How To Score A Chess Upset

Every chess player dreams about scoring a huge upset. Maybe you want to beat your dad or grandmother at chess for the first time. Perhaps you’re trying to get your first win against a player rated over 1000, or even 2000. Although it’s rare to defeat someone rated hundreds of points higher than you, that sort of shocking game happens many times every day.

Here are a few ideas to keep in mind for the next time that you want to slay your Goliath. These tips are the same for beginners and masters. Unless you’re GM Magnus Carlsen, there’s always someone more accomplished than you, but you can still beat them. 

Stick To Your Best Openings

Many people feel a need to surprise stronger opponents in the opening. You might think, “They know the opening better than I do. The only way to win is with something strange and unexpected.” The problem with this reasoning is that most surprises are unusual because they are bad!

If you know some good openings, even a few moves deep. That means that you’re playing like a grandmaster for at least a little while. Strong players are difficult to beat from good positions, but they’re especially tough to beat from bad positions!

In the following tournament game, 1702-rated Anthony Morel took on 2611-rated GM Romain Edouard. White played a mainstream variation of the Sicilian. Black chose the first rare move, probably looking for a surprise, and quickly ended up in a lost position. The 900-point rating gap didn’t matter much when White swiftly won material and the game!

In our next example, a player outrated by 400 points followed top-level theory for 18 moves. When his higher-rated opponent made the first mistake, White swiftly won a pawn and soon the game.

Keep in mind that most mainstream chess theory these days leads to positions that are close to equality. If you are playing a much higher-rated opponent, odds are, he or she will take risks to keep some winning chances. That means that when you play a strong opening, even if it has no surprise value, your opponent will often play something odd to surprise you.

Decline The Draw

Getting a good position against a strong opponent is only half the battle on the way to scoring an upset. Strong players rarely go down without a fight. To finish off the game, you need to be psychologically ready to play for a win. I was once about to fall to a lower-rated opponent in a tournament game when something shocking happened.

Any king move by Black wins the game quickly. White has no good defense against ...Qh1# in just a few moves. Instead, my opponent offered me a draw, and I've never accepted a handshake so quickly! He had so much respect for my higher rating that he assumed I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess if I didn’t have a way out of it. I’m grateful that he had so much unfounded faith in me!

While I didn’t have to ask in that game, it’s a common strategy of strong players to pick the right moment in a bad position to offer a draw. This is a psychological ploy more than anything else because the opponent knows, since before the game began, that the lower-rated player would be thrilled to score a draw. Once the latter has an advantage, they're probably nervous, and the opportunity to secure a draw against a higher-rated opponent may be too much to pass on. I recommend, if you're the underdog, that you take the risk when this happens for two reasons.

1. Your opponent is the stronger player and wouldn’t be offering you a draw if chances were truly even. He or she knows that you are in control.
2. You learn more from playing than from relaxing. You probably have a goal of getting better at chess and being the stronger player in this scenario someday. It will be harder to get there if you don’t practice converting good positions against tough opposition. You will lose some of these games, but in the long run, you’ll win some, too, and become a better player in the process.

Check out this video where GM Jesse Kraai describes the strategic draw offers that he uses to trick lower-rated opponents.

Look For Opportunities

Maybe the most important thing that you can do to prepare to beat a higher-rated opponent is to convince yourself that it’s possible! Chess is an incredibly complicated game, so everyone, even the best players in the world, makes many mistakes. To win, you’re most likely going to have to find a serious mistake by your opponent and take advantage of it.

In this classic game, Frank Marshall played a risky opening, and his opponent, Sidney Johnston, just needed one pretty combination to win the game of a lifetime.

GM Alireza Firzouja might be a future world champion. He just sacrificed a rook with Rxe6 against a 700-point lower-rated opponent. Can you capture the rook on d4?

Force Your Opponent To Beat You

In several of the games above, the higher-rated player may have thought that they could confuse their less-experienced opponents with a tricky but incorrect move in the opening. Higher-rated players try this frequently against less-experienced opponents because they typically feel a need to play for a win. They are terrified of losing to you but are also worried about giving up a draw. That means that the threat of a draw will sometimes make otherwise logical opponents do crazy things.

In this game, IM Vaishali Rameshbabu, who is now GM-elect, probably saw White’s threat of a perpetual check draw after Kg4, Qe2+, and Kh3, repeating the position. Her desire to avoid the repetition is the only explanation for her move, Bg2??. Let’s see what happened.

Here’s another clear example of this sort of thinking. GM Nick de Firmian had White and was playing an opponent around 200 points below him. The players had been repeating the position, and a disappointing draw was about to occur. To avoid this, the grandmaster played the only other legal move—and was quickly checkmated!

If this sort of momentary insanity to avoid a draw happens to grandmasters, I’m sure that your higher-rated opponents will be susceptible to it as well!

Make It Complicated

So, you have come to the board prepared to fight. You’re playing your best openings. You’re looking to pounce on your opponent’s mistakes, and you’re ready to turn down a draw once you have the advantage. The last thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep things complicated and as easy as possible for your opponent to make a mistake. 

In Game Of Thrones, Littlefinger explains, “Chaos is a ladder.” He means that the only way for someone of non-royal lineage to rise up the ranks is when there are unpredictable changes in the world. Similarly, in a predictable, calm chess game, the higher-rated player will usually prevail in the end.

“Chaos is a ladder.

—Littlefinger

Chaos on the chessboard will ensure that both players make mistakes. Of course, the less-experienced player will make more, but it takes just one opportunity for you to pounce and win one.

World Champion GM Mikhail Tal once described his strategy this way: “You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.” That’s the way to give yourself a shot against a stronger opponent as well.

You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.

—Mikhail Tal

Let’s see how this worked out for a young player, Walter Harris, in a game against former U.S. Champion GM Arnold Denker. You’ll notice that Harris wasn’t always in control in this game, but that’s not the goal. Tal’s deep dark forest is a murky place and gives chances to steal a game from any opponent.

Here’s a huge upset against our own IM Danny Rensch. If you’re not paying close attention to tactics in a sharp position, even a 1250-point rating gap can’t save you! Congratulations to Lukasz Kowalski on the amazing result!

Putting It All Together!

Here’s another matchup where our underdog put everything together. Watch how Alexander King, with the white pieces, took apart GM Viktor Mikhalevski in a nearly flawless, aggressive game and scored an upset of over 300 points!

In that game, King did everything right. He played a strong opening, leaned into complications with a pawn sacrifice, and grabbed his opportunity when it presented itself. 

What was your biggest upset? Please let us know in the comments!