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Hiya

Ignore the critics. Have fun. It’s a game after all. I just learnt the moves this week and am already amazed by how much fun this game is. I have always ignored criticism. Folk do it to make their sad little egos feel better. Just smile, take a breath, and remember that they don’t matter. Never let anything you cannot control become your problem.

There's also Bar Le Cloître

So nice girl you are!

so true!

I remember when GM Shankland lost such endgame. That was so funny to me becouse he wrote a large book on rook endings😅. Don't worry, your play with every tournament gets better. Big hug 🤗

Nice gambits!

I have exactly this old wooden vintage set about 60 years old, perfect look, easy to play, its heavy and solid. i.etsystatic.com/16292345/r/il/b4a814/3469862458/il_794xN.3469862458_3tn4.jpg

Is Bxh6 goblin mode? 😮 In that case ill pass on that one. 😅

Being a TH-cam creator must be really hard. Having people being super critical of you the whole time is never gonna be nice. Try and remember that you are the one out there doing it, they are all sat in their armchairs spouting crap to make themselves feel better about their miserable lives.

then quit, why do we need to know

"I love classical chess [...] I love the time it gives me to think about a position [...] but I find it so emotionally draining [...] i think that I just care too much" - this is how i feel! And all i am doing is playing club matches and then slinking off home, only been doing it for a year. And yes i enjoy it, i love the feeling of playing proper chess, with time to think. I won my last game last week, but i came back and said to my partner that i think i put too much pressure on myself to be able to enjoy it. I'm so nervous during the games. They are starting to feel like I'm just sort of panicking for like 2-3 hours at a time. Which as much as anything else, is very tiring. Must be so much harder when you're making videos about each game.

Don't be put off by the cheap critics. Your presentation will likely encourage newer players to follow your example and try competitive chess. I played competitively a lot in my teens (back in the late 60s and 70s(!)) Lots of chess players can be quite rude and arrogant. Keep up the good work.

Is it wrong to follow you because u are so pretty 😅?

You are very mature as a person who has the ability to analyze yourself very accurately. It's not the skills you lack, but the low confidence which you can work on while behind the board saying to yourself:" I can do this". Mostly in complex positions you just need that extra calmness to shut your fears and just cold calculate. You can do it and I am impressed by your professional presentation on your videos. Keep up the good work because you inspire me and many others. 👍🤗👑

Yeah

Is it ok if i still pick a folding set because i always want to bring around my chess set so i can play with my friends lol

So heartbreaking to see you tear up. You are so brave!!

As an "advanced" beginner, my most joyful experience with chess is to play the openings out of order and realize that you have arrived to a familiar position.

Was this in an airbnb room? The background looks different.

Hey Lula. Thank you for such an honest recap of your last game. It was a hard watch, especially when you said how much criticism you get and the attitude of playing chess in England. Please keep playing, don't give up, your still learning and you had a good tournament.

aahh. you're lovely . wanna gi ve you a cuddle and. You are doing great . enjoy whatever happens x

|'m an oft wrecked noob so have developed no icks as yet.

Young lady - If you want to avoid these well analyzed Sicilian, French or other well-known defenses start playing the English (1. c4) very few players prepare for it.

Hey, well done. Appreciated your recap. 😊

20:16 yes you're right about that, the environment seems to favour the overconfident Elitism is everywhere really but yes, in England there is more😅

You are a good player, seems that you may be too hard on yourself. Chess is a difficult game. I think you had a good tournament.

Love her boooooo

Thank you for sharing your OTB experience and insights, Lula. Congrats on your performance, it was good! Just ignore all negative feedback and keep doing what you are doing, for chess is fantastic!

I used to play e4 a lot for about 4 years and switched to d4 as white like colle and play queens gambit .As black D5 against d4 and caro kann against e4 and some timesnimzowitsch defense too.

I still remember a game that I lost in a tournament. It was a draw but I blunder, I try to put some resistance but all I wanna to do was cry. Chess is a brutal game.

I’m glad you’re happy with 4.5/9 in the end and enjoyed the blitz. In this specific opening, basically the reason it is called the Accelerated Dragon is because Black bends over backwards to do everything else before the d pawn, in order to move it two squares. And you mostly seemed to handle that side of things, honestly. Nd5 is only a mistake because it allows Black to pivot from trying to attack into playing positionally for a good endgame, which is not obvious at all. You mobilised well in the early part of the endgame, and the moments where you were supposed to give up material to get the queenside rolling faster also were not obvious at all. I thought you mostly handled it well, though apparently we will not be seeing Open Sicilians from our creator in the future… As you said, classical tournaments are very tiring. And really rewarding too. But mostly tiring. Most people would know. And for those that don’t, but criticise, I saw the ‘man in the arena’ speech quoted somewhere (here?) recently and it goes HARD on the exact type of person you’re moaning about lmao. Hope we see you in action again soon (not too soon?). Thank you for the recaps.

