The Stupid Bowl: When A Win Feels Like A Loss
I was rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers to win the "Super" Bowl over the Arizona Cardinals, and win they did - barely - by a 27-23 score. Yet their players consistently exhibited such stupid and undisciplined behavior in the game that I find myself unable to enjoy the victory. Why is it so hard for professionals to behave like professionals?
Any one or any team can lose a competition. The opponent can be stronger or in better form, may have achieved an edge in preparation - you name it. And we all make mistakes. It's painful, though, to see a loss that results from self-inflicted stupidity. There's a lot we can't control, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to falter over areas where we do have control.
The chess lesson? Here's one. When you lose games, think not only about the particular chess reason why the game got away, but about what kind of error you made. Categorize it. In Edmar Mednis's book How to Beat Bobby Fischer, he presents all of Fischer's losses (in serious games) from 1958-1972 and creates a brief taxonomy of losing factors. Sometimes Fischer lost because he tried too hard to win and sometimes he was careless, but usually he was simply outplayed.
What about us? It's a good exercise to think about how we lose games - what are the trends there? (Alex Yermolinsky has a good discussion of this in The Road To Chess Improvement.) If one is outplayed, that's fine. As Fischer said after a loss to Spassky in 1992, sometimes you give the lesson and sometimes you get one. If the culprit isn't the opponent so much as ourselves, then we have something serious to work on. I've known players who shrug off losses by saying that their opponent was lucky. That's a good coping strategy during a tournament, and it may even be true that the opponent was lucky. But a person who is consistently losing games and "explaining" them as bad luck is going to continue losing games he shouldn't.
So what's the real explanation? If one tends to underestimate the opponent, then cultivate a more respectful attitude. Huge upsets are possible in chess and happen on a regular basis. One strategy is to get into the habit of asking what one's opponent is up to, what the point of their last move happened to be. If the problem is time trouble, there are ways of combating that too. If it's regularly blowing endgames, study endgames. In short, one should strive to be a meta-thinker - someone who thinks about one's thinking. (And not only about one's mistakes and weaknesses, but about one's strengths, too, as well as the opponent's strengths and weaknesses.)
Of course, this is a great lesson outside of chess, too, but that's a sermon for another day.
Any one or any team can lose a competition. The opponent can be stronger or in better form, may have achieved an edge in preparation - you name it. And we all make mistakes. It's painful, though, to see a loss that results from self-inflicted stupidity. There's a lot we can't control, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to falter over areas where we do have control.
The chess lesson? Here's one. When you lose games, think not only about the particular chess reason why the game got away, but about what kind of error you made. Categorize it. In Edmar Mednis's book How to Beat Bobby Fischer, he presents all of Fischer's losses (in serious games) from 1958-1972 and creates a brief taxonomy of losing factors. Sometimes Fischer lost because he tried too hard to win and sometimes he was careless, but usually he was simply outplayed.
What about us? It's a good exercise to think about how we lose games - what are the trends there? (Alex Yermolinsky has a good discussion of this in The Road To Chess Improvement.) If one is outplayed, that's fine. As Fischer said after a loss to Spassky in 1992, sometimes you give the lesson and sometimes you get one. If the culprit isn't the opponent so much as ourselves, then we have something serious to work on. I've known players who shrug off losses by saying that their opponent was lucky. That's a good coping strategy during a tournament, and it may even be true that the opponent was lucky. But a person who is consistently losing games and "explaining" them as bad luck is going to continue losing games he shouldn't.
So what's the real explanation? If one tends to underestimate the opponent, then cultivate a more respectful attitude. Huge upsets are possible in chess and happen on a regular basis. One strategy is to get into the habit of asking what one's opponent is up to, what the point of their last move happened to be. If the problem is time trouble, there are ways of combating that too. If it's regularly blowing endgames, study endgames. In short, one should strive to be a meta-thinker - someone who thinks about one's thinking. (And not only about one's mistakes and weaknesses, but about one's strengths, too, as well as the opponent's strengths and weaknesses.)
Of course, this is a great lesson outside of chess, too, but that's a sermon for another day.
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Sunday February 1, 2009 at 11:16pm
The personal fouls are different from AZ taking a lot of holding penalties on defense because they kept getting beat by PIT's rushers, and "a hold is better than a sack".
I was rooting for AZ, Kurt Warner in particular, and I wonder why the middle of the field suddenly opened for him in the 4th quarter. Also hard to take that the Steeler's winning drive began with a 10-yard hold back to the 12 yard line, and then Rothlisberger "wasted" 2nd down (and 6) by hurrying a pass play before the 2-minute warning.
It was a gripping game---and a slamming game, and a tugging game, and a little bit o' facemask in there...
() Larry Fitzgerald watching himself on the stadium scoreboard as he ran into the end zone---? A way to see his pursuit (on 5-yards delay, the announcers said!) without turning his head, or silly?
() Nigel Short today---only had to see 57...Qd3+! and the tourney win was his, as well as the right to auction off the coveted 2010 Group A qualification spot on the Internet (someone named Blagojevich might have bid for it:).
Also, Usain Bolt may have missed a world record by what was more obviously grandstanding at the end of one of his Beijing runs.