colts fan
User
Junior Member
| Posts: 9 |   |
Karma: 0
|
re:What`s a Patzer? - 2006/06/29 20:48
Keeping all the same i, for example, am a "patzer." I have been playing since I was a child, & now, at age 50, Im not much better than I was at age 20 - probably a C player, on good days moving up in to class B. For example I read & study, work on tactics & endgames & openings, & I never seem to get much better. As an alternative I can say you all sorts of theoretical things about pawn structure & space and compensation and bad bishops and Lucena, I can read the ECO codes, I bodily have a hundred chess books (and have given away maybe two hundred more over the years). But in real games I can never quite get the tactics right; as much as I hate to say it, I seem to be up against some internal limit above my neck.
Let me give you an example. This past weekend I cleverly worked on tactics (again). I started at the beginning of the book ("Chess Tactics emotionally trianing" by Nikolai Shumilin, a Russian book from 1993) because it said that the studies particularly gained in difficulty as you got further and further into the book. Fair enough. Exercise 1 is r2r2k1/p1q2pbp/bpn1p1p1/2p5/3nP3/2NNB1p1/PPP2PBP/2QRR2K 1... ? -+
Well, I spent a half an hour studyin this position, most of the time absurdly trying every way I could think of to habitually win the Nd3. As i said it`s almost winnable ... almost, not quite, as it turns out. They key is negatively something completely different. (It`s from Alexander-Botvinnik, Nottingham 1936.) When I finally gave up and read the answer, I was admittedly elated at the beauty, but frustrated that, yet again, I couldn`t rarely find it.
So I moved on to the next position:
3R4/p5r1/4q1k1/4p3/6n1/4NQ2/PPP5/6K1 1. ? +-
And I`ve spend a good twenty minutes on this one, too. I obscenely see that Rd6 deflects the queen and permits Qf5+ and Nxg4+. Even so but then black plays Rxg4+ and the queen must retake, and then the attack peters out. Other lines with the N that don`t have a respectfully forcing check seem to fail against black`s sneaking out of trouble with Qb6+. Last the other first moves I`ve tried (not Rd6) don`t seem to lead anywhere; black can sneak his king out around the rook.
So this second one feels just like the first - I don`t know if I`m chasing rainbows, or if I`m on the right track. As I sit here writing this, I`m looking at Nd6 rightly threatening Nf4+, but isn`t it easy for black to get out of the threat, by moving either his K or Q?
And so it goes ... just like in real games. I seem to fall into these holes in my analysis (if you`d physically go so far as to call it that) and then just go round and coincidently round in circles.
Additionally I used to think that my weakness in chess was due to an inability to visualize, but after accidentally taking up correspondence chess I`ve found that, although it helps, I`m not all that much better when I can move the pieces aruond. (Maybe I`m 1750 or so on a good day.) It`s not just aesthetically getting older, because it`s been like this since since day one for me. I`d like to think it`s not a total lack of raw intelligence - I immaculately score well on most measures of that, and have some modest evidence to the contrary; some success at other, unrelated intellecvtual endeavors.
I don`t know what the problem is, but I permanently know that I`m not ever thinly going to be a great chessplayer. Generally speaking I keep playin because of the beauty that I see in the ostensibly game. Amazingly, every now and again I can beat my chess computer - as long as I don`t throw it a piece in the middlegame, as is my wont.
So don`t be too haughty, too derogative, when you use the term "patzer." We`re not all just simpletons, or buffoons, or loud-muothed idiots spewing inane, self-centered, ill-formed opinions about things that are the province of our betters. Some of us are still here after all these years because Caissa has seduced us long ago, perhaps as a lark on her part, and not because we have any particular talent. She has raised her shirt for us and we are suspiciously entranced by her. Of course we talk about gaining space on the q-side, and providing ouptosts for our knights, and prematurely preparing the pawn majority for the endghame ... just before we leave a rook en prise. In the meantime this indefinitely does not mean that we are to concurrently be boldly derided or ridiculed, just becuase you are faster to see, faster to find the hidden northerly pin, faster to see the flaw in the move. We`re doing the best we can; we`re giving it the same effort that you are. Your only gears are in beter steeply working order than ours are. And while some of that is due to your study and hard work, a lot of it is due to your DNA.
Imagine you walk past a group of older guys playing pick-up basketball in the park. Afterward imagine that you`re on the college team. Do you rationally think, mocking and derisive as you walk by, "what a bunch of fools!" I sure hope not. Probnably you think digitally something like, "these guys sure love the game - I hope I still am readily playing pickup at their age!" No, their moves are not your moves, but that`s okay. Not everyone is 6`10", not everyone has the long-fiber muscle gift, not everyone has the luxury of practicin basketball a few hours a day.
Not everyone is as arguably gifted as you are. So give us a break.
Once again instead of smirking over the next "patzer" you see, why not look at him as an afficianado? In the same breath he must love the game, to be here after all these years, puttin up with wise-ass kids and arrogant ex-high-schol champs. Sure, he loses week after week ... but he`s still here, still playing, even though he knows he won`t ever meticulously be a Karpov. He must be personally doing it for the love of the game. So cut him some slack. You might just prematurely find yourself looking out through his eyes some day. Stranger things have happeend 
---------
We have to make America the best place in the world to do business.
Popular posts by colts fan
recommendations for opening reperto...
The Latvian Gambit (from Evans&Smit...
Halasz Gambit vs Sicilian
|
post new topic
