What you shouldn’t do against a 2660

Something that doesn’t quite happen every day: being paired against someone with 2660 behind his name. Yesterday, in the third round of the Hogeschool Zeeland Tournament in Vlissingen, The Netherlands, I had to play against the famous Polish GM Michael Krasenkow, the world’s no. 48 and winner of the C group of this year’s Corus Chess Tournament. Such a special game deserves to be annotated and published on ChessVibes, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately I couldn’t prevent doing what most people do when they play someone higher-rated more than 400 points: from move 1 onwards I was overly impressed and as soon as he played a move I didn’t expect, I got the feeling I was being outplayed. A wise man once said “you shouldn’t play the opponent. Play the board.” OK, that’s something for next time.

Replay the game in a new window

By the way, don’t get me wrong, I’m not playing the “Noble Apprentice” here, a notion by Jonathan Rowson in Chess for Zebras which means you act like you’re so happy after you lost a game “because you learnt so much”. OK, there’s nothing wrong with learning, but the big lesson should be that you don’t get distracted by your opponent’s status and even more that during the game you should simply give everything you have in you to find the strongest moves!