How to take a defeat.
I wanted to apologize for the long delay since my last post I’ve had recent dental surgery so I won’t be making a video blog this time.
I think the first lesson that anyone needs to learn regardless of what they play is how to lose, you remember the temper tantrums you had when you lost the game?
I mean sure there is a lot of pressure on a game even when playing at age 4 and upwards. Heaven forbid I remember when I placed against a girl. You wouldn’t want to lose against a girl and keep face with your friends. I don’t mean to take anything away from female players it is simply the type of stupid stuff that goes through a young boys mind. What would be worse if the girl was really cute and you liked the girl, Should I lose so she would be happy, if I beat her she may hate me lol. I don’t know if anyone else would admit to thinking like that when they were younger. But that is how I used to think when I was stupid boy too obsessed with the Girls, and they always used to beat me because I always put them up on a pedestal.
I do feel this subject on how to lose does need to be explained even on here because there are younger players I've come across (or at least I hope they are young) that hated the fact they lost or was going to lose. So for the sake of equal balance to my audience please don't feel offended and consider this as a refresher.
There will come a time where you learn losing is a strong part of the game. It is the best way to learn, I have said it before and I will say it again and properly keep saying it in future posts. You learn far more from losing a game than you do from winning. When I last made a post my rating was going up slowly and I aimed to be at the 1400s. That hasn’t happen my grade YoYo’ed and I’m back into the 1260’s. So how am I supposed to take it? Throw out the chess board, set fire to Red Hot pawns website? It is all fun and games while I'm winning. It isn’t so easy to admit I was wrong or I played badly. The games I play are do or die. So I either win or lose in fantastic fashion so it’s kind of ugly to look at.
Worse of all is where I was closed to winning however I took my eye off the entire situation and I missed his attack.
Again this one, One move away from mating him however Black had time on their side.
You see it takes making the mistakes for us to learn not to do them and of cause studying other games help however there is no book that can teach your and prepare you for the human element. You are going to make mistakes.
So don’t take losing as a personal defeat take it as a chess lesson and someone else you did not expect is teaching you.
How to get the most from a lost game, Wait at least (1) one day get the emotions out the way. Then come back and play a mini game and see how many times You go “Omg, why or how did I miss that !?”
If you don’t understand how you missed that or you don’t see how you can do better, do your research I am sure there is people on RHP that could offer opinions if all else fails.
The one way to look at it, is If you don't make mistakes you are not doing your best. If you never make mistakes then your Lt. Commander Data from Star trek or some other kind of machine.
You could almost say , you have to make mistakes if you are going to get any good at playing chess at all.
I look forward to your comments and feedback.
