Jon Speelman: Defeat and redemption

The psychological toll of losing

[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

Once upon a time, near the beginning of a century not far from our own, there were relatively few top chess players and even fewer tournaments. The world champion, a certain Mr. Whitecloak, went a decade losing just two games.

José Raúl Capablanca was utterly exceptional, one of the best “natural players” of all time in a line that perhaps extends via Paul Keres, Vasily Smyslov, Anatoly Karpov, and Viswanathan Anand to Magnus Carlsen. But in the present climate, even Capablanca would have lost numerous games, as Carlsen’s record attests. When I looked in my database, I found 54 games he has lost thus far this year. Admittedly, almost all were blitz (though no bullet in my base), Armageddon (in Norway), chess960, or rapid play games, and the only classical one was his defeat by Gukesh Dommaraju in Norway.

Of course, losses come in quite different shapes and sizes. Losing a game in a blitz tournament is often only a momentary sting, but the longer and harder the game, the more it can hurt. Sheer resilience is often underplayed, but it is a crucial aspect of a top chess player’s (or indeed any game player’s or sportsman’s) character.

I’ve had my fair share of losses in my career, and the very worst must be the ones where you thought you were winning – very possibly correctly – but played a move so horrible that it turned the position instantly and irrevocably through 180°. Succumbing after a long bout of torture must come close, especially if you were close to holding. Nodirbek Abdusattorov suffered an archetypical instance of this in the recent UzChess tournament in Tashkent at the hands of his fellow countryman, Nodirbek Yakkuboev. After defending R v R+B for 43 moves, he blundered sufficiently badly that he had to resign three moves later, just four short of the sanctuary of the 50-move rule.

It’s very much to Abdusattorov’s credit that he was able to recover the next day and win nicely against Parham Magsoodloo, though the loss may have had some delayed effect on his nerves. After drawing with Ian Nepomniachtchi in the penultimate round, he looked really jittery in the final round as White against Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and lost badly, leading to the blitz playoff, which Pragg finally won ahead of Javokhir Sindarov and Abdusattorov himself.

The best game in Tashkent was, of course, Richard Rapport’s fantastic victory as black against Pragg, which Robert Ris has already annotated here as a strong candidate for the best game of the year. It’s interesting that Rapport played it immediately after losing to Sindarov and following the start of 2/6. Either he showed terrific resolve, or perhaps he’d had enough and just decided to let rip. Indeed, being able to trust “your hand” is another crucial attribute of a top player. There are definitely times when a grandmaster’s got to sac what a grandmaster’s got to sac. (Don’t you love dictation software? It’s just rendered the second “got to sac” as “cul-de-sac”.)

Experts examine the games of Max Euwe. Let them show you which openings Euwe chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were, which tactical abilities he had or how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame.
Max Euwe became the fifth World Chess Champion after beating Alexander Alekhine in the 1935 World Championship match. A maths teacher by profession, Euwe remained an amateur throughout his life, but was still the best chess player in the Netherlands, and one of the world’s best players. Euwe holds the record for the most Dutch national championships, with twelve. After winning the World Championship, Euwe was also the world’s best player for a while. He lost the title again in 1937 in the rematch against Alexander Alekhine.
Free video sample: Openings

Richard Rapport at the UzChess Cup | Photo: Shahid Ahmed

Since I wrote the second paragraph, Carlsen has lost at rapid play against Gukesh, and afterwards, he said that he wasn’t enjoying playing chess. Though I don’t think we should take this too seriously. I can’t be the only grandmaster who has many times given up chess in his mind after a particularly galling defeat, only to have the siren allure of the board draw him back to the game…

I thought about annotating Pragg v. Rapport again, but it seems a bit unnecessary. So instead, I’ve gone for some critical moments of defeat and redemption in my own games, starting with one of those after which I “gave up chess”: a loss to Gyula Sax in Hastings 1989-90. As I left the hall, I kicked the door viciously and was mortified to see my opponent, a very nice man whom I got on very well with, just behind me.

I’m following with a couple of games from the Escaldes zonal tournament in Andorra nearly a decade later, in 1998. An appalling blunder nearly put me out of contention, and then the glorious (for me) if utterly disgraceful game that enabled me to qualify for an eight-player play-off for six spots in the FIDE knockout world championship in Las Vegas the following year. I was knocked out in the second round by Boris Gelfand, and it was rather unexpectedly won by Alexander Khalifman.

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

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