How can losses be bad ? It is possible that you played a great game and lost, or possible that your opponent made a brilliant "immortal" move which gave you chess joy even though you blundered and lost the game.
Here's a fresh loss where I enjoyed a large part of the game.
In the opening I started to experiment a bit, with some unsound pawn sacrificing where I felt I was worse. Later on I suddenly got winning chances but I used quite some thinking time without finding the best moves. I liked the tactical part though !
lichess.org/n2QM1dFf/ a 45-min game I played a while back against a strong player.
Here are some games where I play good until I am up material, then I start blundering like crazy, I was upset kind of. Here are some time trouble games:
In some of them at the end I wasn't winning but when I started time trouble then I was in a better position.
Not a loss but ... still, kind of. Having played a nice zwischenzug, and was concentrating during most of the game fairly well. Then in the end I got slightly distracted, and blundered into a draw ("Too weak, too confused").
Lichess actually offers a very nice search option regarding this.
If you ever feel embarrassed by similar game results, you can search for your favorite heroes (or "enemies"), and search for the amount of stalemate games they have.
Now 50 stalemate games are in my game collection (Not too shabby in some > 31 k blitz games) :
lichess.org/@/achja/search?players.a=achja&status=32&sort.field=d&sort.order=descOf course Sarg0n had lots of painful losses - that's chess life.
Here I want to share one of those against a prominent player namely Vassily "Chucky" Ivanchuk who played simultaneously. Although it was a simultaneous display I was the last man standing (sitting) and the last say 20-30 moves were played "man vs. man". Actually he sat down as well and we played a normal ending without clock.
Hi Albert,
it is nice to meet You,I followed you,
I have sometimes bad game like this one,
I was in toilet and my loss was also in toilet because I messed:),
Thank You
Hi,
i am old and my most memorale loss already fell victim to the ... of time. :-)
But i still know some things:
The story
It was a (swiss) tournament in my home town and i was paired against the favorite, a player way stronger than me, because the previous rounds had gone well for me. I had a hard time BEFORE the game, as i knew somhow, that i was going to lose it. But then i had a great idea: I was going to resist as much as possible and later learn from my mistakes and get better, this was going to be A FREE LESSON.
So i was prepared to put in my best effort, and i did. But nothing i could do, he slowly upped the positional threats and after 2 hours, i saw him create a distant passer on the Q-side, where all the struggle originated and i knew, that this was going to cost me a piece and (later) the game...
Then something weird happened: Apparently, he got impatient, that the game took so long against a "beginner", so he switched to a mating attack and sacrificed 2 pieces against my king shelter. I got very nervous, when i realized, that he missed an in-between move, securing the material to me, but failing him to get enough compensation!
So i found myself in a winning position against the renown master of my town, and - up 2 pieces - i knew, he would have a hard time to prevent losing... But i was afraid of it happening still. That is why i was calculating all sorts of ideas to trade the queens off the board, when i suddenly saw a brilliant possibility to double attack his Q and K from an undefended square with my queen, thus more or less forcing him to take it, but exposing his K+Q to a N fork, that was covered previously by his Q, thereby regaining the sacrificed Q and almost securing the win, MY WIN!!!
And when he (forcibly) took my queen from that N-fork-square, i suddenly saw a detail, that i missed: From there, my own K was in check, thus no time to execute the N fork! :-(
I tell you: that hurt so much, that a stopped playing immediately, resigned from the tournament and suffered for years. It was a really long and hard way back to playing and to facing my own stupidity again... ;-)
Thanks for bearing with me. :-)
@SlowSlug #7
Interesting anecdote. Apart from the painful loss itself you had a brief "immortal" moment during the game though I can imagine.
And did you read about Fischer-Taimanov match and what the 6-0 loss did to Taimanov ?
When I was a teenager and joined a local chessclub I maybe lost the first 10 games, but then I won my game. I won with a tactic, and the old aged guy resigned. Later that night he came back to me and showed me that my tactic was flawed. I had won with a blunder. I felt very bad and it still feels a bit weird, but ... I didn't give up, kept on playing, and my chess became a bit better over time.
almost lost on time, not really a loss but wanted to share another stalemate :)
Sorry for this digression in your post... I wanted to describe, what could be possibly be the worst chess loss imaginable. You have resigned your game, and your opponent suggests that play continue with the sides switched and you lose again with the pieces you just resigned with. Oh the horror! Ever happen to anyone ? :]