Really love your tournament recaps, and I especially appreciate your honesty and vulnerability. I can't imagine having internet randos criticize me after a tough close loss in classical chess, it would drive me mad

Great tournament 👏. You’re definitely way too hard on yourself. Unless you’re a pro and can focus 100% it’s nearly impossible to dedicate all your time to studying openings etc and still juggle day to day life! I’ve tried to work on a few openings but there are obviously millions of variations and often what you prep is wasted from very early on. I was driving myself insane thinking could learn everything. I now focus on just general principles and hopefully sound moves. It’s often the middle game plans I struggle and very hard to prep those. Probably a case of letting the results take care of themselves and focus on the process and over time it will come. The 10,000 hours approach etc and given a lot of Chess is pattern recognition then just playing should help over time (I hope anyway!). Enjoy a break 👍

Thanks for sharing your game.I say dont quit .Nice game recap as well.

For most people around our level, even playing in a tournament requires a certain amount of courage. You might blunder a piece, or show your ignorance of a basic endgame, and feel a fool because people can see what you did. Streaming your games, and posting your thoughts afterwards, requires a whole other level of courage. I admire your resilience, and envy you for it. Please keep playing. But also keep not-preparing against the Philidor, cos that's what I play.

Honestly I think you played great this game. You didn't know the opening because it was your first time playing it but you still got a pleasant position and it really just came down to time pressure at the end. If anything your ability to hang on despite the time disadvantage is a testament to your skill. Openings and endgames are rough because if you haven't learned or memorized as much as your opponent, it feels like it's just brute force calculation and you always feel worse because you don't want to play a bad move but you also don't want to play into your opponent's prep so you just feel bad. You're a very strong chess player and the haters are usually just insecure about their own rating, misogynistic, and trolls. And as an open sicilian player for White, the secret is it's a scary opening even if you know what you're doing. You're always constantly scared and so is your opponent. So if you're scared while playing it, you're doing it right then lol.

Hi lularobs. You may be disappointed with the result, but please be proud of the way you played! I was watching live and it was gripping stuff! It was like when I watch one of those classic five set matches at Wimbledon where a player is two sets and a break down, they win the third set tie-break, win the fourth set and it's 5-5 in the fifth set with all still to play for. At one stage, it looked all over but you kept fighting and fighting and there were times when you were right back in it! Kudos to your commentary team too, who added to the drama. It's sad to hear that you've been getting criticism. I respect streamers such as yourself who are putting your games out there. From my perspective, it will always be for me an opportunity to learn, so thank you. If you're streaming next when you're in Paris, perhaps I should sign off with "Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année! À bientôt"

I think the world of chess is all the richer for streamers.

Tough loss but well done for persevering for such a long time. Players, even the strongest players, forget their opening prep all the time; it happens and you hopefully have learnt something from the experience. If I am being honest with you, when I came into the playing hall to tidy some equipment away at the end of the tournament, you looked stressed and exhausted; 8 days of classical chess does that to you. Please remember: What you have done is the equivalent of running a marathon over a number of days. Tournament chess is insanely difficult and you should be proud of yourself for completing 9 grueling rounds over the days - Not many chess players can say they have done that. Take a well-deserved break and I look forward to your next set of tournament recaps :-).

Doing this in front of so many people, especially as a player that's not like grandmaster level or something, is a huge challenge. I'm sure there's a great community that supports you and just enjoys engaging with the content and your chess journey, but at the same time it opens you up to so much negativity and people that are just there to hate and be negative. I can really imagine this putting a huge downer on things. Unsollicited advice in itself can already be super frustrating, let alone a bunch of people actively putting you down and things like that Add that on top of the fact that content creation, and playing chess itself can already be super draining in multiple ways, and it's a really difficult thing to handle. I hope you have a good support system around you to deal with it I found your channel relatively recently but I've really enjoyed the content you put out, and game reviews are always interesting to hear your thought and ideas about the game, and your experiences while playing it. It might be good to take a break but I hope you still keep the desire to keep going

Im learning chess from you keep grinding

Kind of heart wrenching watching this! Chess is a cruel hobby, but also so satisfying when things go well. Hang in there!! Fun times will be back!!! (PS you did a selfie with me on the Tuesday!! I was very happy - famous chess streamer and all .... )

