Written by F3ynman on 06.11.2021 at 12:30

Written by Karlabos on 04.11.2021 at 22:06

Such a weird game this was

Thanks for sharing! Yeah that was pretty entertaining that you and your opponent kept trying to trick each other. Thanks for also having a link - and I like your commentary!
Another thing you could think about is making a "study" on Lichess. There you can have comments for every move and even continuations of different lines.
I made one a year ago: https://lichess.org/study/ErXsBCph

Thanks!

Yeah, I always thought those studies were for something more like when you study a line or something. I never thought of doing it as a game example.
Nice study, I like the sicilian, it's my fav as black, because I don't need to memorize so many traps to not fall for =p
I only like doing the traps, not falling for them.

I played this game in flyordie (long since I played chess on that site) and it doesn't save the games, but I made this link thing on lichess, I hope it redirects properly...

Anyway, this game is not very much, but I wanted to post it just because of a cute intermezzo i'm proud of.
We start with petroff defense:

1. e4, e5 2. Nf3, d6 3. Bc4, c6
(notice that with 3... c6 the De Lega'ls trap doesnt' work, but even so I developed my knight instead of playing c3 anyway. I've been doing a lot of Nc3 instead of c3 lately...)

4. Nc3, Bg4 5. O-O, b5
My opponent went all crazy here. At first sight I thought that now the c pawn is weak, so if I could get him to remove it, I'd be able to do the De Legal trap since he actually played Bg4. However, the only way to remove the pawn is sacrificing the knight so it doesn't work... But while I was checking that knight sacrifice I got another idea:

6. Nxb5, cxb5 7. Bd5
And now I'm winning the rook. Of course, he defends it by removing the knight and I lost two pieces for a rook and a pawn which is generally bad, but in this case I remove his pawns from the c file, so I thought it was kinda good.

7. ...Na6
And here comes the cute intermezzo:

8.Bc6+
Instead of taking the rook right off the bat, I give this check, which forces his bishop on g4 to go back. The reason is that since I traded my knight from c3, that pin on my knight could get annoying. For isntance, I'd like to play d4 at some point and break the center, but I can't do that because if exd4 then my knight can't capture back because it's pinned to the queen. This check here forces the opponent to temporarily disable the pin so that I can play d4 on the next move.

At the end of the day it turns out the engine didn't like for some reason, but I felt quite clever for thinking of that at the time.

8. ..., Bd7 9. Bxa8, Qxa8 10. d4
Yaay! I opened the center.

10. ...,f6 11. dxe5, fxe5 12. Bg5
Hasty move from my end, I wanted to control the black diagonal since his king maay take long to castle shortside, but he just threatens the bishop and he could even threat again with g5, and then I lose the diagonal.

12. ..., h6 13. Bh4, Qxe4

Maybe a very wrong move? Now he oppened the file to his king
14. Re1, Qg6

15. Nxe5
At this point I already had sacrificed the other knight and was like... "after all, why not?" I didn't really know what was gonna happen but it seemed correct at the time. After all, his king is in the center, I have all my pieces around... Should be good, right? Worst case scenario I sac a piece for two center pawns.

15. ..., dxe5 16. Rxe5+ Ne7 17. Qe2, Bh3
And here the opponent threatened a mate on my king, but he didn't see I had a mating net of my own:

18. Rxe7+, Bxe7 19. Qxe7#

I guess if he played 17. ..., Qf7 the game would proceed and be interesting. But the best thing on this post here was the spite check at move 8 :3

Wow, that was a tough game. We kept doing trap after trap
Too bad I lost at the end due to a dumb blunder, but I feel like posting anyway:

1. e4, c5
2. Nf3, Nc6
3. c3, Nf6 (all until here is just open sicilian-alapin variation)
4. Qc2
Since I don't have the c3 square for the knight I figured I'd protect the pawn like this...? The queen isn't blocking anything on this line since I plan to place the queenside knight on d2, anyway. My intended development was d4, moving the black bishop out, then Nd2. But this opponent won't give me chance to do that

4. ..., d5 (my planned d4 is less good here, since my pawn is hanging)

5. exd5, Nxd5
With the e pawns traded, I realized my wanted d4 is not as strong in this position, because I stay with a very isolated pawn in the center. So I figured I should prob develop the white B and castle and worry about the queen side later

6. Bc4, e6
7. O-O, a6 Clearly the opponent wants to play b5 to attack my bishop. Since he's gonna do that I figured I should play Re1 and then after threatened, return the B to e2. It avoids possible future pins on my knight at f3 and the bishop is defended. And that exact sequence happens:

8. Re1, b5
9. Be2, Bd6

Now back to what to do with my queenside. I still wanted to play d4 at some point, but now it doesn't work because he pushes c4, so I prepared d4 with b3, possibly opening a square for my black bishop later

10. b3, O-O
11.. d4, Qb6

now that's a move I didn't anticipate. I swore he'd just take the pawn. In this case I took it myself:
12. dxc5, Bxc5

And now it turns out his idea ended up well, as he has an attack on f2. Defending with the bishop loses a pawn with check, so I thought I had to return the rook, and my previous rook move turned out useless. (postgame analysys shows a better move that also defends f2 that I missed, can you find it?)

