Glad That's Over

It's a relief that I'm finally finished playing in the 1st Chesspunks Correspondence Tournament. I came last in my group in the second round, but that wasn't unexpected given that I was the lowest-ranked player.

My notable achievements were two wins, neither of which I expected, and two losses against the same opponent that were hard fought and led to interesting conversations afterwards. One of those losses had my first brilliancy. It also had me miss a forced mate and have an apparent mate snatched away from me unexpectedly. All I can say is that bishop blindness is a real thing.

There were some good things about the tournament overall. I felt like a real chess player for the first time since I started back at chess in February. In each round, I met opponents—other Chesspunks—who were fun to play against and actively engaged in discussions after the games. I'm also more experienced and more comfortable with my chosen opening repertoire.

Stress in chess on ice

There were some bad things about the tournament as well. I wasn't ready for the mental load it involved. It took up so much of my attention that I didn't feel able to go off and do other chess things. As a result, I made very little progress on my #100daysofchess challenge for the duration of the tournament.

I've seen people with 20 correspondence games on the go and a list of daily blitz games that goes off the screen. I will get there eventually, but I'm not there yet. To understand why, let me relate it to a sport I play, curling. It's an Olympic sport, so it's slightly less obscure than it used to be. If you're unfamiliar with it, here's a good, short guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOk9SVzqHsk It's a sport that has been called chess on ice. To see why, I'd encourage you to check it out at the next Olympics in a few months and I invite you to cheer on Canada, if your country doesn't have its own team.

When I started curling, I quickly moved to play the hardest position: skip. The skip is the captain of the team, sets the strategy, and usually throws the last and thus most important rocks for their team. When I first started skipping, I knew what to do, but I didn't have the experience to know that what I was doing was the right thing. I ended up nervous all the time. I was nervous about things like losing the scoring lead that my team had built or making a blunder in my strategy that gave away our advantage in an end. Now when I curl, I almost never get nervous. I can easily tell the difference between my team not playing well and the other team outplaying us. It's part experience and part knowing the limits of my and my team's abilities.

I haven't gotten to the same point of comfort with chess. I can't readily tell when I'm performing well or my opponent is. I don't have the intuition yet to be able to know when I'm dominating or when I'm walking merrily towards my own defeat.

The problem with correspondence chess is that your opponent can reply immediately or use up the entire time limit. I found that thinking about how I was doing and how my opponent might reply took all the energy I was willing to devote to chess. I absolutely could have studied or played a few blitz games, but I was always anticipating my opponents' responses. I said in my first post about correspondence chess that it is all consuming. While I got better at managing my time and expectations in the second round of the tournament, I never felt like I had the mental space to work on other things. I know that will come, but it won't be for a while, which means that I won't being playing correspondence again anytime soon. Instead, I'm looking forward to the holidays, studying, and getting a few games in.