How I went from one of weakest players in my club to one of the strongest

Over the past year, I have been playing league matches for my local chess club Naomh Barróg. If you're not Irish you're probably wondering what that name means, and if you are Irish, you probably still don't know. I had no idea what it meant until I looked it for this post, apparently it's Saint Berrack, after whom the local area Kilbarrack in Dublin is also named.

The club is small, with about 15 active players and like most chess clubs, is mostly older men and only one woman. One of the main activities of the club is competing in the Leinster Leagues, which despite the name is mostly comprised of Dublin clubs. The leagues are very active with scores of teams competing across 6 divisions (the bottom two of which are split into a North and South group). The season lasts from September to May, with one game every 2-3 weeks.

What I found interesting is that the club scene is quite different from the tournament scene, with many players only competing in club matches. The age profile is also older in clubs and there is a sense of tradition as many players have competed in the league for years or even decades. I overheard one player bemoan the fact he had to note his moves during the game because he was so unused to it that he still used the old notation.

At the start of the season in September, I was the 12th highest rated player out of 15, in other words one of the lowest players with an active rating. The club had 3 teams, two in the BEA Cup North (Division 5) and one in the Bodley Cup North (Division 6). By rating, I should have been on the 3rd team, but for some reason two stronger players were put on the C team and I was put on the BEA B team (a lot of clubs seem to strategise with where they place their players which I don't full understand).

The power of a psychological victory

An underrated factor in chess is psychology. Sometimes, if you beat a player mentally, you've already beaten them over the board. There are some situations where a player gives up because they are convinced they're lost, even if a computer can find a way to save the position. This is exactly what happened in my first game.

The first game of the season was an internal affair as the Naomh Barróg A team played the B team. As I mentioned above, I was punching above my weight to even be on the B team, so imagine my surprise when I was placed on board 2 (I played board 3 for the rest of the season). This meant that with my rating of 885, I faced a giant player with 1151.

We played an Alapin Sicilian and my opponent quickly over-extended his pawns leaving them unable to support each other and blocking his Bishop. Then on move 11, he made arguably the crucial move of the game and blundered a pawn. To make a simple mistake early can be a strong psychological blow and for the rest of the game he frequently sighed and shook his head, showing how unhappy he was with the position.

The pawn blunder put me on +5 but I was unable to take advantage of my lead and it slipped away into a drawn position. In fact, I was lucky not to be losing after a pin could have cost me a piece. Neither of us realised how strong his counter-play was or that my pawn advantage wasn't as good as I thought. I let him take on g2 figuring that now his Knight was tied to his Rook and was able to exploit this on move 43 with Knight to d5.

It might seem strange that my opponent resigned on move 44 when the evalution was only +1. The simple answer is that we were both tired and missed that the Bishop was no longer pinned to the King. This might seem like a basic mistake, but the fact is that we had been playing for about 3 hours on a work night, so neither of us were at our best. After the game, my opponent told me that after he lost the pawn, he struggled to form a plan and get any counter-play. He was so psychologically demoralised that he didn't see that still had a reasonable position.

How I played differently because I mistook my opponents rating

A detail about club matches that played an important role in my second match, is that you don't know who you are playing until you sit down at the board. You can guess based on who played that board in previous games, but teams often mix their players around. So before this game I thought I was playing an unrated player who had lost their previous game to a player rated 454. In actual fact, I was playing someone rated 994.

I will openly admit that this was the dullest game I played all season. After a standard Italian opening, pieces were quickly traded off and we got locked into a drawn position with little room to seize an advantage. Had I known my opponent was 100 points higher rated, I would have happily taken a drawn, but I was under the mistaken impression that my opponent was much weaker. I kept thinking "if he lost to a 454 player, why can't I beat him?"

I hung a pawn on move 36 just to lure his Queen away from his King because I knew I couldn't win if he kept playing so defensive. By all rights, the game should have been a draw, but I persisted in the defiant belief that I would eventually get a winning chance. That is exactly what happened on move 50, when I could hardly believe my eyes as my opponent blundered mate-in-one. It just goes to show how much we let our idea of our opponents rating influence our play.

