Nemo121
Posts: 5821
Joined: 2/6/2004 Status: offline
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The key is that winning is an irrelevance. What matters is playing skillfully. Its like Bushido. Obedience and trying matters, success will or won't come but the true follower of the way will accept either victory or failure without surprise or indignation. Play skillfully until the game ends, however it might end. THAT should be your goal. As a sidenote... THAT was my problem with the whole Indian gambit. It was bound to end in something like this and, more importantly, it wasn't the most artful use of your troops possible. Winning and being showy are irrelevancies which exogenous factors may render impossible to achieve BUT you can ALWAYS play more artfully this turn than you did last turn, this month than you did last month and this game than you did last game. In the end I don't view that Damian or Hartwig are my opponents ( and this isn't a dishonour to either of them ). I view them mostly as the means by which I can be pushed to MY limit in order to force the most skillfull play possible. I don't play against THEM, I play against what I think I should be capable of. E.g. I currently feel that while my game against Damian is going reasonably well I have made 3 to 4 serious errors which mean I am about 3 months behind where I should be. So, in-game its going well but, in reality, I amn't playing up to the standard I would aim to achieve, am identifying the reasons for those errors and, hopefully, will learn from them. When push comes to shove your ONLY true opponent is yourself --- or, more accurately, what you should be achieving. So, will you lose? Yes. Will you find it difficult to win any victory in this game, no matter how small? Yes. Does this rob you of the opportunity to play skillfully? Absolutely not. You can play a sublimely skillfull game and still lose every single battle and THAT IS WORTH DOING since winning or losing are mere ephemera in any case.
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