Originally posted by rubberjaw30That's the problem with chess. The winner usually isn't the one with some brilliant attack, but the one that messed up the fewest times.
everyone else has threads complaining about one thing or another, so I thought I'd do one too.
When I win, I HATE when opponents try to reconcile the loss.
"you only one because I made that one mistake, you're nothing special. You just got lucky." I don't see that a lot on this site, but especially OTB it occurs a lot. All wins are the result of a mi ...[text shortened]... ition. Why can't they just congratulate me on spotting their error and capitalizing on it?
Originally posted by rubberjaw30There's nothing new under the sun.....
everyone else has threads complaining about one thing or another, so I thought I'd do one too.
When I win, I HATE when opponents try to reconcile the loss.
"you only one because I made that one mistake, you're nothing special. You just got lucky." I don't see that a lot on this site, but especially OTB it occurs a lot. All wins are the result of a mi ...[text shortened]... ition. Why can't they just congratulate me on spotting their error and capitalizing on it?
Another well-known quote was the subject of an enquiry by John Nunn (London) in C.N. 2051:
‘Everybody knows the chess aphorism concerning the player who commented that he had never beaten a healthy opponent, but who originally said this and what was the exact quote? I have asked several grandmasters, and received a range of answers. Most went for Tartakower, but in the back of my mind I have the idea that it was Bogoljubow.’
Pending the discovery of more details, in that item we quoted Charles Tomlinson from pages 54-55 of the February 1891 BCM:
‘Few men will admit the superiority of an opponent, and he who loses finds generally something in himself to account for defeat; or, as Löwenthal once remarked to me, “He always has a doctor‘s certificate in his pocket!”’
A number of readers subsequently referred us to an (unsubstantiated) assertion by B.H. Wood in the 1949 Illustrated London News and reprinted on page 10 of Fred Reinfeld’s The Treasury of Chess Lore (New York, 1951):
‘It was old Burn, veteran British master of the ’90s, who was heard to remark plaintively towards the end of his long life that he had never had the satisfaction of beating a perfectly healthy opponent.’
The same passage (with a repetition of the word ‘never&rsquo😉 was reproduced by Wood on page 78 of CHESS, January 1952, but it has proved impossible to find any link between the quote and Amos Burn. In C.N. 4187, however, we reported that page 2 of Chess Pie, 1936 had an article entitled ‘Humours of Chess’ by E.B. Osborn (‘Literary Editor of the Morning Post&rsquo😉. It concerned H.E. Bird (‘most lovable of all the old masters&rsquo😉, with whom he was personally acquainted. Osborn remarked:
‘Dear Old Bird would say that he had hardly ever beaten a healthy player.’
😕
The one I quite enjoy getting frequently is that I am a bad player because I dont play 'properly' I.E. Instead of looking for brilliant mating combinations, I mostly try and look for a mistake and pick off material with a mate to follow later.
Also, even if I do come up with a mate in the middlegame, it is often criticised for not being spectacular enough and the sort of mate that even a beginner should know (makes you wonder what level the players who say this to me must be if I am supposed to be the beginner)
I got this little gem from an opponent after just 11 moves.
"That's it for this game: too much cheating, and of the old familiar kind, too. First, my judgment and skills are artificially ruined (e.g., by sleep deprivation, as in this case, when my sleep was disrupted by a barking dog night after night for weeks on end), resulting in my choosing moves I would otherwise never seriously consider, made without adequate reflection, analysis, or research, and consequently resulting in positions which are untenable for me. This has to be the worst, most anti-positional game I have played in a long time.
Then, having reached such a position, my opponent seems to have access to information he shouldn't (i.e., my plans) and also seems to feed that information to a chess engine with the instruction to come up with the best move among the subset of moves I have not considered.
So, you can say you won, but not through skill.
Finally, as I have also said before, I don't like being tested.
And who the hell is Monique Flaherty?"
I was actually enjoying them game, especially the in-game analysis that he initiated. The position was just a little unusual but totally playable. As far as I can tell, it was an even position.
His message and resignation was a complete surprise to me.
For the record, I have no idea who Monique Flaherty is either. The fact that he brought up a name that I never mentioned leads me to believe that he was either mistaking me for someone else, on drugs, or both.
The message is a gem because it gives 3 seperate excuses for why he 'lost'. First, he accused me of cheating. Then, he says he hasn't been able to sleep. Finally, he says the position is unplayable. Whatever.
I like to use:
"Sorry I have to resign, I have just started teething and the pain is ruining my concentration,"
Or
"haha, good win for you, I have been using dice to randomly choose my moves, I am amazed I lasted this long!"
I have never had someone make an excuse before, and I have never either, the closest I came is a closing note when I resigned of "what an awful move I played, thats possibly the worst few moves ive ever made!"
(I added the usual well played in the second game)
Looking back I suppose that does sound like a whining excuse but it was actually genuine, it probably was the worst game I had ever played and it is the only time in all my games here I have left such a remark.