13. Rf1, Nf6
I was half expecting him to go all in, maybe playing Bb7 with some danger, but since his mvoe was a bit passive, I took the chance to remove his strong diagonal:

14. b4, Bd6
15. Be3 (the strong diagonal is now solely mine and there's no more annoying battery on f2 winning my pawn) , Qe7
16. Nbd2 (and my so wanted development is now complete after move 16, lol), e5

e5 is interesting because it closes his battery. I figured the closure would be permanent if I stuck a piece in front of the pawn, so I did that:

17. Ne4, Nxe4
18. Qxe4, Bb7

Of course, blocking with the queen isn't permanent, especially when he has discovered attack on the white diagonal, but at least I managed to trade his attacking knight. Now I thought I could prolong the closure on his diagonal by threatening mate:

19. Bd3?
and that was probably the third worst blunder of the game on my end...

19. ..., f5

I somehow overlooked this move. It both defends mate and attacks my queen but the worst part is that it gives base to a later e4, that is actually a fork. And I don't think I have the time to defend both the fork and the attacked queen...

But we have to try, so I win a tempo with a random check:
20. Qd5+, Kh8
21. Bc5
We can always hope. Here if he's hasty and does the fork with 21. ..., e4, then 22. Qxd6 recovers the piece.
21. ..., Bxc5

Notice how confuse this position is. The original idea was to keep the queen on the 5th row so that when he forked me with e4, I just retreated the white bishop and then after exf3, I can win at least the f pawn with the bishop. However, he still has Nxb4 with a discovered attack on my queen... I didn't want to lose the b pawn with a tempo, so I came up with this weird move that removes the fork threat.

22. Nxe5

Now if he captures the knight with either the queen or with the knight (with a discovered attack) I simply take his bishop with the queen, and my queen is protected since the b pawn is still there

22. ..., Nd4

yeah, ppl tend to do weird moves on overly complicated positions. I think this hangs material on his end?

23. Qxc5, Qxc5
24. bxc5, Ne6

The tension is gone and technically I ended up a pawn up. However, both my pawns are loose and I was pretty sure I'd losing them soon. So I figured I'd better go after his f pawn while I can and try an endgame with equal material

25. Nd7, aligning the knight and the bishop on purpose.
This is a neat trap. His rook is attacked and the most natural thing is to skewer my both pieces, but then I have Bxf5 and I'm winning the knight back after capturing the pawn for free. It turns out that exact sequence happens:

25. ..., Re8
26. Bxf5, Rxd7
27. Bxe6, Re6
28. Rfe1?

aaand this is the second worst blunder of the game on my end. Why did I defend with the rook? If I just moved the bishop away I'd probably have won an endgame with two temporary extra pawns... Or at least drawn

28. ..., Rae8
Now my B is trapped. Well, but I did fall for a pawn fork and survived earlier, so we persevere:

29. Rad1
Another dirty little trap. If he captures the bishop with 29. ..., Rxe6, then 30. Rxe6, Rxe6 and he's falling for a backrank checkmate

29. ..., h6
The opponent saw the trap. This defends the mate and maintains the threat on the bishop.

30. h3?
Here I thought I didn't have means of protecting the bishop so I gave up the piece. It turns out Rd6 saves it, because he can't bring the king to help, since the bishop protects the Kg8, and if he brings via 6th row I have discovered check...

Anyway, I lose the piece:
30. ..., Rxe6
31. Rxe6, Rxe6
The idea behind this trade was to try something by threatening his bishop or his a pawn from the back. If I can trade the queenside pawns maybe I can achieve a draw?

32. Rd8+, Kh7
33. Rd7
here if he moves the bishop to c8 reinforcing the a pawn, I can trap his bishop with c7. I was hoping for that, but he moves the bishop somewhere else:

33. ..., Be4
34. f3
Trying the trap one last time. If he moves it back to the 8th row, I can threaten it with Rd8 then after Bb7 I can do the thing I just said above

34. ..., Bb1
35. Rd6

The idea is that if he trades, I have a passed pawn. I can try to bring my king closer, and if he loses a tempo taking my 'free' a pawn then I can advance and he can never reach it before I promote.

He decides not to go for that line and moves the rook away instead:

35. ..., Re5
36. c6

Now if he does something dumb like 36. Bxa2, I just push the pawn and the rook defends it on a black square. I can bring my king over and help.

36. ...,Rc5
37. c7

At this point I can just trade pawns. Ideally, if I traded them all it'd be a draw) if he captures, I capture back on the a file and protect my a file pawn at the same time, and the the queenside is pretty much all traded. And this is pretty much what happens:

37. ...,Bxa2
38. Rxa6, Bd5
39. Ra5

The idea is promoting on the next move then after RxQ I trade the pawn with a tempo

39. Bc4 (opponent sure is annoying)
40. Ra7, Bd3
41. Kf2
Now all I can do is try to bring the king over to try and force the pawn trade

42. ...,Rxc3
43. Ke3, b4

44. Rb7
last and worst blunder, giving the game away. All of that work just to fall for a discovery attack at the end.

44. ..., Ba6+
And then I resigned

Good game, anyway. Especially at the end, where pretty much every move had a trick hidden in it

I really wanted Nepo to win the world championship

But at this rate it's not gonna happen =/

Written by Karlabos on 06.12.2021 at 22:50

I really wanted Nepo to win the world championship

But at this rate it's not gonna happen =/

Carlsen still reigns, I take it?

