A duel or an all-in brawl?
Submitted by
Dozy on Sat, 04/05/2008 at 11:49pm.
I've been a chess.com member for just over seven months now, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience but the addition of tournaments has added a whole new dimension.
It's not new to say that a chess game is like a duel but, to me, a tournament is more like an all-in bar fight. Sure, it's just a collection of single duels but, as in a bar fight and because of the number of people involved, sometimes the action gets confused. Until tournaments I was happy to keep my maximum number of games to about ten . . . now if I drop below twenty I start to get withdrawal symptoms.
That's where the problem begins for me. Sometimes I forget who I'm playing. (I know, I know, it shouldn't matter whether your opponent is rated 1000 or 2500, you should play the board, but I tend to relax more against less experienced players. I'll be you do too!) So here I am in a duel with Player A when, SPLAT! out of left field comes a round-house combination from Player B -- and, just as in a bar fight it tends to be a bit unsettling.
But tournaments are lots of fun and I'm hoping to blindside a few old enemies who may be distracted by their games with somebody else.
(And, in case you were wondering, I've never been in a bar room brawl. Thankfully.)