Different Rated Players: The way their games "Look"

Originally posted by USArmyParatrooper
That's the best advice ever. It's fool proof! If I simply "don't lose" from now on my chess rating will skyrocket! 🙂

Second advice from E.M. Reubens... always seek stronger players as opponents, no matter what your level of competence

or prowess may be (rather than masturbate your way to heaven with weaker ones). Lose 1000 games or more if possible.



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Originally posted by Tiwaking
Too late!

If I were White, I would have resigned after move 27. d7?


The difference between our skill level and GM skill level is the same as a Mountain Biker's skill level vs a Motor Cross Bikers skill level.

We've both got two wheels. They just get things done alot faster.


Plus some of us havent taken the training wheels off our bikes.

Good evening, Tiwaking. Your RHP record of 27 wins and 1 loss since January is certainly impressive.



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Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Good evening, Tiwaking. Your RHP record of 27 wins and 1 loss since January is certainly impressive.

Not when you find that this is the loss I played:
Game 7147192

Originally posted by Tiwaking
Not when you find that this is the loss I played:

You're much too hard on yourself. Embrace your losses, learn from them, move on. 🙂

Originally posted by USArmyParatrooper
That's the best advice ever. It's fool proof! If I simply "don't lose" from now on my chess rating will skyrocket! 🙂

E.M. Reubens Postscript



His gentle insistence that Job One in chess was "not to lose" (strategic/what focus) and to continually seek stronger opponents, rather than kidding yourself and wasting your time with the indulgence of playing doll house with weaker opponents (tactical/how focus), on one level appear to pose a superficial contradiction. On another it easily resolves. If growth in stature and ability, in any realm, tend to be less linear than cyclical with inevitable and hopefully temporary plateaus (which seems generally to be true), then the reality is that chess ratings per se are somewhat point in time inconsequential. Even as with parachutes, there's a functional falling upward as well as down. Like it or not, strategy and tactics in any warfare are inextricably intertwined. If chess is about anything and more than a game, it's about the virtue of patience and the creative big picture view of near infinite possibilities.

One Friday evening at his home (with Landey, Brown, Schaak, Pransky), during a break in the action over blueberry muffins and strong black coffee, he asked me where chess ranked in the overall scheme of things. I answered, "Best game in the world". He made no comment. Segued to some topic of the day with the other men, old enough to be my father, as I listened intently. Several hours later at the door just before leaving to drive home in the snow he said, "You were close. Chess is the second best competitive game in the history of mankind. The talking game is still and always will be the best game in town".

Eventual corporate transfer from Boston to Chicago imposed no real hardship on our classic age/youth rivalry. We simply solved the intrusion and overcame the geography with weekly moves via postal mail. Still have his many letters filled with incisive commentary and broad guaged humor, hand written in his artistic and exuberant cursive style. And then one otherwise prosperous and fine day a loss occurred. Emil Reubens disappeared. I was greeted by Ben Landey's note on returning home:



9/1/73


Dear Bob,

"I have the sad task of writing to all of E.M.'s chess correspondents

and friends that E.M passed away Wednesday, Aug 29th -- one month

short of his 87th Birthday. We have all lost a friend--I, a brother."


Ben




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Reubens biographical article (and newspaper photo.. please scroll all the way down):


http://boylston-chess-club.blogspot.com/search?q=emil+reubens

Originally posted by USArmyParatrooper
I've noticed that watching games where the players are rated in the mid teens actually look different than GM and Master games.

Those of us in the teens seem to play tighter games against each other, protecting every pawn, very few true sacs, and very reactive to short term threats.

GM games are fun to watch because they seem more op ...[text shortened]... s anyone notice an actual aesthetic difference between the way high and low level play look?

I think GM games differ massively simply because they understand certain principles which "teen" rated players are totally unaware of. A GM will chose an opening knowing what sort of end game they are aiming for. I have done this perhaps two or three times in my life, and that was generally when a succession of forced exchanges was on the cards. Anand against Topalov is a shining example, Anand played the Catalan repeatedly aiming for the famous ending that Kramnik reached in his match with Topalov while using the same opening. Average players spend more time calculating immediate tactics and don't have large parts of the game previously analysed at home..