Written by Metren on 07.12.2021 at 17:23

Written by Karlabos on 06.12.2021 at 22:50

I really wanted Nepo to win the world championship

But at this rate it's not gonna happen =/

Carlsen still reigns, I take it?

yeah...

How can I not root for this guy, though?

...aaand... Carlsen is world champion again.

Poor Nepo... He didn't get to win a single game

I liked this game. Mostly because we castled opposite sides and went all on each other. Also, every other move has some sneaky trap going on.
Me (white) vs opponent (black)

We start with the caro-kann and I've been doing 2. Nf3 in the caro-kann because of all these traps that I can apply

So 1. e4, c6
2. Nf3, Qa5 (opponent apparently is a scholar)
3. Nc3, d5
4. d3 (now, while d3 protects my attacked center pawn, it has the drawback that his annoying queen is pinning my knight on c3)

4 ..., Bg4 (another annoying pin, his idea is that he wants to push d4 and then my knight cannot move and the other knight cannot capture because of both pins)
5. Bd2, Qd8 (apparently I didn't fall for his early tricks with the queen, so he decided to go back. I think that kinda loses some tempos)
6. Be2 (my bishops look weird on the 2nd file, but be2 gets rid of the pin and prepares the castle. also, there is a pawn on d3, so why not?)
6 ..., e6

7. Ne5 (I like this square for my knight. Not only I'm offering to trade my bad bishop for his only active piece, but also the square itself is good, since the only way to kick that knight with a pawn is by ruining his kingside structure)
7 ..., Bxe2
8. Qxe2, Nf6
9. O-O-O (computer hates this move, but at the time I thought castling long would go pretty well here. When I took back with the queen on move 8 I was already thinking of castling long, because he has nothing on the queen side and is prob gonna castle kingside with less development, so I can start attacking on the kingside. Welp... Turns out it was probably my worst move of the game :p)
9. ..., d4
This simple move already gets some space on my side and he has c5 coming soon, also that threatened knight doesn't really have good squares. I get back to the only one I have:
10. Nb1, a5 (opponent already starts attacking on the opposite side)
11. g4 (I do the same, and I embrace the advantage that the g4 square is actually defended. usually you need a preparing move before pushing the g pawn)
11. ... , Bd6 (develops threatening the knight, opponent was trying to win a tempo.)
12. f4 (unfortunately, f4 accelerates my attack on the kingside AND protects the knight)
12 ..., Nbd7

Here I thought of this tricky trade:
13. Nxc6, bxc6
14. e5 ( I lost a knight for a pawn but forked his two pieces and the material should be equal, however I get rid of his pawns on the queenside, making it harder for him to attack me. This should give me more opportunity to attack him instead)

opponent apparently is not too fond of trading B and P for N and P, so decides to lose the pawn instead (?)
14. ..., Be7
15. exf6, Nxf6
16. g5 (wins a tempo by pushing a pawn on the kingside), Nd5
17. Qe4
In this move I was looking at the white diagonal toward his c6 pawn. The knight is sorta pinned now.
17. ..., c5
18. h4 (keep pushing the attack), Rb8
I realized his attack on my queenside started getting dangerous so I felt like I should do something about it before continue my pawn storm on the kingside. I like my next move (computer hates it)
19. c4
yes, I know the en-passant rule, but both my B and N protect the square, so I decided it was ok, because it gets rid of one of his attacking pawns and gives my defender pieces more mobility near my king. Of course, if he doesn't take en-passant then the queenside is closed and he can't attack. So he does it:

19. ..., dxc3
20. Nxc3 (offers a knight trade), Nxc3 (if it was me I wouldn't trade)
21. Bxc3

And now I sighed in relief, because the bishop defends my only weak square near the king, and there's nothing really he can do about it. Qb6 is not a threat anymore and he cannot add his bishop to pressure b2 because the diagonal is blocked by my annoying pawn on g5. With that my problems were pretty much solved, so I planned continuing attacking on the kingside

22. ..., Qb6 (not a threat)
23. h5

here computer hates h5 and suggest that I do the obvious move: Bxg7, saying "yas! free pawn". I thought about it at the time, but I got scared of the response 23..., f6. Of course I can't take the rook because now the bishop doesn't defend b2 anymore and it's checkmate, so I'd have to do some awkward move to defend the mate, and then he'd save the rook on the next move, so all I earn is getting my good bishop out of the game for some random pawn. Weird that computer wants to do exactly that. How materialistic... I prefered pushing the pawns slowly on the g and h file, because at the point there's nothing really the opponent can do to avoid the structure break.

23. ..., f6
24. h6
now if he takes on h6 I free the file for the rook, if he takes on g5, I take on g7 and if he pushes forward with f4, then I have Qa4+, followed by hxg7. Either way, the structure collapses.
24. ..., fxg5
25. hxg7, Rg8
Notice my bishop protects the about-to-promote pawn from a distance. Not only his king is unsafe but he still has the promotion issue to deal with now.

