Junior Grades

So do I. They are little sharks.

At the Edinburgh Congress a few years back I was judging the Best Game Prize
a score sheet was in the entry box that had two grades after this players name.

I asked him about it.

He told me that he works his new won game grade out before the game starts.
They don't see humans they see numbers stamped on players foreheads.

It's great when a junior unexpectedly loses though. I was watching a game a few years ago when an up and coming Oxfordshire junior, graded about 160, was playing an old man whose grade had gone down 30 points over the previous five years and was now barely higher than his age. The old man played typical old man stodgy chess, avoiding all pawn exchanges and blocking up the centre and both wings, and the poor junior didn't know what to do. Eventually he sacced a piece for two pawns and got ground down in the ending.

I like playing juniors in the League, in which games are played on weekday evenings, because they get tired before I do. It's the University players I have most problems against. They are old enough to have a bit more stamina and aren't tired because they get out of bed at midday and their "work" consists of a couple of half hour lectures on long division; whereas I have probably been up since six in the morning, solving Fermet's Last Theorem in the morning and rewriting a computer program to control Heathrow Airport in the afternoon, finishing five minutes before the start of the match.

Originally posted by Fat Lady
They are old enough to have a bit more stamina and aren't tired because they get out of bed at midday and their "work" consists of a couple of half hour lectures

Yeah, but dont forget you go straight to bed after playing the match and we students have to party long into the night. Its tough being a student, but you get used to it🙂