On Friday, March 25, 2022 at 6:01:28 AM UTC-4, Eli Kesef wrote:
On Thursday, March 24, 2022 at 11:15:52 PM UTC+2, William Hyde wrote:
On Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 4:55:22 PM UTC-4, Eli Kesef wrote:
On Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 9:53:13 PM UTC+2, William Hyde wrote:
On Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 2:20:15 PM UTC-4, Eli Kesef wrote:
Bs"d
It is always better to sacrifice the pieces of the opponent
Except of course, when a sacrifice of your own pieces leads to a brutal mate.
Or you are fairly sure that you are going to win material.
In this game I decided to sacrifice a castle, and that proved to be decisive: https://lichess.org/2TktKb9d3FKm
It was, according to my humble opinion, a big mistake of the enemy to do the short rooking, to the side where I had an open line for my castle on his king.
I am surprised that you did not play the Budapest.
Bs"d
For the Budapest I need the cooperation of the enemy. After 1. d4-Nf6, I need to get 2. c4, but I didn't get that. So no Budapest.
But if you want an attacking line in this position try c5 instead of d5, getting a Benoni. Which would be patriotic of you as it was created and developed by Elias Stein, a resident of Holland.
I'm not that patriotic concerning Holland, I live already many years in the Judean desert. Haven't been in Holland quite some years.
And I don't know the Benoni. I looked at it on youtube, but it doesn't look too appetizing.
Look again. It's actually counterattacking line. You can even play the Benko gambit.
Of course you will save it for stronger players. The ones you face now will lose to anything. Your most recent game on another thread was against a guy you could beat with the Damiano.
I don't see you beating people higher than your rating. That's a bad sign.
Bs"d
It's a law of chess nature that you don't beat people with a higher rating. They beat you.
At least most of the time.
and that's why I avoid them.
This is no law.
For most of my career I violated that "law". Because for most of my brief career I was getting stronger.
Another way to regularly beat higher rated players is to artificially lower your rating by not taking weaker players seriously enough.
Mind you, it's not so easy to compile a good record against weaker players. A 2100 player I knew, one whose conversation about weaker players was a tad insulting at times, changed his mind. He said that in future he would take every B player as
seriously as if he was a GM. He succeeded, but it was not easy to get in the proper mind set.
Prior to this he'd been beating higher rated players because his rating was artificially low owing to draws and even losses in games he did not take seriously enough. After that he continued to beat such players because his own ability went up.
As for myself, I took his advice in g/15 (the only chess I was playing) and never again lost or drew with someone under 2000 at g/15 (but then, I only played about 100 more games, today I would undoubtedly break that streak).
Oddly, focusing hard against weaker players seemed to improve my overall game. They were perhaps not as weak as I thought.
You might not find all this work to be much fun, of course. I had a great time and was particularly enjoying myself when I began to outcombine 2200+ players.
Alas, I graduated and had to go to work in a distant place with basically no chess. Probably just as well, I suppose.
William Hyde
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