26. Rxh7, gxf4? (what?? Is opponent underestimating the promotion that much?)
27. Rh8 (he can't trade because I promote), Kd7
Now the connected rooks protect each other and if I trade I have one rook less to annoy him on the backrank. But I was kinda expecting that move. I knew I had this spite check:
28. Qa4+
And now he has to be very careful, because the black squares ask for a bishop check and coming forward to the center can't be good. Of course, moving the king to the backrank allows pawn promotion. So he tried oferring a queen trade:

28 ..., Qc6
29. Rxg8 (if he takes my unprotected queen I just traded queen for two rooks and have a pawn about to promote, so he doesn't take the "free" queen), Rxg8
30. Qxf4

Here I'm a pawn up, I have a pawn on the 7th rank and i'm threatening to threat the rook, helping the promotion.

30. ..., a4. (weird move, maybe he was waiting for me to threat the rook so that he could get back with his queen to the 8th file?)
31. Qf7, Qc8 (sorta forced)
32. d4 (here I thought it would be a good idea to open the file to bring my rook to the game. the thing is that he can't prevent it. If he pushes c4 I push again with 33. d5, and if he pushes 33..., e5, then my pawn is protecting the e6 square for my queen, and that can't be good.

32. ..., Kc6 (he decides to let me waste my move to open the file and runs away with the king of the soon-to-be open file. Unfortunately that move hangs a bishop:)

33. Qxe7 (now I'm winning on material and not only on position. I found that move weird, but honestly I don't see what else he could have done. Postgame analysis says hanging the bishop was ok... (?))
33. ..., cxd4 (I think this was a trap by him: had I taken with the bishop he had discovered check with some sort of counterplay)
34. Rxd4, e5
(Honestly I think he was just doing random moves at this point. happens when you know the game is very lost. The game could have ended a couple moves ago, but he let the next sequence happen, with a check winning the queen and another winning the rook:)
35. Rc4+, Kb6
36. Rxc8, Rxc8
37. Qe6+, Kb5
38. Rxc8

Had he moved the king defending the rook I could still sac the queen for the rook and promote the pawn. Either way I'd be a queen and a piece up. So he resigned here.

Ha!

Just discovered a trap (or is it?) in the sicilian defense
One of the problems I face when playing the dragon variant is when people try to do that fried liverish attack with Knight and Bishop on my b7 pawn, and here it goes exactly like that:

So, we are playing as black on the analysis:

1.e4, c5
2. Nf3, Nc6
3. Bc4, Nf6 (more often than not, the best thing here is blocking the B diagonal with e6 instead, but when you are trying to polay the dragon, you try to not do that)
4. Nc3, g6
5. Ng5 (that annoying attack is what I was talking about), e6

fine... we play e6, then...

6. d3, Bg7
7. Bf4, O-O

And now white wants to fork our pawn and rook:

8. Bd6, Re8 (saving the rook)
9. Bxc5

So this is the starting position. I believe I've "felt for this fork" some times, because it's pretty common trying to exploit the black diagonal that appears after g6 and e6 quite early. But it turns out there are at least three interesting traps black can play in this position:

TRAP 1:

9. ..., d5 (threatening the bishop)
say, if white takes, then:
10. exd5, exd5+

since white never castled, this is a discovered check. Plus, the bishop is hanging, and on top of all we have later knight move with discovered attack on the knight in g5, which is undefended.

The problem with trap 1 is that white is not obliged to take on move 10, so there is a more forcing line:

TRAP 2:

9. ..., Nd5
this opens a discovered attack on the other knight, and it is easier for white to get confused in this position.

if black captures d5 with the pawn, exd5 is discovered check and trap q scenario happens, so here we assume he takes with the knight:

10. Nxd5, Qxg5

and now if you look at the board, we have a lot of threats:
Qxg2 destroys white's castling side, the knight on d5 is hanging, and the bishop is aiming at b2.

White can save at least the castle and the knight with
11. Ne3,
but then instead of taking on b2 only recovering the pawn, we win a piece with

11. ..., Qxc5 (since the knight opened the path for the queen)

Now there is another trap, even if white plays a bit smarter on the same line, after move 11:

TRAP 3:

9. ..., Nd5
10. Nxd5, Qxg5
11. Nc7

Here white forks both rooks, so our threats on g2 and etc suddenly don't feel so strong, since white is also gaining material. We stasrt saving out kingside rook:

11. ..., Rd8
12. Bd6 (if white doesn't save the B then he's basically trading two pieces for the rook AND g2 and b2 are hanging, so he needs to save the bishop first)
12. ..., Qxg2

now white needs to save his rook:
13. Rf1, Bxb2
now white needs to defend the other rook:
14. Rb1, Bc3+

yep... we save the bishop with check, and now we won two pawns, white's castling right is gone, and on top of all we could even save the hanging rook after the king moves! However, at this point checking the king with the knight would be even stronger, I dunno.

I dunno what white should do after move 9, really. Maybe moving the knight back to f3? Then we lose a pawn but get a lead in development and the game continues.
The engine suggests 10. exd5, which is insane. I tried playing different lines here and it seems black gets the advantage pretty quickly. I guess it's one of those positions where white needs to play completely accurate in order to not fall for a trap, since their king is still on the center and we are almost skewering everything.

