Vacations and Chess

Here I am… back from a 2 week vacations.

It was cool since it gave me time to sleep a lot - and I badly needed it because work consumed most of my awakened hours of the last weeks, and a lot of hours when I should be sleeping - and to play in a chess tournament in Amadora (linky).

The tournament was cool. I ended up in 11th, with the same points of the guy that ended up in 7th. It wasn't bad at all for me - I actually wasn't expecting to have so many points. My ELO rating is around 1807 right now, but I'm going to have a big fall on the next list. This is mostly due to some really bad games I played in the last epoch. Since my rating is quite recent (1807 is my first international rating) each defeat costs me a lot of points.

Anyway, having a good ELO is cool because it kind of serves as a comparison between players, but playing chess just for the sake of ELO is not my objective. I believe that if you really are good at it, sooner or later, your ELO will follow you. Too bad I'm not really good at it right now :(. Unfortunately, some players seem to take it the other way around: they get obsessed with their ELO and they start playing for the sake of it. Now, where's the fun in that? I don't think they actually enjoy much of the game when they get to that condition. And if you aren't having fun playing chess, why should you bother playing it at all?