Hurrah for the underdog!

Hi, my name is Larry. No, I'm not a grandmaster. Just someone who enjoys chess as a hobby and an intellectual challenge, not to mention a way of staving off dementia and Alzheimer's. I love teaching others, especially children, about the game, and I have written the insructional book The Chess Workout as a "hands-on" approach to learning basic chess strategy and tactics. This blog is dedicated to another matter altogether. As its name suggests, I will be dealing exclusively with games where a strong player gets a sound whipping from a lower-ranked player. What's the point, you ask? Why, everybody roots for the underdog, don't they? The psychological reason is simple. At least some of the time (for other people, unfortunately, most of the time) in our lives, we feel like underdogs. Sympathy for the underdog, whether in the movies or in real-life, is more common than we might think. I don't know about you, but whenever I watch sports, I always root for the lower rated player or team (unless the other player happens to be Ana Ivanovic). It's always more exciting to watch the underdog gaining on the stronger player and crushing him, than watch a one-sided game where the champion lazily coasts to inevitable victory.
This blog is all about giving hope to us chess "dummies". Yes, I include myself, because I can't help but feel like one when trying to second-guess the grandmaster's moves. These are games to cheer us up, with the realization that champions are after all, human -- fallible and not invincible. For this purpose I will try to select games where the disparity between the opposing players are as wide as possible. But for instructional value and quality, I may have to settle from time to time for a narrower gap between the antagonists. I will be analyzing the first game now. I hope to post it as soon as possible.