For instance, if 10. exd5, then 10. ..., exd5+ and if white blocks with the bishop (looks natural) 11. Be3, we have 11. ..., Qxg5, and we are now threatening g2 and his bishop is hanging
What seems that he should do is preventing Qxg5 by blocking with the knight, which seems pretty hard to find, imo, so
10. exd5, exd5+, 11. Ne4 and now we take the bishop! 11. .., dxc4
here we recovered our pawn and are with a good position. Because if white gets greedy and tries to hang to the extra pawn with 12. dxc4, then

12. ..., Bxc3+
13. bxc3 and we win the knight.

Just got a game with 2 brilliant moves, one great move and 3 blunders, so I guess that's a hell of a mixed bag. What I'm most proud of this game is that I got an idea, stuck to it and in the end it worked.

Opponent (white) vs me (black) 0-1

1.e4, e5
2. d3, Nf6
3. Nf3, Nc6
4. c3, Be7
5. g3, O-O
6. Bg2, d6
7. Nbd2

yeah, as you can see the game started weird ever since from the beginning. Apparently this is breyer opening leonhard variation or something. I was trying to do normal developing moves but never faced that strange setup before. I accidentally bumped in theory, because my opening moves turned out to be book.

Anyway, with the pieces developed, I figured he'd castle short so I tried weakening the kingside:
7. ..., Bg4 (the idea is provoking the pawn push h3 and going back to e6. Engine prefers Be6 straight away for some reason...)
8. h3, Be6
9. O-O, Qc8 (this threats the h pawn. if he pushes it forward to defend it weakens his side even further)
10. Kh2.

A lot of ppl seem to incorporate kh2 as defense. The thing is that sometimes it may amount to some sacking attack ideas. Here I looked at the position and thought: "Hmmm, with his kingside so weakened, I wish I didn't have castled. This way I'd still have my rook on the h file and could try to sack my h pawn to open a file and attack vehemently" and that's when my plan was born: I thought of artificially "uncastling" by playin g6, Kg7, Rh8 and then going for the attack.

10. ..., h5
11. Qe2, g6
12. Qe3 (now he is threatening to snick into my camp. But Kg7 defends the h6 square AND it was already part of my plan anyway ..., Kg7
13. Nc4, Rh8

aand I uncastled. Now it's the time to attack. Technically he could make it harder by pushing h4, but on such case I'd probably have sacked the black bishop instead of the knight to open the file. In the game he kept playing it weird on the queenside:

14. a3, Nf4!!

engine classifies it as brilliant. I was looking at that move on the previous turn, tbh. It's a fork, so he obviously has to take with the h pawn. And then it opens the h file. It's sort of a fishing pole trap, except that he's obliged to accept.

15. hxg4, hxg4+
16. Nh4, Bxh4?? (apparently this was my first blunder according to post game analysis. Not sure why. It opens the file...)
17. gxh4, Rxh4+
18. Kg1, Qh8
19. Qg3, g5?? (here it was an actual blunder, because I didn't see the pawn was hanging. Also I didn't even need to overprotect the rook. This is one of the times the opponent takes the piece and you're left like: "oh...")
20. Bxg5, Rh5
21. Bd2, Rg8! Apparently this is a great move. Here I was thinking that I should prob remove my king from the g file, so I brought the rook there first, preparing Kf8.

22. Ne3, Kf8
23. Nf5, Qh7
The good thing about Qh7 gaining a tempo on the knight (because it's double attacked and the opponent might lose a pawn) is that it also enables later Rh8, tripling on the h file.

24. Ne3, Rh8??
And that was my third blunder... Honestly... I can't see how this move is bad at all. Engine suggestion here was the "obvious"... Na5 (wtf?) Not sure what that knight has to do with anything.

Anyway, the idea was simple: check with Rh1+ and then mate after the bishop takes back.
25. Re1??, Rh1!!
(and apparently it's a brilliant move, according to the engine)

26. Bxh1, Qxh1#

This was pretty fun. My only idea was uncastling, opening the h file and attacking somehow, and it all turned out ok :3

Written by Karlabos on 19.01.2022 at 02:40

Just got a game with 2 brilliant moves, one great move and 3 blunders,
This was pretty fun. My only idea was uncastling, opening the h file and attacking somehow, and it all turned out ok :3

Nice game! It's funny because I have a lot of games where I do the same thing you said: "uncastling" to put my rook back on the h file, sack a knight à la fishing pole trap to open the h file, create a battery with queen and rooks, win!
It's probably ugly in terms of standard theory, but as long as you avoid blunders and constantly keep pressuring your opponent, then they usually don't have time to fight back

Written by F3ynman on 19.01.2022 at 03:13

Written by Karlabos on 19.01.2022 at 02:40

Just got a game with 2 brilliant moves, one great move and 3 blunders,
This was pretty fun. My only idea was uncastling, opening the h file and attacking somehow, and it all turned out ok :3

Nice game! It's funny because I have a lot of games where I do the same thing you said: "uncastling" to put my rook back on the h file, sack a knight à la fishing pole trap to open the h file, create a battery with queen and rooks, win!
It's probably ugly in terms of standard theory, but as long as you avoid blunders and constantly keep pressuring your opponent, then they usually don't have time to fight back

Thx, I'm often scared to do that because playing h5, g6 also weakens my king. I guess it's a situation where you really need to be able to guess when your king is gonna be safe and the opponent's isn't, even though the two sides castled on the same side.