Be patience 🙏

It's so damn easy to toss around comments and critisism through the internet using a nickname. I would not give too much attention to comments like that. Chess is a learning process for a lifetime, everyone plays a bad game every now and then. Even a World Champion can blunder a piece in one move as we have seen. So my advice would be not to take hostile comments too seriously. One can immadiately see which comments have been written simply to irritate ad which ones are written with a sincere idea to offer constructive options. I have played for 25 or so years and I'm around 1900. Despite of that I still find every single sicilian line to be 'threatening' and not comfortable so please don't feel bad if you feel the same about sicilian openings. Of course one always ends up playing positions one does not find to be too comfortable but anyway. Opening 'theory' is rather important I have learned though. Or atleast familiarize oneself with a few lines per a common opening so one can get a decent position after the first moves. As I mentioned before about the sicilians I have 'created' an opening I can play as white against e5 or c5 and 'every time' get a similar position I'm comfortable with and atleast equal against my opponent. That does help a lot I think. The opening I 'created' just happened to develop on its own while I kept on playing and I found out it's 'always' solid and offers me options and play no matter what my opponent plays against me. Only after several years I found out that opening I had 'developed on my own by just playing and playing' actually is an extremely rare sideline of an e4 opening or a sicilian opening by transposition.

Ive been playing chess for decades before the internet and been following you off and on from when you started streaming. All I can say is that I won't make any criticism or suggestion at all. You're very impressive as you are and if sometimes people don't let you know that, but only the critics and smart Alecs contact you, then that must be difficult. Go well.

Grey or red squirrel? Lemsip Max is the way to go! I'm rated 590 on Chesscom, I'll be lucky if I reach 1000, though nothing to prove to anyone but myself. Thanks for sharing the ups and downs of your chess journey. Don't let the Bishops tear you down! Remember to have fun, enjoy life and the rest will fall into place 🙃🙂👍

You know.. besides that, that i agree with your in my opinion healthy relationship to chess, and because i peaked at around same elos like you for decades, i have the conclusions: its really good enough. If you look into the percentages.. you are already better than 95% of chessplayers on this planet. And thats with only 4 years of chessplaying. To put more efford in it, putting another 4 years, exhausting yourself, just to squish another 1 % out of the rock.. it could be to much... You know we like you as content creator.. you know, we resonate with you, and you resonate with us. There is a fine balance i think between feeling the reward of chess and the content out of it, AND the efford put in it. In the end there is also a life to live. And when chess (or any other thing in life) begins to feel exhausting, just to squish another % out of the rock, it needs to slowed down a bit. To the amount were its fun again. I hope this doesnt comes from top down. Absolutely not, because i am often in the same shoes like you, where i realize "mh, that was emotional exhausting.. this maybe took more from me away than it gave me".. Meaning: i still often miss that sweet spot between efford and feeling rewarded. Its quite a thin balance in my opinion. And yes that also doesnt mean that we never should suffer a bit. Because like you pointed it out perfect: because you "suffer" it means you care. And because you care, you was able to get that good in so short time! Its really a shooting star developement! So yes, a bit of pain is the salt ingredient for success. Definetely. But as Paracelsus said: the dose makes the pois*n. So yes recognizing "whats the sweet spot for me between efford/pain and reward" is individual and differs from person to person. I cant add to much to your thoughts.. all what i wrote come from the same realm as your thoughts, in my opinion. But maybe it further inspires your thoughts on this. To play a competitive chess was a very good idea for content! Definetely! I loved to see your recaps and your journey in that tournement. It wasnt about winning or losing. You are a content creator within the chess sport. And that means: the reward was the adventure! And i dont say that out of pity. Because 4,5 of 9 is indeed a good score in a over-the-board tournament! And as you said it with a healthy state of mind: its probably the last tournament for a long time. Because its the adventure whats all about.. this was worth to take. And there are other adventures too.. And you know: how much we enjoy it :) Hope i found the words to my thoughts. Because i know how bad it can be when someone feels like "i explain whats the problem" . As you said it: you know every critics because you have already all those thoughts. So i hope nothing what i wrote comes as something like "i explain to you whats the problem" .. Its much more a : i am in the same shoes like you. And i think: it gives, and it takes. Its how people like us are, and think, and feel.

Thank you for both streaming this tournament AND doing all of the breakdowns--both the ones where you won and the ones where you didn't. I have been learning so much, and your teaching/breakdown explanations are incredible. I also think it is admirable that you are holding back some of your prep. Some streamers/content creators give away too much, I think, and they become detached from the game and disillusioned. It is awesome that you are a chess player first and then also a content creator; not the other way around.