I thought I'd do a little bit on my games on Red Hot Pawn, just to get things covered.
Some days ago, I wrote I felt like I'd been winning too much games for my own good. Today I did a little counting. And well, it's even worse than I thought. Out of the last 60 games, my wld score is 49-9-2. That makes for a winning percentage of (49+2/2)/60 = 83.3%. During those 60 games, my rating has risen from 1625 to the current 1771. Out of those 9 losses, in only 3 was I outplayed. In others I just dropped a piece. And even if it can be argued that dropping pieces is an aspect of my playing strength, it's not very helpful. All you can learn about that is: "don't do mistakes." That's almost no information at all (on my level, where I don't really drop pieces much anymore).
Although it's nice to win a lot, I don't think it's particulary good for improvement. Thinking about the fact, that the best way to learn about your weaknesses is studying your lost games, and the fact that 6 of my losses were simple blunders, I'm left with only 3 'good losses' to study. Out of 60 games, that's not a lot.
So, for the past couple of weeks I've tried to get as many strong opponents as possible. Out of the current games, I have 2 against a 2100, 4 against 2000's, 4 against 1700-1800's, and 8 against 1500's. I won't deliberately start games against people under 1700 anymore, unless they come against me in a tournament. I'm also choosing my tournaments so that I'll get as many strong opponents as possible.
Of course I'll get beaten into a bloody pulp, but at bare minimum, I should get a lot of good learning material in the form of lost games. It'll probably cost me a lot of points, as I doubt I'll win any of those games against the 2000+, but I'm sure it'll be all the better in the end.
CTS: 1566, 77.6%, 59116
RHP: 1771, 172 games, wld: 112-53-9
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6 comments:
i honesty try for a negative win/loss ratio. seirawan in the intro to winning chess endings, said that his medioric ascent to the gm level really only began when he decided to ONLY play better players.
i try to only play 150/100 elo+, 50+ is ok, and only play someone = to my rating if no one else is available, and NEVER play anyone < my rating, unless ive been sitting idle for a while with no challengers, late at night...
if you revisit the subject, i ask, have you not found that two opponents of similar rating, one with 400w/100L and 50d is less troublesome than someone with 150L/350W and 50d? the latter is a LOT more testy, IMHO.
At our level it doesn't matter if you use won or lost games to study, since they both contain about the same abundance of mistakes.
dk, yeah sure. I feel similarly rated opponents with high winning percentages are usually far easier to deal with, compared to ones with low percentage.
I tried to raise the level of opponent's before, taking part into a 1600-1699 tournament when I was just barely 1600. but those damned wins just kept coming in, and now I'm just about to win my group. and I just tied for #1 in group in another tournament.
tempo, yeah, sure the same mistakes are there. but they're a lot harder to find out, because you don't see how your opponent can ram them down your throat. also, you can't see what you don't know to be an error, so how can you look for it? but let a stronger player destroy you with it, and suddenly there's all kinds of neon lights pointing to your error. you also get so pissed by the defeat, that you'll remember the lesson a lot better. win the game, and you're likely to think: "well, it was an error, but nothing bad as I still won the game."
20,000 coming tomorrow. yea. remember what that was like?
your comment on RD at CTS was so concisely smart. you astound me sometimes. so pithy, such economy of metr'e and rythm. and english is not your first language?
no, can't remember 20K really. I have a vague recollection of 30K, because that was about when I passed nabla. :)
finnish is my mother tongue, portuguese was next, then english swedish and the rest... I write a lot, mainly in english, and I guess that's starting to shape things a bit. but I write a lot better in finnish, english is just so inflexible. well my english anyway. :)
I do pay attention to rythm and melody, the way the words come out when you say them. if I don't like the way something sounds, I often change it. and if I don't do that, I almost always regret it afterwards. not that I always succeed in it, or bother, but I do pay attention to it.
if I've ever learned something about writing, it's that less is more. the more concise the expression, the better it'll sound. lose the excessive adjectives even if they convey information. they'll just cramp up the sentence. get rid of abstract big words and use simple concrete ones instead. it's just like in chess: avoid 'loose' positions, avoid redundant pawn moves in the opening, develop fast, don't dilly-dally. make every word/move count. win the won game with simple easy moves, don't screw it up by trying out something fancy. :)
although the sole reason I'm concise on CTS, is probably that I just don't bother. what could be more boring than long-winded drivel about something that doesn't really matter anyway?
i implore you to be sure to take a carefull look at Thoreau's Walden if you have not already read it. there are some books that i alone spent a year reading, line by line, word by word, so as to absorb them into my brain, as you have done with CTS here, and this book is one of them, along with Murasaki Shikibu's The Tail of Genji (the massive shakespear of japan, but writen by a 13th century woman unencumbered by chinese writing, but simple japanese Raisho or cursive writing...). his english is terse, yet ample and densely and carefully constructed.
as you may know, he was a friend of emersons, ralph waldo, and lived on walden pond for a year or more in the mid 19th century. the first two or three chapters, economy, where i lived and what i lived for are some of the most memorable in all of english literature.
not to mention, prescient views that anticipated the 60's, freedom, and minimalism.
david
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