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James Schuyler - Your Opponent is Overrated

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James Schuyler Your Opponent is Overrated
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First published in 2016 by Gloucester Publishers Limited Northburgh House 10 - photo 1


First published in 2016 by Gloucester Publishers Limited, Northburgh House,
10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
Copyright 2016 James Schuyler
The right of James Schuyler to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN Kindle: 978-1-78194-353-3
ISBN epub: 978-1-78194-354-0
Distributed in North America by National Book Network,
15200 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214. Ph: 717.794.3800.
Distributed in Europe by Central Books Ltd.,
Central Books Ltd, 50 Freshwater Road, Chadwell Heath, London , RM8 1RX.
All other sales enquiries should be directed to Everyman Chess,
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
email: info@everymanchess.com; website: www.everymanchess.com
Everyman is the registered trade mark of Random House Inc. and is used in this work under licence from Random House Inc.
Everyman Chess Series
Chief advisor: Byron Jacobs
Commissioning editor: John Emms
Assistant editor: Richard Palliser
Typeset and edited by First Rank Publishing, Brighton.
Cover design by Horatio Monteverde.
Printed by TJ International Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.


About the Author

James Schuyler is a FIDE Master. He was Nevada State Champion in 2007 and won the Virginia State Championship in both 2011 and 2012. He has been teaching chess for over 25 years.

Also by the Author:
The Dark Knight System

This book is dedicated to my wife Caroline. Her support has been essential to all my successes, but for this book she went above and beyond.


Contents


Introduction

The Problem
We all play about as well as we can manage, given the amount of effort we can spare for chess. We have our ratings and a certain average percentage of wins (plus draws divided by two) that we can expect depending on the level of our opposition. We read books to improve, and study openings, but after a certain point this doesnt seem to have any impact. Perhaps this is because our study is generally based on the premise that the only road to improving our results is to improve our accuracy. Some of us may need to think about chess in a much different way.

Your Opponent
We have a fallible opponent. Hes messing up every game. Even when he stumbles upon the right moves, its often for the wrong reasons. Id even go so far as to say hes overrated. And yet if we play our normal best game those errors may not appear frequently, and they may not be severe. Surely there is some way to expose his ignorance. But hes familiar with the common tricks and traps. Well need to be subtle. Cagey. Persistent. Overwhelming. So we will not merely go about our business we will at times go out of our way and actively induce errors in our opponents play. Right?

No Draw!
The originally intended title for this book was No Draw! As it turns out, avoiding draws and inducing errors generally amount to the same thing. There is no way to win otherwise drawn games without inducing errors, so it is really the same subject, and I believe I may use the phrases nearly interchangeably.

The benefits of avoiding draws are considerable, even if it does not improve a players results overall. It is a very common occurrence in tournaments that we need to win a particular game. Perhaps there is money on the line, or a tournament title, or a Master title that depends on temporarily achieving a certain rating. Naturally, we want to play as well as we can, but there is an additional consideration because a draw may be worthless, or nearly worthless. Should we play our normal best game, or can we do better by playing differently to avoid a draw? Obviously, it is pointless to avoid draws if all those draws turn into losses, but if some of those draws (lets say about half) can be turned into wins, we increase our chances of achieving our goals. That is what this book is about, though as we go on, we may realize that it is about other things as well. Allow me to elaborate on this, since it helps explain why it might be so important to play fewer draws.

Imagine two players, Mr. Draw and Ms. NoDraw. (See how progressive I am?) Mr. Draw makes the maximum percentage of draws. Therefore, if he plays a player of the same rating, the result is always a draw. If he plays a player in the next higher class, he will lose approximately half the time and draw half the time, while if he plays a player in the next lower class, he will win half the time and draw half the time. Whatever this players skill level, he will never win a tournament unless he is vastly superior to the rest of the field, and he will have a hard time winning prize money, because he will almost never have any exceptionally good results. (This is especially true for Swiss System tournaments, though it also holds true for round robin events.) For the same reasons, his extreme consistency will make it nearly impossible for him to earn the norms that are required for certain prestigious titles.

Ms. NoDraw has the same playing strength as Mr. Draw, but she never draws. Against players in her own class, she wins half and loses half. Against players in the next lower class, she wins 75% and loses 25%. She is not a better player than Mr. Draw, but she gets to win tournaments sometimes, and places in the money more often. If her playing strength is close to 2500 FIDE, Ms. NoDraw is a Grandmaster, while Mr. Draw is not. Ms. NoDraw is well known because of a few outstanding results. If it matters to her, she is also more popular with fans and spectators because her games are more exciting to watch. She gets invited to more tournaments. Maybe not all of these arguments apply to you, but there are additional benefits to playing fewer draws. With your fighting style, you learn more about what works and what doesnt. And since you rarely accept or offer draws, your games are longer, and you accumulate more experience, especially in endgames, a stage of the game in which many of your opponents are weak. Your opponents start to fear you, since every time they play you, they are stuck in the ring with you until there is only one of you left standing. You develop your fighting spirit, competitive instincts, and mental stamina while other players are sitting on the sidelines. Your attitude is of great benefit to you, and ultimately helps raise your standard of play.

I dont need this book.
Some players are, consciously or unconsciously, already using many of the ideas, techniques, and attitudes presented here. In my biased opinion, they probably still need this book. Players who are intuitively playing as combatively and competitively as possible need to bring their techniques into their conscious mind in order to gain better control over them. After all, there is a time and a place for everything, and overuse is probably even more dangerous than underuse. As for players who are using all their competitive tools consciously, there is still the danger that they will at some point have a bad result and lose faith, especially since their play will not be properly understood, even by many of their fellow chessplayers. I will present both examples and arguments to buck up the spirits of any disillusioned adventurers.
No Draws Ever?
Some people are very strongly anti-draw, and have even suggested changing the rules of chess to avoid or prohibit draws. I will right now make a distinction between a win oriented attitude, which can be valuable even in games where a win is not essential, and a drawphobic attitude, which can be detrimental even in games where a win is very desirable. I used to be drawphobic myself in my attitudes and play, but this is generally counterproductive. To try to squash draws out of existence or, alternatively, to deny how useful half-points can be to a player is to be at odds with reality, which is always a dangerous thing. Still, if my attitude was somewhat drawphobic, it did help me to develop strategies to avoid them. I firmly believe that it is not at all necessary to produce a large percentage of unwanted draws.
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