[ExI] Chess Player Behavior

[Lee Corbin]

Spike writes

>> ...he interrupted with a laugh and said "Biyassis!  Him, hah!
>> You know, I deliberately misspelled his name 'Biyass' on my
>> scoresheet---I think it really upsets him".

Total coincidence: got my list of USCF Life Members yesterday
and ran accross the *right* spelling of Biyiasas.  :-)

> I was sixteen, freshly minted driver's license, filled with
> the wonder of a newfound freedom.  The Cocoa Florida club arranged the
> county tournament in a lounge of all places.  That was all they could get,
> and it was during the day when the place was closed usually, so they set up
> 14 tables in there.  It was nice but not well enough lit even with
> additional lighting.  But that wasn't the real problem.  The real problem
> was they had a very lifelike painting on the wall of a nude woman...The
> reprehensible malefactors set my chair facing that painting.  {8^D 
> Waves of raging hormones bashed my two remaining operable brain
> cells against each other.

Now *that's* distraction!

> man.  Then he started walking over to my side of the board each time it was
> my move, looking over my shoulder.  This mighta rattled me, but by the time
> he started doing that, his ass was already whooped, as I had a strong
> advantage in addition to a couple pawns and plenty of time on my clock, over
> half an hour more than he had left.

I heard that a certain postal player finally decided to play an OOB tournament
(over the board), but by this time he was so accustomed to looking at every
position from White's point of view that he couldn't play Black at all unless
he got up like your opponent and went around to the other side. In fact, he
did more than that.  He pulled up a chair and sat next to his opponent. 

His opponent was so rattled that he called the tournament director, and
insisted that the guy be forced to sit on his own side of the board. But
neither one of them could find anything in the rule book that mandated
just where someone sits. So this postal player actually got away with 
this.  

(Sometimes I used to stand behind my opponent for a while too, to 
see if from his point of view something different would occur to me.)

As for strong advantages, in the late eighties I was playing in a tournament
in San Jose, and won a rook against this guy, expecting that he would 
resign on the next move.  But this A player, for some bizarre reason, 
decided to keep on playing, perhaps just to exasperate me (he certainly
succeeded in that).  So we reached a King and Pawn endgame that was
perfectly matched and nearly symmetrical: a King and 5 pawns vs. a King
and five pawns, plus my rook that was sitting innocently on my side of the
board.

An acquaintance came by and studied the position, took me aside, and
said "Say, aren't you a rook up?"  In as somber a face as I could manage
I said, "Yes, but the position is very deep."  He just gave me an odd look
and walked away.

Well this nut proceeded to play, and so I managed to penetrate with my
king and rook after all our pawns were blocked. I got his king into a corner
and was one move away from checkmate. IT so happened that we reached
time control just then, and so instead of playing the checkmate move against
him, I asked "Well, should we reset the clocks?"  I was really very annoyed.
At that point he broke, laughed, and resigned.  What a character.

But Spike, did you ever meet any of these class D players who had such
egotistical personalities that when you went over the game (which you won
easily) they spent the whole time explaining to you and to the bystanders
in very authoritative tones exactly what was right and wrong with each
move?  That happened to me twice.  It was kind of irritating because any
casual bystander who wandered by would naturally assume that I had lost
to this fish.  Grrr.

Lee