"It was incredibly shaky! I thought early on that I was doing alright, but I couldn’t figure it out, and then I lost the thread. I think she [GM Zhu Jiner] completely outplayed me for a while there—I didn’t like what was going on at all."
Carlsen admitted his 14.Nh4?! was "really a bit too much," explaining, "I just didn't know what to do and I was down to 26 minutes or something, and having no idea what my plans were."
After my first outing with the 'pure' Dutch Defense in Annotated Game #342, I immediately and surprisingly got a chance to redeem myself as Black, thanks to the tournament director generously giving me two Blacks in a row, which also made it it 3 out of 4 Blacks for the tournament to that point. Naturally I had been mentally prepared to play as White, so it was not an auspicious start.
In contrast to the previous game, my opponent confidently played the 2. Bg5 sideline, although by move 8 I had fully equalized. The Dutch sidelines can generate some strange-looking positions, so I had very little to fall back on for guidelines and standard plans. As the analysis shows, wild-looking attacking play is what the Dutch sometimes demands - see the move 9 variations - although my more solid approach was going well enough until the blunder 10...Kf7? That opened the door for White to easily and quickly ramp up pressure against my king, and my opponent did a good job of mobilizing her pieces effectively and inviting them all to the party, taking advantage of further mistakes on my part.
I recently completed Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Hardcover, 2009). Given that it has been around for over 15 years at this point, it is not surprising that some of its main ideas are in general circulation and widely accepted. However, since motivation is so central to learning and improvement, I still found it valuable to read and reflect on the original source.
The core concept is that the exercise of complex, creative knowledge-based skills and one's performance on related tasks is best driven by intrinsic (internal) motivation, rather than extrinsic (external) rewards. While the book is largely oriented towards business-related scenarios, a significant part of it applies to the broader process of mastery, as reflected in Training quote of the day #60. The author enumerates three elements of intrinsic motivation; what follows is my own summation/understanding of each, which are also interrelated:
1) Autonomy - you feel you have personal agency, which means that your decisions matter and help shape outcomes.
2) Mastery - here the author, as often occurs, refers to its manifestation in the "flow" state as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - thereby demonstrating one's full engagement in a task. "Compliance" is contrasted with "mastery" as opposite approaches. The former reflects a lack of autonomy and more mechanistic approach to tasks (following instructions capably), while the latter incorporates a deeper understanding of the situation and a creative approach. One common illustration is the difference between a cook (someone who only follows recipes provided by others) and a chef in the kitchen.
3) Purpose - you feel that the goal of your work/activity is meaningful and worthwhile.
I'll offer some personal views on how this all relates to the pursuit of chess mastery:
Because "chess is hard" an improving player certainly has to feel that their purpose is worth the time and effort invested, since it will take a significant amount of both to achieve something close to mastery, with more needed the higher you go on the scale.
Finally, the mental trap of focusing too much on rating outcomes is not just a common source of anxiety, but can undermine a player's long-term motivation and purpose. A rating goal is not necessarily a problem - it is an objective measure of performance level - but when it becomes the primary purpose then I believe our thinking can become excessively warped. The purpose of improvement is to grow in chess strength and understanding over time, which is eventually reflected in a higher rating due to performance achievements. Your personal strength level is intrinsic, while a numerical rating by definition is an extrinsic statistical snapshot in time and result-dependent. Obsessing over rating is similar to the mental trap of focusing on receiving a high grade on a test, and putting all your effort into "gaming the system" to try to obtain that grade, rather than on mastering the underlying material.
This third-round game saw me bravely use the 'true' or 'pure' Dutch Defense (1.d4 f5) for the first time as Black. I've previously played the Dutch Stonewall by transposition, but decided to adopt the move one version so I can use the Leningrad Variation. My opponent was rather hesitant during the first few moves, which indicated to me that he was not familiar with the Dutch at all. That said, he played into the main fianchetto line for White with the rare 4. f4!? thrown in, apparently in an effort to play symmetrically and reduce the chances of any surprises. As a result I equalized rather easily, but then blew the middlegame with some poor choices, including misunderstanding the best way of contesting the a-file. That has happened before in my games, so I hope I've learned my lesson there. The Dutch performed well in the opening phase, however, so the loss was not its fault; I'll need to do better by it in the future.
In this second-round tournament game, my opponent initially struggles with her unfamiliarity in the opening (a Colle-Zukertort) but eventually a small error is made leading to much greater vulnerabilities and a relatively quick breakthrough for White on the kingside. Broadly similar to Annotated Game #339 and others, I've seen a recurring pattern in the Colle where White obtains no actual advantage out of the opening, but like a shark lurks in calm waters, waiting for the opponent to offer up some tasty meat. There are no spectacular sacrifices here, although there is a tactical forced end sequence - just an illustration of how White's pieces can quickly activate in a threatening, sometimes decisive manner. At the same time, analysis shows how patience and constant pressure can also be required, as in the note to move 16.
