Lower rated opponent
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess. I am Grandmaster Noël Studer, and today I want to help you play better against lower rated opponents. Now, facing lower rated opponents is one of the most difficult tasks in chess because our expectations arise. We feel like only a win is a good result, but in chess, we can't force a win, right?

We need our opponent make mistakes for us to have actually chances to win this game. And this sometimes leads to very, very absurd games. In one game of a friend of mine, he saw that one of his two legal moves would lead to a draw. And as he was facing a lower rated opponent, he His branch told him, well, play the other move instead, so he just moved his king the other way, and two moves later, he was checkmated.

He just willingly stepped into [00:01:00] a checkmate in two, and mind you, that was not just a random guy. It was a grandmaster. And that just shows you that sometimes when we play against lower rated opponents, we make extremely irrational decisions. We want to avoid the draw or even the thought or the possibility of a draw so badly that we lose.

that we end up destroying our position and losing the game. I see that in openings, for example, people think, oh no, this line is too drawish, I can't play that against a lower rated opponent. Or when they are supposed to exchange queens, they think, no, no, no, I shouldn't exchange queens because when queens are off the board, it will be an end game and my opponent will be able to hold a draw.

And all of these You know, weird psychological effects just lead to you playing worse than [00:02:00] you would because you aren't fully focused on playing the best move in the position, but instead you focus on playing the move that in your irrational emotional mind could give you the most winning chances. And my former coach, Grandmaster Markus Ruger always asked me a good question in those moments After the games, he told me, was this a try to win the game, or was it only a try to lose the game?

Because, yeah, some of the times we want to avoid the draw, but the only other outcome, as with my friend that stepped in a checkmate in 2, was losing the game. So that's not the right approach. Now, what is the right approach? The right approach is surprisingly simple, because let's just get this rationally straight.

You're playing against someone who has a lower rating than you. What does that mean? That [00:03:00] means on an average game, you are playing better moves, better chess, and have better results than them. If you both play your normal game, You will likely win the game, but you also have to remember that if you're a hundred points high rated, you might have an expectation of scoring like 70 percent of the points, 75 percent of the points.

Maybe it's even lower than that. You never have a hundred percent expectation. So the draw and even occasionally losing game is just part of the game. And I learned that even more when I started to play poker. Poker, you have percentages, right? And you can get all the money in the middle and you can have 90%.

Now it feels like you're, you're the correct winner of that pot, but you need to remind yourself that one in every 10 times, if you are a 90 [00:04:00] percent winner, you will lose that pot. And that's very important to understand when you play against lower rated opponents. You're not going to win every game and you're not supposed to win every single game.

What you're supposed to do is to play your best chess and to see where this leads. So instead of having all these crazy idea about Not exchanging queens, not going into boring opening lines, not going into endgames, uh, not having opposite colored bishops, having a symmetrical structure, whatever could lead you to think that a draw is more likely, stop thinking about those things and start thinking about the best move in the position.

Because the reality is, if you play your best chess, You have a much higher likelihood to get a good position, to put pressure on your opponent, and [00:05:00] then your opponent will make mistakes. And actually sometimes it's extremely surprising where our lower rated opponents make mistakes. Maybe it is exactly because they are bad in endgames that seem so drawish that they are lower rated than you.

So, instead of avoiding trading the queens, if that's especially against kids, for example, they love to attack you, so if a kid is much lower rated than you, it might be smart to get the queens off the board and get into a drawish position, because they dislike strategic positional slow games, and there they are much more prone to make mistakes.

So, really, instead of just always focusing on the result, what position could give you better chances to win, you need to focus from the first move on to play the best possible [00:06:00] move. And really that means play your openings that you know best. Play the openings you would also play against an equally strong or a stronger opponent.

If that opening seems good enough against those people, it probably is good enough against a lower rated opponent as well. As an example, I've won a lot of games when I played the Queen's Gambit Accepted, which sounds like the most drawish opening ever. And there is this line where on move 7, you know, White just takes all the play out of the game and exchange the Queens.

And I have like a 85 percent winning rate in this opening, because I'm just better at endgames than the lower rated opponents. So they are trying to get the draw, but again, they don't play the best moves. They just play the moves they think lead to the most draw ish position, but then they play this draw ish position badly and I will outplay them [00:07:00] and I won many, many, many games.

Don't think about where you want to go, but think about what is the best move in this position and play it. And you can see that with Magnus Carlsen, because he just plays such long games all the time. And the longer the game is, the more opportunities you give to your lower rated opponent to make a mistake, then you can capture the initiative, and then you can win the game.

So, in short, the best way to beat the lower rated opponent is focus on yourself, play what you think is the best move possible, and see where this leads you. And it's very important to remind yourself you are not supposed to win every single game against lower rated opponents. It is normal that there are occasional draws and even that sometimes you will lose a game.[00:08:00] 

That's all right. There is much less pressure on you. You have that mindset and now next time you face a lower rated opponent, try to enjoy the game. Don't think about the results. Play your best chess, and you'll see that you are this way more likely, be happy after the game. Cause it turns out, you were better, and you win the game.

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