Saw this thread and thought I'd break in with a fun chess story. The story is actually my dad's, from his college days at the University of Adelaide (Australia).
Although my dad really wasn't much good at chess, he did enjoy it, so he went ahead and joined the chess team. Apparently the university was large enough and there was enough interest that they had multiple teams of five players -- I think I remember my dad saying that he was on the "E" team, or something like that -- what I'm sure about is that he said it was the very worst team.
Anyway, my dad and his fellow E-teamers show up to watch an "A-team" match between Adelaide and some other university. To their surprise, Adelaide's A-team didn't show up. So they decided to pretend to be their missing brethren and sub in for them. Figuring they had very little chance of winning any of the five games, they resolved to pit their best player against the opposing team's weakest player, etc. My dad was the very worst player on the team, and so was matched up against their top man.
Can you guess what happened?
My dad's team won five-nil.
To hear him explain it, the whole thing was a bloodbath because the opposing team didn't know what the hell was going on. They assumed my dad's team was good, and had some deep and incomprehensible strategy going. In reality, they just sucked at chess, and were simply playing for fun. But the other team's players were so disconcerted that their opponents weren't making the obvious moves that they couldn't cope with it. Adding to the effect was that my dad's team was totally calm and relaxed, smiling and feeling no pressure because they had no real skin in the game and no reasonable expectation of winning. In all five games the opposing players surrendered before the game ended, and with my dad's matchup being the most uneven one, his opponent was so befuddled that he surrendered even earlier than the rest of them.
It certainly says some interesting things about strategy and expectations...
