Quitting Chess

Sometimes a short break is what is called for. Clear your mind and be back better than ever. Sometimes after taking a day off is when I play my best games. Getting discouraged is not bad but there are other ways than just upp'n leaving. If you only feel you lose to stronger players you are looking at it wrong. I look at it is the other player is better than me now I will look at it and learn from it. Every time you win or lose it is a learning opportunity. Maybe you can reach CM or NM after hitting some kind of spike. Other than being a child genius like Morphy (for his time anyway) the only way to get better is to practice and learn. While you might never be as good as Carlsen, Tal, Kasparov, Fischer or Kramnik you have to ask yourself if I could do 10% what each one of them did I would be a genus. Similar things go for business if I could make 10% of what Bill Gates did Id be sitting pretty happy (only at 7 billion dollars). Baby steps, baby steps... Okay enough rambling good luck!!

@Masquerade #10

Welcome back ! :-)

Here's an example of a "bad" game I played. I went too far with my queen sac and should have lost eventually.
But I found a "crazy" idea, a zwickmuehle/windmill draw possibility. My opponent fell for it.

Stockfish analysis :
en.lichess.org/rAuhBvob/white#42

Blog posting with some game annotation :
www.chess.com/blog/achja/a-rare-vertical-zwickmuehle-trick

The fact that I found this "creative" idea made my day !

Later on I showed it to the old chess master that I analyse with almost every week, and he thought it was a funny idea.

If you look at creative chess masters like GM Jobava (he recommended training with composed chess studies), IM Bosboom, but also GM Smyslov, you will see that they all spend some time on "chess studies".

Composed chess studies, like for example here :
http://akobiachess.gol.ge/
http://www.afekchess.com/

And apart from that, you might enjoy some of this "crazy" chess stuff :
http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/chess.html

Have fun !! :)

@achja That reminds me of someone I play with at the library. She is not so good probably she is around 1000 lichess I sometimes dont try too hard and lose but I offered to take my queen off the board and give some compensation. I won very pretty game all by trying super hard since I was down so much material it made it interesting for me and made me try even harder. Stuff like that is how I have improved.

"If you say you can't do it, you are right you can't do it." From youtu.be/AYPbMybmVyo

Here is a little present for you, a queen sac finish :)
I was pleased with it :

en.lichess.org/6QZNBz4H/white#41

Nice game @achja ! Queen sac is the best thing in chess! Reminds me of Legal Trap!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9gal_Trap