse the outcome of matches compared with my own results. I found that the percentage of matches won or drawn by my teams, compared with losses, increased significantly when I avoided defeat - over a period of 20-25 years for one team, from 20% to in excess of 50%.
DeleteI agree that the joy of winning is rarely as high as the despair of losing is low. But I seem, subconsciously at least, to feel a draw is nearer a loss than a win - rather as if I were playing footie-style three points for a win, one for a draw.
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