High Rated Scholastic Trick

I have been watching Blunderprone's games against Cindy Loo with a bit of interest. His last game had a very interesting tactic that was going to be my next topic.

But the whole game got me thinking. The end of that game just didn't seem to be jiving with the rating of the player, and the whole advantage of booking up just came clear. I had always believed it was so that you could ride on the shoulders of the masters, and always make "good" moves. But the real reason it works, is that when you get dropped out of book, it is because your opponent has made a mistake. Often a horrible, game losing mistake. It is like always playing with odds. You only start playing chess in an advantageous position. Wow. This has got to be a pretty powerful methodology up to a certain level. But...

The advantage of Blunderprone's “bad banana with a slippery black peel” move was not that it was strong. It wasn't. The advantage was that it was an out of book move for her, that was both attacking and not an error per se, but was not an attackable error.

This left her foundering, without memorized lines, and what looked like a lack of understanding, and ultimately a losing game.

It would appear that this memorization is a successful tactic. Some of us may indeed have problems with deep memorization, so we can fall to this tactic. However, I think that appropriate use of Real Chess, will probably also be our savior. We may find not best, but not weak out of book lines, that take our memorizing brethren out of book sooner, and meet us in the battlefield of chess. Where our better visualization of tactics, and are strong desire to avoid blundering off our queens will help us win the day!

It is clear that memorization has helped her generate a relatively nice and high USCF rating, but she has some major weaknesses in her tactical vision. Maybe she should do some puzzles.

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