The Difficult Opponent

[Chris Rice]

Great article on chess.com about opponents who, although on paper are roughly evenly matched, but for whatever reason the scores are completely lopsided. It reminded me of a conversation one time I had when travelling to a Kent county match with John Sugden. John asked me who I had lost most to. I think I said something along the lines that I couldn't remember as I had lost a lot of games but I did remember that I had lost to a friend of mine loads of times even though he was no better than me. John had this theory about difficult opponents and said that would make that guy my World No 1! I'm sure we have all got our personal World No 1's.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-d ... t-opponent

[Lewis Martin]

Great article on chess.com about opponents who, although on paper are roughly evenly matched, but for whatever reason the scores are completely lopsided. It reminded me of a conversation one time I had when travelling to a Kent county match with John Sugden. John asked me who I had lost most to. I think I said something along the lines that I couldn't remember as I had lost a lot of games but I did remember that I had lost to a friend of mine loads of times even though he was no better than me. John had this theory about difficult opponents and said that would make that guy my World No 1! I'm sure we have all got our personal World No 1's.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-d ... t-opponent

Depends on how you describe "evenly matched". For example at this stage in my chess, there is one particular player who I've lost 3 times to (out of 3) and all as White! However these losses are at different stages of my own chess development. Nowadays he is probably only slightly stronger than me, though still tough to beat anyway.

If at a later stage I am stronger than him overall, and I still lose to him, then yes of course, he'll be my nemesis, if you like. I've beaten some stronger players who are apparently stronger than me and him, so will probably conclude that he is somehow the World number 1, but I am quite sure that if I ever get the opportunity to play Magnus Carlsen, he'll beat me, and beat me far more convincingly too.

[Niall Doran]

I’ve a club-mate who I’ve played against a few times and who was stronger than me. In our first few games, he’d always beat me by opening up the game, and then going in for positions which required swashbuckling sacrifices and mad tactics. As he is a better player than me tactically, and prefers that type of position, he obviously got better results.

So in order to calm things down, I decided to try to play in a more positional style, refusing gambit pawns, keeping things closed. It was amazing; he played like a fish out of water! He even muttered to himself a few times about my “unsporting” play, as if only mad tactical play was real play. Eventually out of desperation he tried an exchange sac which didn’t really do anything for his position, so I was able to win with my material advantage. Any games we’ve played since have followed a similar pattern.

This won’t work with all your opponents as most of them won’t have such an extreme style as my club-mate, but maybe have a look at the games you played against your opponent, see if there’s anything that sticks out.

[Joey Stewart]

The real difficulty is breaking out of the cycle of losses, I have a couple of bogey players around the 210 level (which is only slightly higher then myself now) who I consistently get bad results against and the problem is that they have become extremely confident when playing against me and generally whip out moves at quite a brisk pace thus putting me down on time as well.

Once I get my first wins on the board I think it will change and some nerves will creep in but right now it feels like I have no edge against such opponents.

It works the same in reverse, I have some opponents who I beat a lot, even so far as to swindle results out of bad positions, and they seem to lack the confidence to convert good games into wins now because of this.


I guess the lesson to be learned here is that chess is more then just a logical exercise in pattern recognition and there is a great deal of a game that takes place in the subconscious.

[MartinCarpenter]

Can't really think of anyone I score unusual well/badly against, probably I just don't play them often enough.

What I seem to have instead is the odd player I draw with, almost regardless of what we do in the earlier stages of the game

[Stewart Reuben]

I lost 5 times to John Nunn, always with the Black pieces. My view is that at least I didn't waste a White on him.

[Joey Stewart]

Would you say that you and John are a roughly equal match?

[Stewart Reuben]

Joey, I have little doubt that I am the better poker player.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I’ve had the pleasure of being a difficult opponent for somebody else.

From about 2000 or thereabouts I played this one chap something like seven times over six years. The score was something like +3 =4 -0 to me. Even though this guy consistently was rated 15-20 points above me throughout that time (other than one year when our grades matched). I had the upper hand in a couple of the draws too.

I really can’t explain it. He was definitely the 'better player' throughout that time. But somehow not when we met face to face.

By the end Joey’s 'law of expected returns' definitely came in to force. The last time we played the guy actually said, "I always lose to you" as he sat down. And then he did.

Curiously, somewhere in the middle of the sequence we played out a quick draw in a French Exchange and to fill the time before the match ended we played some casual blitz chess. He beat me 4-0.


The other side of the coin is that I could name three players at my club against whom I have scored much less well than you’d expect from our grades. Not always at the same time, thankfully, but for periods that seemed to last for years not just a day or two.