My passion, my purpose, and my problems.
Submitted by on Wed, 10/22/2008 at 9:03pm.
The passion: Chess
My purpose: To defeat it
My problems: Balancing defense and offense
As I play more and more chess, I find I get a sort of "tunnel vision". This is where my blunders occur - if any. My opponent will castle king side, immediately after I've set my offense on obliterating the queen side. It can be frustrating at times. I find a tactical advantage, and one move takes everything away. Or I have a strikingly nice defensive position, and my opponent positions his pieces elsewhere, making me re-adjust my defenses and getting me further from my objective: a win.
I'll look back at my games and realize I truly screwed up in the middle game. Embarassing and not all the same; for said disadvantage is hard to spot and hard to conquer - at least for myself. If it's the opening, I look back at what I played and how I could've played better. This doesn't help, for my next game I'm playing against a purely different beast of its own.
But no, wait, maybe it was my endgame where I failed! (If it was a loss). I look at my handy dandy endgame course/guide/book, and nothing pertains to my situation despite me having access to a plethora of literature and knowledge from the Internet.
There you have it. My passion, my purpose, and most of all my problems.