"Vulgar Letters Were Sent To Female Chess Players For Over A Decade"

Uh... Apparently there is an IM dude who mails pornographic cointent to female chess players over the world and patches up used condoms together with it...?
And apparently they even know who the guy is! (doesn't say on the article, tho). Shouldn't this be a crime or something?

Come to think of it, the chess community is probably one of the most mysoginist communities I make part of. And I'm part of some pretty bad communities

I liked this miniature a lot

We start with the typical Smith-Morra gambit:
1. e4, c5
2. d4, cxd4
3. c3, dxc3
4. Nc3, Nc6
5. Bc4, d6
6. Nf3, Nf6

So the thing with the smith-morra is that you can't place your both knights like that (which looks natural), because I have this breakthrough:

7. e5
Now the Nxe5 loses to 8.Nxe5, dxe5, 9. Bxf7+ and if he takes with the pawn: 7. ...,dxe5 (so that his knight protects his queen and Bxf7 doesn't work) then I have 8. Qxd8, Nxd8 9. Nb5 and now there are several knight forks on c7 and f7, I can castle long... Pretty much a winning position

My opponent sees all of that, so decides not to open the center:
7. ..., Ng4

And this is my cutest move of the game, imo. The obvious is taking on d6 and trying to open the center, but I think it's a bit slow. If I wanna hinder his development I can do it right now!

8. e6

Now I'm threatening to take on f7 destroying his kingside, and if he takes with the B, I trade and then he is obliged to take back, also destroying the pawn structure. Either way, the kingside collapses

8. ..., fxe6
I'm surprised this is considered the best move by the engine. Now both of his bishops aren't leaving any time soon

9. Ng5 (commencing an attack on the kingside), Ne5
Ne5 is a good move, because it reafirms f7, prevents my queen from moving to f6 to join the attack and kicks my bisho away all at once
The engine says I should just take on e6 and recover one pawn, but I don't want that, I sacked a pawn so that he would get doubled pawns blocking everything to prevent him from developing, so I'm gonna do exactly that

10. Bb3, h6
11. Nf3 (another bad move according to the engine, it still wanted me to take the free pawn on e6. Well, I like that it gets him blocked like that), Nxf3
12. Qxf3, Nd4 (forking my queen and bishop)
13. Qh5+
And now the hunt begins. Moving the king and losing the castle is forced:
13. ..., Kd7

14. Ba4+, b5
This was a very bad blunder, but to be honest, my attack looks too scary to keep moving the king like that. What was he supposed to do? block with the knight? Then I trade the bishop and weaken the queenside as well... At this point he's just surviving there

15. Nxb5, Nxb5
16. Qxb5+, Kc7 (forced)
17. Bd2

And now look at the screen. I am threatening:
a) Ba5+ winning the queen, and he cannot make any king move because the queen covers all the other king escape routes
b) Qc6+ winning the rook
c) Rc8++

Can he avoid all of the threats at once? Pretty much can't.

17 moves into the Smith-Morra gambit and the opponent was already dead lost. It's funny because i've been trying to find things that work agains tthe annoying sicilian. I delved into grand prix attack, which I didn't like very much; then velimirovic attack, which is great, but only works in very specific versions of the sicilian, and that makes it pretty useless, since we never know which version the opponent will go to; then wing gambit, which is a bit... well, it's wing gambit. And now I'm trying this, which is a gambit I didn't even like the first time I heard about it, back then I found it kinda weak... But so far I have been getting pretty good results with it.

https://chess.com/live/game/42208785081
Here's a game (i play as black) where I played badly at first, losing castling rights and losing a rook to stop pawn promotion from my opponent. Being severely down on time, my chances didnt look good.
However, thankfully my opponent didn't know how to checkmate with rook and knight, I still had a very strong knight that could eat away his pawns, and in the end I got two connected pawns that were bound to make a new queen! In the end, I won on time.

https://chess.com/live/game/42197978399
Here's another game (I play as black) where I was actually the entire time winning. However, I wasn't paying attention to my clock. On move 31, my opponent had 1 minute 17 seconds left - and I only had 22 seconds!
I was determined to still win and was actually able to play 36 moves in 22 seconds, win all of his pieces, and nearly promote a pawn to a new queen when my opponent ran out on time. I barely made it, having 0.9 seconds left on my clock

Written by F3ynman on 28.03.2022 at 14:42

I barely made it, having 0.9 seconds left on my clock

Woah, such speed.

Reminded me of a recent video by Supi (in portuguese, unfortunately) where he told too many stories during the game and at the end he had like 3 seconds against an opponent with full 4 minutes on the clock. he had to play mostly on premove, and by the end he had basically a mate in 1 except that the opponent could do spite checks to try and win on time. There is a move where the opponent can check by three different angles and he's like 0.05 on the clock, having to predict the actual move by chance. Intense stuff.

Finally! I got my first ever Nakhmanson gambit against a human (I've got it against bots before)

It's a really aggressive gambit where you sacrifice two whole minor pieces in the very beginning. It ended in a draw, but even so... Gosh, was this fun to play.