My strongest victory

If luck played a big role in my first two games, I proud that my third game was won by outplaying my opponent. It opened with a standard Sicilian Dragon and after castling my King, I began looking for a way to attack my opponent. As they were a very strong player, I knew I wouldn't win with an obvious attack, it had to be something subtle. Often in chess, the best way to attack one piece is to disguise it by seeming to attack a different piece.

With this in mind I played e6 on move 9. It looks like an innocent pawn move with little threat beyond possibly an attack on the Bishop on c4. But even then, White can just move the Bishop to safety right? Only too late did my opponent realise that the Bishop wasn't my real target, my real plan was to get the pawn to d4 where it would fork the Bishop and Knight, the attack on the Bishop was merely a feint.

So I won a Knight for two pawns and began trading off pieces. When White played 19. g4 to chase away my Bishop, they opened a weakness. I decided to use the same tactic again, use the threat of my Queen on their Knight to distract from defending the backwards pawn on c3. My opponent was so concerned with defending the pawn that they opened themselves up to a fork on move 25, costing them a clean Rook. There were some tricky moves with the Bishops and White threw in some checks, but the game had already been decided.

The danger of failing to castle

Sometimes games can be decided by simple issues like pawn play or whether or not you can castle in time. Early in this game I seized a lot of space with my pawns and pushed his pieces back. Doubling his h pawns on move 14 was important because it made it difficult to castle kingside but I had already launched a pawn storm on the queenside that was ready to tear open his defences if he castle that direction.

His King was stuck in the centre and his Queen was overloaded defending everything so I executed a nice tactical attack on move 20 that didn't win anything but it opened his defences. I had to be careful (move 23 threatened a Rook sacrifice that would lead to mate) but I was in a winning position. He had so many vulnerable points that he couldn't defend them all. Eventually I won his Bishop on move 28. He tried to play on, but there was little room for counterplay and with my passed pawn and my threat to trap his g4 Rook, the position was lost.

The weakness of a backward pawn

Sometimes, all you need is in a target. This is often the case in positional d4 games, where the game is decided by slow and patient play, instead of any grandiose attack. In this game, I saw that my opponent's c3 pawn was weak, so I gradually added more and more pressure on it, until I could crack open my opponent's defences.

This had the added advantage of keeping all his pieces tied down and allowing me to launch attacks on the kingside, which eventually won an exchange. Once I broke through, I picked off pawns one-by-one, exploited pins and won a Rook with a nice tactic on move 38. By move 42, White's Queen was about to be lost, so my opponent resigned.

Every chess player's greatest fear

In this game, I faced every chess player's greatest fear - an unrated teenager. There's two types of unrated players, beginners who are still figuring things out and prodigies who know theory and have a high online rating that their over-the-board rating hasn't caught up to yet. Not only will they kick your ass, but they'll kick a hole in your rating too.

The game started well, we played something similar to a Fried Liver Declined and I won a pawn. My Rook was out, so I decided to go for an attack. Unfortunately, I did not see 20. Nh5 at all and it was downhill from there. I thought my fork on move 27 might bring me back into the game, but I knew I was losing and just wanted to make things tricky for Black. According to the computer, I was lucky not to get mated. I tried to make the endgame tricky with my Knight but ended up trapping my Rook and resigning.

Sometimes all it takes is one mistake

This game was one of the closest games of the season, despite being against one of the lowest rated players. The opening was even, despite the fact I missed the potential for a Greek Gift (the thought of which never crossed my mind). My kingside attack gradually ran out of steam whereas his was picking up the pace when he made a Bishop sacrifice on move 26 that just didn't work.

I was feeling great, had a strong position, so I went to trade Queens, only to miscalculate and lose my Bishop. The computer says I'm still winning, but it didn't feel that way at the time. It looked as though my pawns would be picked off one by one, whereas I could only win one of his pawns and maybe use the open f-file.

It was at this moment that my opponent made a catastrophic mistake, probably due to tiredness. After spending hours fighting to get a winning position, he threw it away in a single move by hanging his Bishop. There was no tactic or anything clever on my part, he just hung a piece. That blunder clearly frustrated him and so he didn't consider the next danger, that I had mate on the next move. It just goes to show, you play a fantastic game with dozens of careful well thought out moves - and then you can throw it all away in a single blunder.

