So I am a class B player who has been improving rather quickly. I have a strong background in sports and all sorts of games. I am extremely competitive by nature and have been especially successful in poker and video games. But here is the problem...

I have never competed in a game before where draws are a big part of the game like chess. I feel like my brain processes draws as losses rather than as something in between a win and a loss. I feel almost as bad after a draw as I do after a loss even though draws are obviously a part of the game that will only become more common as I move up the ladder.

The consequence of my overly negative attitude towards draws is that I often find myself trying to force wins in equal or slightly worse positions. As a result, I end up taking huge risks that ruin my position and lead to a loss because I would rather complicate things for a tiny chance at a win than accept that I should be competing for a draw.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I seem to really struggle to wrap my head around the somewhat drawish nature of chess. Does anyone have any suggestions for overcoming this mental block? I obviously don't want to become one of those guys who plays like a wuss and brags about his draws against higher rated players. But at the same time, playing for draws when appropriate needs to be a part of my game. Thanks for any help!

I haven't played for awhile but one aspect of a draw is that the player can see that the position is a drawing position. This means that understanding of the position is important irrespective of who you are playing.

Now, you may play on if you believe your opponent is not so understanding and may blunder but look at it as if its about the position and not the player(s).

Thinking/feeling in this manner may keep you from attempting to put a square peg into a round hole.

I think you're working with the faulty assumption that at Class B, a balanced, equal, or even dry position will naturally lead to a draw a lot of the time, as it might in a game between very strong players. You and your opponents will make mistakes naturally, so you shouldn't really be forcing the issue.

If you want to play more enterprising chess, which isn't a bad thing, you could also focus more on steering the game into imbalanced territory, instead of allowing dry positions to arise in the first place.

But seriously, unless you're a professional or undertaking a serious, realistic quest to become a master, you should want to play because you enjoy it. Consequently, if you want to play exciting, swashbuckling chess like Tal or Chigoran, go for it!

You know my view, that at our level there are no true drawish positions. You have the right attitude until you make the mistake of playing tournaments. I play lots of gambits in the openings and try to sacrifice pawn for initiative in the middle game. And the end game...who plays endgames.

Here is an example from my most recent tournament that is very typical of my thought process up to this point in my development:



My 1600 opponent has just played 14... Nfd7. Intellectually, I realized during the game that NxN was the best move. But it looked dead and drawish to me. I went into "a draw is a loss mode" instead of "play the best move" mode and was ready to do just about anything to avoid the dreaded NxN. So I played 15. Nd3 fully realizing that 15... e5 was a major problem. I voluntarily entered a worse position hoping to increase my winning chances even though I knew I was drastically increasing my chances of losing. Needless to say, my opponent happily played 15... e5 and my attempts to complicate the position were thwarted. I do this type of thing quite often. I almost never lose serious material or get checkmated in long time controls, but I frequently make these types of decisions which lead to a slow, grinding death.

I think a better title for my thread might have been "learning to adapt to the drawish nature of chess" or some such. To be clear, I am talking primarily about dealing with a psychological leak... my brain equating draws to losses or perceiving boring, equal position as losing positions.

I play for both enjoyment and competition... they are one and the same to me. I simply love to compete and improve at games. In all other games/sports I have played, draws basically do not exist. My mind is wired to compete for a win and to do my absolute best to find a way to win even if things are going poorly. The inclusion of draws into the mix really seems to confuse me.

And fwiw, I am fully aware that I have tons of leaks in my chess game. I just feel like this psychological leak should be a relatively easy fix. In the game I posted, I could certainly play NxN and win. But to do so, I have to be psychologically willing to accept that a draw is okay.

Some adjustments I have already made that have really helped:

1) Making myself play positional openings such as the Catalan, Caro-Kann, and the Accelerated Dragon where I will usually be playing in the center or queenside.

2) Working hard on my endgames and learning to appreciate their beauty so that I am less inclined to go kamikaze in the middle game.

3) Trying harder to appreciate the games of players like Karpov, Petrosian, and Kramnik.

4) Just generally being proud of myself when I win long, grindy games.

I have also considered creating a personal rating system for my USCF rated games that gives me a small bonus for draws or some such lol.

Fwiw, I spend the vast majority of my training time on tactical puzzles, endgames, and long over the board or online games. As long as my openings are "good enough" at my level (they almost always are), I am happy and spend my study time on more important topics since class players inevitably change our repertoires multiple times before reaching expert anyway.

It sounds to me that you may just not have much confidence in your endgame. Even at the top level of chess a lot of wins are squeezed out in slightly better or even drawn endings. At our relative level someone very good at endgames could just have a field day in equal endings. Although, note that being good at endgames often means having good patience in general.

As for that position, due to the structure there is definitely still a lot of play (if you want it) after you trade knights.

Now, if you just hate going into positions that "look dry" even after studying endgames or you don't want to get better at endgames, then you should be even a bit more enterprising in your opening choices so that you don't get to many "dry looking" positions.

Btw, not wanting to dry is a good thing. Most people have the opposite problem and agree to draws or go for draws and don't learn or improve.

But yeah, just play what you think is the best move and if that leads to a draw, when you go back over the game you'll see x234234234 ways you actually could have won it instead anyway .

This is a serious forum. No trolling allowed

I love that last sentence! That is definitely what I feel like I have been doing in these situations... trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Hmmm, good points... I do think I tend to underestimate my chances in "balanced, equal, or dry" positions. I have very limited experience in such positions and endgames... I am usually significantly ahead or behind by the time the endgame approaches. That being said, I have definitely put a lot of hard work into my endgame in the last couple months. I should definitely be more confident about entering these positions since I should probably be a favorite in an equal endgame against players at my level.