We start with the two knights defense:
1. e4, e5
2. Bc4, Nc6
3. Nf3, Nf6
4. d4, exd4 (the scotch gambit)
5. O-O, Nxe4 (taking this pawn is brave, it leads to A LOT of creepy gambits from white. Nakhmanson being one of them)
6. Nc3 (THE Nakhmanson gambit starts here. I "blundered" a knight), dxc3 (gambit accepted)

By the way, if you can't tell... I'm white.

7. Bxf7+ and there goes the second piece

... , Kxf7
8. Qd5+, Ke8
9. Re1
All of this is standard Nakhmanson theory. In this weird opening I'm down a knight, a bishop and a pawn. Plus, b2 is hanging. Yet the computer says black has a bit more than a point of advantage... With perfect play.

9. ...Be7
10. Rxe4, d6
11. Bg5
The idea is to free the other rook so that I can double and attack the e7 squares with a bunch of heavy pieces
11. ..., h6
12. Bxe7, Nxe7
13. Rae1, c6

Honestly, I didn't know what to do here. Post game analysys says I'm completely winning after Qh5+ but I'm not sure why. In the game all I could think was trading both rooks for the queen and the knight. c3 is gonna fall on the next move and althought I'm a down a pawn, I'm the only one with a queen on the board and his extra pieces are all a bit weird on the back rank. So I went for the mass trade:

14. Rxe7+, Qxe7
15. Rxe7+, Kxe7
16. Qe4+, Be6
17. bxc3

Now the game became a weird battle of queen and knight versus two rooks and bishop

17. ..., Rhe8
18. Qg6 (rudimentar threat on g7), Kf8

19. h3

This move has sort of a convoluted reasoning behind it: notice that bringing the queen to a white square on move 18 looked dangerous, because he can attack my queen with the B and discover attack a mate threat of Re1, but the reason that doesn't work is because I have a knight on f3, who protects e1. If I move my knight out of the way he can do that and get my queen. And I was really willing to play Nd4 to bring the knight into the game, so I played that to stop eventual mate.

19. ..., Bxa2
20. Nd4, Rac8
21. Nf5 (not sure why he brought the other rook to c8, but I'm not gonna miss the chance. I'm threatening both Qxg7 checkmate and Nxd6 forking the two rooks)

21. ..., Rc7 This defends both threats but now I win a pawn:
22. Nxd6
Computer wanted me to take with the queen with check instead. that does not win the rook because he plays Re7. Honestly, I don't see why taking with the queen would be better

22. ..., Ree7
23. Qh7
A blunderish move on my end. Somehow I was thinking I was threatening Qh8#, but he has Bg8... Now my Q is just misplaced

23. ..., Re6
24. Qf5+, Rf6
25. Qe5 (gotta protect the knight), Re7
26. Qc5 (this opens up to some discovered attack possibilities if he ever removes the rook on e7), Re1+
27. Kh2, Rg6
28. Nxb7+ ?? (HUGE blunder. I could have checked with Qf5+ and won the rook, then I could say I won with the Nakhmanson gambit, unfortunately all i saw was that free pawn)

28. ..., Re7
29. Nd6, Bd5, threatening an annoying attack with B and R on g2. Here time started getting low for both sides, so we decreased quality of play:

30. f3, Re2
31. Kg2, Rgxg2+
32. Kf1, Rgf1+,
and then he checked with both rooks bringing my king over and over and the game was a draw by repetition.

I'm sad I missed some winning moves but it's good to know they existed. Shows this weird gambit is actually playable to some extent.

Written by Karlabos on 29.03.2022 at 01:00

Finally! I got my first ever Nakhmanson gambit against a human (I've got it against bots before)

It's a really aggressive gambit where you sacrifice two whole minor pieces in the very beginning. It ended in a draw, but even so... Gosh, was this fun to play.

Wow I've never seen this gambit before. Crazy idea

Written by Karlabos on 29.03.2022 at 01:00

13. Rae1, c6
Honestly, I didn't know what to do here. Post game analysys says I'm completely winning after Qh5+ but I'm not sure why. In the game all I could think was trading both rooks for the queen and the knight. c3 is gonna fall on the next move and althought I'm a down a pawn, I'm the only one with a queen on the board and his extra pieces are all a bit weird on the back rank. So I went for the mass trade:
14. Rxe7+, Qxe7

Ive learned to hesitate trading two rooks for a queen. Same thing with two minor pieces (knights or bishops) for a rook. Even though queen > rook and rook > bishop, 2 rooks > 1 queen and 2 bishops > 1 rook in my opinion.
Also, the idea of Qh5+ is to deliver check, forcing the king to move (or temporarily block with a pawn) and getting your queen closer to the pinned knight and the King. Keeping the pressure with the double rooks is better than capturing the Black queen, who isn't posing a threat to your position anyway.

Written by Karlabos on 29.03.2022 at 01:00

22. Nxd6
Computer wanted me to take with the queen with check instead. that does not win the rook because he plays Re7. Honestly, I don't see why taking with the queen would be better

Yeah it's hard to spot during the game, but taking with the queen is better because you're forking the king and the rook. Even if the rook blocks the check, you're guaranteed to capture a rook with your knight.

