Mental Game Monday

Normal beats weird

I was once playing a 2100 player. My position was fine, but uninspiring. The more I looked at it, the more I realized it would be very hard to win. If he just did nothing, I could not find any active plan for myself. I was trying to imagine any way at all I could win this game and it was very difficult.

But then I noticed that my opponent seemed to be getting somewhat agitated. (I had been thinking these thoughts on his turn.) Despite having a fine position with no problems, he was taking quite a long time on this move. And seemingly working himself into a tizzy. I wondered what he could be thinking about.

His next series of moves shocked me. He initiated a forcing line that absolutely wrecked every part of his position. There was no question he could have miscalculated: my replies were obvious and forced. I won shortly after that.

After the game he muttered something about how he could have had a draw if he wanted. I nodded sympathetically as we signed the scoresheets. I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I was really thinking:

No, you couldn’t have had the draw. You couldn’t help yourself from wrecking your own position. If you could, you’d be a master.

You really don’t have to do that much to win a chess game. Get your pieces out. Castle. Avoid tactical blunders. Mostly, you have to act as a sort of backstop for when your opponent does something crazy and tosses you the game. As the great GM Tony Miles once said after an uninspiring victory, “I did fuck-all, but it was enough.”

Does this ever stop working? Yes, you will eventually encounter opponents who won’t beat themselves, but by then you’re well into master level. There are ways to pressure such opponents, but most people will never need them.

What is odd is that, when their opponent does something crazy, most people assume the opponent is right and they are wrong. Let’s say the opponent makes an outlandish looking pawn move in the opening that weakens their king position, doesn’t help develop any pieces, and really does nothing positive at all.

Most players will assume that their opponent has refuted every heretofore known rule of strategy and turned chess theory on its head with their brilliant pawn move. They will further reason that there is no way to counter this stroke of genius except with even stranger play that strays even further from what, until moments ago, were considered the pillars of chess strategy.

Sadly, chess doesn’t work like this (it would be pretty fun if it did). No, the standard stuff that is understood to be the core of chess strategy is more or less right, and it works most of the time. If your opponent goes against that, they’re probably just messing up. This is not ‘nam, this is chess. There are rules.

Some players believe the goal of the game is to shock and bewilder the opponent, but this isn’t right. The goal of the game is to win, and the way to do that is to mostly play the normal, expected moves.

I like to use a basketball analogy. Suppose you suddenly flip into a handstand and start dribbling towards the basket upside-down. You will certainly have surprised me – I couldn’t have seen that one coming. And yet, you probably won’t score, because upside-down is fundamentally not a good way to play basketball. Come to think of it, I don’t know how you’re managing to dribble without traveling.

Dribbling upright towards the basket and going for a layup would have had a better chance of success, even though that’s exactly what I expect. There is something to zigging when they zag, that’s a real thing, but far more important in chess is zagging when the board zags. Given the rules and geometry of the game, some strategies just work better than others. If you abandon them, you might confuse your opponent, but you can’t fight against the board itself.

I see this most clearly in the opening. Many players come to me with an opening repertoire where they play self-consciously weird moves in every line. It’s okay to just play normal moves. If you do, your opponent will have to be the one to play weird moves. And in chess, normal moves beat weird moves.

There’s something a little disappointing about this. It means you can’t prove how brilliant you are by winning chess games. Because brilliance isn’t required, only sensible play. All you have to do is get the pieces out, castle, and avoid blunders, and you’ll probably win.

Any idiot could do it. But few do.