As far as enterprising chess, I started off as a maniac like a lot of 1200ish players. Currently, I focus very hard on fundamentally sound play and seek to "torture" my opponents with strong play in the center and queenside. I do think I am light years ahead of players at my level tactically though, so I maybe I should consider playing more violently lol.

Fwiw, my goal is just to reach class A and then reevaluate. If I am having fun and feel like I have a lot of potential left, I will try to keep going. Also, I am such a chesstard that I did not immediately realize that that was Anish Giri lol. I would obv be pretty happy to constantly draw the best players in the world even if my style was pretty boring!

Excellent point about lacking confidence in my endgame skill. I do think I am good at endgames or at least will become good with more experience. But I need to be willing to enter equal endgames to find out and gain this confidence. I agree that the game is still pretty interesting after I trade knights in that position. I feel like he has the better bishop, the safer king, and that ...e5 is coming with effect. But I should be able to untangle my bishop, keep my king safe, and fight for an open file. A minority attack might also be possible.

I have won a lot of games where I complicate positions like this and use my tactical base to turn the game in my favor. But my feeling is that purposely making weaker moves to complicate positions will blow up in my face more and more often as I approach 1800.

One final thought... maybe i should be less concerned about this "psychological leak" since it may just be a natural consequence of spending most of my study time on tactical puzzles. I have been training my brain to find the most violent continuation, so maybe this tendency will naturally resolve once I spend more time focusing on other aspects of the game. Great points, thank you!

Draws are perfectly ok as long as you gain rating points and they are also ok against equal opposition, because it reduces variance. They are also ok as part of an opening repertoire that is build on a freeroll. If your opponents manage to find all the perfect moves, they actually deserve half a point.

Needless to mention, there is: www.forced-draw.com

I used to take chess pretty seriously but I peaked at ~1600 on fics about 10 years ago so take this with a grain of salt as I'm sure you will:

If there's nothing but pride on the line then why would you want to draw anyways? Like in poker, you'll do well to put your opponent in a position to make big mistakes.

Maybe have some fun with openings that give you the best chance to win the game instead of the safest openings available.

I get that you're really competitive and you want to make class A. Maybe that's more important to you than having fun?

I don't think I've agreed with a single post you've made on this chess forum.

Draws are not perfectly ok. Playing to gain rating points and reduce variance is a stupid and boring approach to chess. A "freeroll" opening repertoire only makes sense if you're an IM or better. Nobody "deserves" anything in chess (nor does anybody play perfect chess). And the forced draw is a flaw in the game that you're only justified in exploiting if you want to piss off Garry Kasparov in a simul.

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some gto chess advice here

I know im late to the party and havent read the whole thread yet, but this position doesn't seem drawish to me. Equal, yes, but drawish, no.

i always read this thread title and think someone cant accept draws in poker, they only play made hands

ask drelo for lessons. jk, but maybe seriously.

i think the simplest solution is to play openings that don't lead to drawish endgames. another solution is to become super expert at drawish endgames (imo the ladder is harder due to way more permutations/variations, altho a lot of similar themes).

Check the % of draws every openings leads to. I'm sure theres huge database on chess.com or some library. Obviously that isn't going to be an instant solution, but it can show some perspective.

Also it's a huge disadvantage when villain knows u don't like draws. I've certainly used it against higher rated opponents and won games i shouldn't have.

I play the french and I don't often get a position I feel is drawish except for the exchange french (luckily I have a solution against that). I always feel like it's a double edged position in the advanced, tarrasch, winawer, etc. There's probably more volatile openings like the svesnikov, etc.

I also mixed in caro (kinda diminishes a ton of winning chances, but significantly improves drawing chances) into my repertoire against higher rated villains (not lower) due to its draw-ish reputation. I don't care about being a wuss. I thought it was more +ev at the time and gave me potential bragging rights.

looking at the winawer main line (poison pawn) in 2017, i think i've learned something and its about time to pull that line out of my repetoire.

it's also surprising to me that the svesnikov is very drawish at the higher level. i guess if villain is theoried out then its a bad line, but i don't think many B players are theoried out.

If you want to avoid early equal positions against 1600s, think on this: How did you get to this boring ass middle game with a worse Bishop after 14 moves?

...except most members of the Elo-2700 are doing it. Check out the blog from the website mentioned above and you will see numerous examples.

For the amateur level I fully agree with you of course, because amateurs play for fun. As soon as you do this for a job, you have to play for rating points.

Okay, this will be important and valuable advice when OP decides to start playing chess professionally.

There is another aspect to it. As a poker player you are trying to emulate professionals, because you know that they must be doing something right. As a chessplayer this might be a good idea also. Maybe the reason why amateurs - even good amateurs who can actually calculate rather well - fail so often, could be that their strategy is simply wrong. You simply have to know the forced draws, either to make them or to avoid them.

Check out this comment from yesterday at the Grenke Tournament: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzwONtAd1W4&t=118m18s

Leko, who has the reputation for the world's biggest Drawmeister, actually came off like a boss during the whole commentary. He saw tons of stuff and certainly much more than Gusti. Leko is a very impressive player, his risk level against equal or better opposition is just on the lowest end of the scale.

What starting ELO do you think this knowledge starts becoming a priority?

I think it is deeply implausible that the difference between "good amateurs who can actually calculate rather well" and professional players is not understanding the nuances of forced draws. Unless these amateurs are titled players, in which case I still don't see how this is at all relevant to OP's question.

The fundamental problem I have with your maximize-your-rating approach to chess is that it's not fun and doesn't help you improve your game.