Drawing tendencies

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Jon Mahony
Posts: 670
Joined: Sun Jun 14, 2009 10:47 pm
Location: Leeds

Re: Drawing tendencies

Post by Jon Mahony » Tue Sep 01, 2015 11:05 pm

I must admit I've become quite a coward over the last couple of years, mainly because I've been obsessed with catching my YCA grade up with my ECF and have taken or offered draws in reasonably better positions, because I've decided a slight grading increase is better than risking loosing points, and it's probably time for a pint in the bar!

I was having a look at my draw ratio on chessnuts for the last year and there are a ton of 1/2's on there (granted, usually against people 20+ points higher rated, so this could be considered a success, but a good half of those games I was probably winning). I've also done a lot of Majors recently, and usually getting 3 blacks, a score of 1.5-2 made up of half points seems respectable at the time.

There were two sides to my game last year - in the Leeds evening league we were playing much inferior opponents (thankfully my team got promoted for the coming season) and I made a conscious effort to crush everyone, consequently I won 13, lost none and drew 1 (a draw offered to me, which I very gladly accepted as i'd blown it and was a full rook down!).

Practically everywhere else I was playing much stronger opposition, on occasions I didn't loose, I would get the game into a position where it looked scary for my opponent, but if I couldn't see a clear win would offer a draw in the middle game which would usually be accepted by a sweating 140-160.

I've vowed to change this for the coming season, as I want to make a sizable grading improvement sometime soon, and what I'm doing is giving me about 2 extra points every time the new ECF grade comes out.

I made a good start over the weekend at Leyland and managed to joint win the U135 section (couldn't resist going in as top seed) because I consciously went for it in every game, even taking horrendous risks against Dave "draw master" Scorer - granted they were too horrendous as I lost :lol: but I kind of felt good that I didn't allow him to trade every piece and settle in for our usual 15 move draw.
"When you see a good move, look for a better one!" - Lasker