Thursday 3 August 2017

Non tilt

In the good old days, a bad loss in a tournament was necessarily the end of the world. Equilibrium could be restored by the simple trick of taking a quick draw, before focusing on winning the event. Of course this was if you were playing in a 23 round event, a luxury few of us can afford these days.
In a short swiss event, every round counts, meaning that a loss can be far more destabilising. In some cases a player can try a little too hard, and the whole event can go totally pear shaped. In Poker parlance, this is referred to as 'going on tilt', a term that is now also common in chess. On the other hand, if an aggressive response does work, then 'getting back on the horse' is the how it usually gets written up.
IM Andrew Brown had this exact experience at the ANU Open. After a loss to Fred Litchfield in round 5, he bounced back with a couple of good wins. Although it wasn't enough to catch Litchfield, it did provide the spectators with some entertaining chess, including this quick last round win.

Brown,Andrew - Hathiramani,Dillon [B21]
2017 ANU Open Canberra, Australia (7.2), 30.07.2017


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