The power of an active rook

This is probably the game I have the least to say about. It was a pretty standard game, we traded off pieces and White launched an attack on my kingside. I blocked all the attacks and went into the endgame up a pawn. The game was decided by one simple fact, my Rook was more active.

Although it might not seem like much, I like the move 35. Kf8. There was a time when I would have ignored my opponents plans and just focused on winning their pawns, but instead I took a moment to block their counterplay and turn my pawns into an impregnable wall. They marched their King down the board, but there was no threat, so I just pushed my passed pawn. Sacrificing their Rook was unnecessary, but it allowed me to eventually promote and cruise to victory.

My fastest victory

Most chess games are like marathons, but sometimes you have games where someone gets crushed before they even know what's happening. I felt sorry for my opponent in this game, who was a nice guy but just got unlucky. They brought their Queen out early which became a target and then I pushed my centre pawns to dominate the centre. I was very pleased with myself for finding e6, which blocked their Bishop from defending the King. Looking at the analysis afterwards, I probably could have kept adding pressure, but I was happy to cash out and win a piece.

My opponent tried to fight back, but I set up a trap, so when it looked like they were going to win back a piece, I forked the King and won their Rook. They resigned on move 17, one of my fastest chess victories.

My toughest challenge

As I mentioned above, there is a wide range levels competing in club matches even on the one board. So after playing someone rated 661, I now had to play someone rated 1378, one of the highest rated players in the league from one of the strongest teams. I had come a long way since the start of the season and was now rated 1106, but was still 200 points below my opponent.

For the first 30 moves, I held my ground in an even game as we slowly moved our pieces into better positions. Then, without realising it a the time, the game slowly slipped away from me. It wasn't until move 37, when I thought I had a strong attack that could lead to a repetition or better, that I realised how much trouble I was in. I lost a piece and then the game.

Ending with fireworks

One thing to know is that the league offers a board prize to anyone who gets a score of 75%, which as there were 11 games in the season, was 8.5. I have no idea what the prize was, but who doesn't like winning prizes? At this point, I had a score of 8 after a fantastic season and as it happened, my opponent had a score of 7.5 so they also could win the prize. Before my game two separate people whispered to me that I should just play for a draw, but I hate to give anything less than my best, so I decided to play for a win.

I was happy with the opening (Alapin Sicilian) and apparently had a +2 advantage that I failed to take advantage of. I was unsure of pushing the pawn to c5 on move 21, as it allowed me to anchor my Bishop in the heart of enemy territory but it also allowed the Black Knight to get active. I didn't realise my opponent could maneuver their Knight around to force a tradeoff and also missed the opportunity to win a piece.

The tide was turning against me and the Black Queen-Rook battery had me worried. I was afraid that if Black started pushing their c-pawn to drive away my Bishop I would be in big trouble. But then on move 31, my opponent made a slow move that gave me enough breathing space to get back into the game. I won a pawn, then a second one and was now threatening their King. In contrast, my opponent didn't seem to have a direct attack on me, so I decided to go for the kill.

So, when I moved my Queen to e5, I thought there was no way my opponent could avoid checkmate. They only had 10 minutes left on the clock and all they could do was sacrifice some pieces to give check and delay the inevitable. So, when they sacrificed their Rook, I wasn't worried at first. But then I looked closer and my triumph turned sour. I realised with horror that taking allowed them to mate with the Queen, but I was forced to take. Somehow I went from mate-in-one to being mated-in-one.

As devastating as that was, I was also impressed, it's probably the most imaginative tactic I've seen in over-the-board chess. Apparently, I could have also sacrificed my Rook and got mate-in-six, but that's the kind of line that only a computer would see. The simpler f3 to chase the Bishop away is also completely winning for me.

Conclusion

I'm very pleased with how I performed over the season. Although it was heart breaking to come so close to the prize, there's no denying how well I did. For most of the season, I was one of the top, if not the top, performing player out of the 99 players in the league. Funnily enough, I did so well in other tournaments that by the end of the season, I was rated 1106, so my massive upsets at the start of the season no longer seemed so impressive. Thus, despite my amazing performance, I only gained 16 points. Still, I am now the 3rd highest rated player in my club (had I won the last game I would have been 2nd), which is amazing progress to make in less than a year.