Written by Karlabos on 29.03.2022 at 01:00

I'm sad I missed some winning moves but it's good to know they existed. Shows this weird gambit is actually playable to some extent.

Thanks for sharing!

Written by F3ynman on 29.03.2022 at 01:31

Ive learned to hesitate trading two rooks for a queen. Same thing with two minor pieces (knights or bishops) for a rook. Even though queen > rook and rook > bishop, 2 rooks > 1 queen and 2 bishops > 1 rook in my opinion.
Also, the idea of Qh5+ is to deliver check, forcing the king to move (or temporarily block with a pawn) and getting your queen closer to the pinned knight and the King. Keeping the pressure with the double rooks is better than capturing the Black queen, who isn't posing a threat to your position anyway.
[\quote]
Yeah but in this case I gave two rooks for queen and knight so I'm actually winning a piece. of course, I gambited a piece earlier so this just gives it back but still, material-wise it's more than worth it because of the extra N.
But yeah, I should have maintained the pressure instead in this case.

Written by F3ynman on 29.03.2022 at 01:31

Yeah it's hard to spot during the game, but taking with the queen is better because you're forking the king and the rook. Even if the rook blocks the check, you're guaranteed to capture a rook with your knight.
[\quote]
Oh... I missed that, yeah, I'd win an exchange that way

Well, I hope next time I get this gambit I don't miss so much tactics, lol

Today I played an Over the Board (in person) game of chess for the first time since 2019. I've only played online this entire time and it was kind of strange seeing the board in 3d again

Anyway, I played against a friend of mine on the university campus (he studies physics too). It was bright sunshine, people were playing table-tennis behind us, we had just eaten lunch when my friend offered to play a game of chess (he had a board with him). He didn't know that I play chess regularly online. He is an amateur himself and hasn't played online, but he watches some chess videos.

Well, we played and he was surprisingly good. However, he thought that trading his rook for my knight was good for him and soon after that he blundered his knight to a diagonal pawn attack. Well, the game ended with me checkmating him. We had played without time controls and just for fun - it was nice

Now, about 6 hours later I tried (for the first time) to remember the exact moves we played so I could analyze our game with the computer engine. And, after about 20 minutes of thinking I was able to recreate the game! Here it is (I played as black, he as white):

https://lichess.org/8Ez4d8g6

Poor guy, challenged the great Feynman without knowing what he was delving into

Switching to otb instead of online chess feels weird. First couple times I played I kept falling to long distance attacks because the board doesn't feel as clearly on my sight as the smaller online board does

Written by Karlabos on 20.04.2022 at 20:53

Poor guy, challenged the great Feynman without knowing what he was delving into

Aww, you are too kind

I sac my queen twice in this game: https://lichess.org/CCxBKXQ3

Another game: my opponent has two queens and I have no pieces except a knight and pawns - and I'm able to checkmate with a pawn! https://lichess.org/xI1re5wQ

Keep in mind that both games are bullet (each side has 1 minute time) so some tricks only work because the opponent doesn't have enough time to react.

Tough game, I had to defend really hard and was running out of time (I've lately gotten worse at fast time controls ). But I managed to checkmate my opponent! (I played with the black pieces)
https://chess.com/live/game/48274125453

^ Some nasty tactics winning pawns in this game.
Nice checkmate =D

Tomorrow begins the first of 14 rounds of the chess Candidates tournament. The 8 top chess players of the world play against each other. The winner gets to challenge current World Champion Magnus Carlsen!
Here for more info:
http://candidates.fide.com/
Here's one place where you can follow the games:
https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-candidates-tournament-2022/round-1/LsFeKWZU
And I'm sure when you search on YouTube you'll find video broadcasts of the players as well

Anyone got any chance against Magnus?
I don't think so, lol =p

Written by Karlabos on 17.06.2022 at 02:45

Anyone got any chance against Magnus?
I don't think so, lol =p

The match-up I'm hoping for is Hikaru Nakamura vs Magnus. If you don't know Hikaru, he's a Japanese American super GM who's very popular as a chess streamer on Twitch and YouTube. He's kind of arrogant, but he's incredibly talented. I think he's got the title of fastest highest rated player on chess.com.
Here's a compilation that shows his different aspects pretty well, including premoving and calculating a ton of moves ahead, reacting to his subscribers blunder games, and his signature look up at the ceiling when he's thinking hard

Written by F3ynman on 17.06.2022 at 14:56

The match-up I'm hoping for is Hikaru Nakamura vs Magnus. If you don't know Hikaru, he's a Japanese American super GM who's very popular as a chess streamer on Twitch and YouTube. He's kind of arrogant, but he's incredibly talented. I think he's got the title of fastest highest rated player on chess.com.

Yeah, I know Hikaru. and frankly I feel like he's the strongest of the 8 (or maybe Alireza I dunno). But even so, he has a huge story of losing to Carlsen, so pretty much I think this year is gonna be Magnus again. We are prob gonna have to wait for pragsfghjnda to grow up if we are to see a new world champion.

Quote:

and his signature look up at the ceiling when he's thinking hard

Yeah, it's because he has stockfish running on the ceiling