Have I cursed Daniel Fernandez?

                                                Have I cursed Daniel Fernandez? 

Those familiar with the Stephen King book "Thinner" (originally written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman) might find the irony in this Facebook post of English chess Grandmaster Daniel Fernandez: 

"Since being termed a “lucky player” by British chess soapboxer Danny Gormally, I have lost no fewer than 20 rating points, been rejected from 3 (real) jobs and placements, and fallen off my diet. Maybe he can reverse the hex somehow?

On the plus side, I now have a cat."

In "Thinner" the main protagonist Billy Halleck has the misfortune to run over the elderly daughter of an even more ancient Gypsy man, who seems to possess special powers. When the grossly obese Halleck is found innocent by a corrupt judicial system, the gypsy places a curse not just on him, but also on the judge and the cop who helped him beat the rap.

Things go downhill from there for almost everybody involved.

Although Daniels post was at least part in jest, it also begs the question- is there such a thing as curses? And are there indeed lucky chess players, and could the two things be similar?

It seems to me with my limited intellect that we are partly dealing with cause and effect, and in the case of curses we can interpret one cause as leading to an effect, when in reality it might be a completely different cause that leads to that same outcome. The same happens in the case of a lucky chess player.

As I tried to establish in the videos I made on my Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeuxKDDPLl7-bba-M0Ogdzg

Daniel was not in fact a lucky player; he only appeared to be so. The reason he might be seen to be "lucky" is that he takes risks, eschews easy draws and in general is not afraid to freewheel during a chess game. Couple that with a dynamic style, tactical resourcefulness and an equable temperament that allows him to survive dubious positions, and you are left with a player who seems to emerge from a troublesome melee more than most.

Daniel Fernandez I would argue in a wider sense is an unlucky chess player, not a lucky one. Not unlucky over the board perhaps, but unlucky in that he was not selected to play for England in the European team chess championships, unlucky that he was passed over for the London chess classic, unlucky that he ran into a top-form Mickey Adams (although, when is he never?!) in the British chess championship.

And perhaps even more importantly than that, Daniel is unlucky to be stuck in that 2450-2600 zone in which a professional chess player is doomed to seemingly endless poverty and where in fact it becomes more tempting to jump onto the mindless gravy train of books/video/coaching and avoid playing altogether. For now at least Daniel is fighting the good fight, and hinting at the idea that he might be able to escape the phantom zone sometime soon.

Because it would be sad if a qualification-free, ageing, washed-up GM like myself was guilty of affecting the life of a promising young player and a Cambridge graduate to boot.

I wouldn't want to be the reason why Daniel is reduced to doorstepping Malcolm Pein outside the London classic, drawing his hand across Malcolms face while whispering in a snarl "Less powerful."