TheBoss
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re:Play the weak or not play at all? - 2006/10/13 12:30
The answer is not as simple as others in this thread make it sound, that suppossedly you can only hurt your chess or style by playing the weaker players or at the best that it won't hurt (but certainly, according to them, would not improve yuor game).
One of the regular members of the chess club in The
Woodlands was a USCF 2300+ FIDE master. The next strongest player was an expert ratedaround USCF 2100.
Our master, as he told me, certainly wished for a better opposition. Nevertheless he was coming to the club regularly and, in a contrast to lazy me, played nonstop against about any opposition, even weaker than me (I was a strong  B player at the time). Now I wish I played him much more, I have wasted an opportunity. He really was making on me an impression of someone "working" during those club meetings.
I asked him how come he plays all the weak players (and with an intensity, niot casually). He told me that he likes to solve problems. In each game he was (privately) setting himself some puzzles, some challenges. This way even under the inferior (for him) club conditions he was still accumulating an experience.
He was never giving any material odds (possibly out of politeness). He had offered me time handicap in casual blitz, 5m:3m. I have accepted because it was a right thing to do. However I don't really enjoy being given time odds or any odds. I was silly, against my better jugdement, in several games, when I tried to run him out of time. Once I started to take my time
I was winning. He was a true, strong master, but I knew that he is not really a blitz player. Despite of that he had such a strong will that he won almost every club blitz tournament with a 100% score. I had good, sometimes even winning positions against him in the first few blitz tournmaments but he showed his master's resilience and I didn't manage to win or even draw any of those promising games. After that psychology kicked in and I was losing all games to him, including regular (slow) tournament games frustratingly fast, without a fight.
Only in one active chess tournament got a draw from him after he had grinded me in the ennding mercilessly, he had an extra pawn. He made a sac' early in the game. I asked him if he sac'ed counting on my low chess level. He said that at the time, when he sac'ed, he considered it the best way to play, perhaps to win, and only with the hindside he would reconsider it. I mention this episode to show how seriously he was approaching his activity at our chess club. It was very nice to have him as one of us (he was more equal than the rest of us .
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The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple. - Rebecca West, 1892 - 1983
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