Because I already posted five times in a row in the chesslings thread.
This is possibly the cleanest game I ever played. My opponent was 100 points higher rated.
It is generally my opinion that playing the queen’s knight to the sixth rank in the opening with a Queen’s pawn game is an inaccuracy. But, though he didn’t make any mistakes I could see, where I feel he made a losing move was by then moving that knight to A7. That’s the moment I felt “this game is probably mine.”
I mean, of course the mistake was allowing me to take that bishop with my pawn in the 20th move. But I don’t think a player below master level would even seriously consider that type of move in that position. I can’t really call it a mistake in the sense.
His position looks completely silly when you look at the outcome. But the thought behind it was quite sound. His plan was to use compressed power on the Queen’s side to push and overwhelm. He didn’t consider sideways mobility, or that he would need the bishop’s range, because it didn’t occur to him a serious way to bring the game to the king’s side could develop. He thought, not unsoundly, that it would stay at least locked enough for him to develop his play methodically on the Queen’s side.
Sometimes you lose, but you win.
I made a mistake in simplifying and solidifying with the king rook endgame, knowing the win was there. But when I got there, I couldn’t see it.
I had to wait until my time was down to 20 seconds to his two minutes to finally understand.
Ah. It is a rook sacrifice.
It will look like white resigns and loses, but actually black runs out of time and loses. Last nine moves were premoved.
Enjoy.
I did make one serious mistake, which was angling the Queen for the checkmate set up on move 28. I knew I should put my bishop blocking the diagonal starting at f1, but I got carried away by that feeling of a fleeting chance. But it wasn’t fleeting.
The amount of 2000+ players that think taking that knight isn’t a huge blunder is astonishing.
By the way, I could have accepted his Queen trade and it still would have been winning.
This whole game was played out of rage for having missed the fork at move 11 (pawn to e4).
Lol I already had it in move 10. Geez McGeeze.
Pawns, pawns, pawns, we want pawns.
It’s not about strength, it’s about effective strength at the Shwerpunkt. (pzr is black)
Overall strength matters insofar as it determines potential Shwerpunkt strength. But once the Shwerpunkt is determined on both temporal and structural grounds, reserves don’t really matter.
The fucking shear point.
“A battle plan without a shear point is like a man without character.”
von Hindenburg
I went up a weight class, from 10 min to 10 min with 5 sec increment per move, because I was winning, losing and drawing too many games because one or both of us ran low on time.
But, of course, it’s not as simple as the same game with more time. 10+5 players seem to eschew middle game strategy almost altogether, instead making each move with 20 or 30 moves calculated ahead to create a perfect endgame, while killing the middle game as quickly as possible in the correct direction.
When I say a perfect end game, I mean actual ready-to-go 4-5 move sequences once only three or so pieces are left to each side plus the pawns.
I don’t know yet if what I want is to find a way to reintroduce middle game strategy, or learn this cold blooded paradigm.
I guess the lesson is that, given enough time to calculate, almost any middle game overture can be disassembled.
Black to play and win.
posting in duplicate:
Gem in the eye.
Sometimes, you develop a plan so multifariously devious, that you lose the thread and forget what you did.
Here, the first move I had considered was taking the e pawn with the g knight, with the idea that he would have to take to escape the fork of queen, rook and king, after which I take knight with queen (the pawn is pinned by the rook, so it can’t recapture the queen) and am up another pawn.
But then an even more glorious idea occured. I take the f pawn with the h knight. He takes with rook, thinking he will have two knights for the rook. But then I sacrifice the queen, taking the knight. After he takes the queen, then the g knight takes the e pawn, attacking the queen (the queen, additionally, is undefended, so he won’t even get a knight for it), uncovering a check from my rook. He moves his king, I take the queen, and am up two more pawns, plus a wrecked black king defensive structure. But when I played the knight to begin the sequence, all I could now see was that the bishop defended the e pawn, completely forgetting that that had been calculated already, and that the sequence included the queen sacrifice so that the knight’s attack on the queen would come with a discovered check, nullifying the bishop’s defence of the pawn.
He could have survived a bit longer than he did, he was already completely lost, from several moves ago, but the reason he lost so fast is that he had spent most of his time coming up with his 19th move, and was down to mere seconds.
Preparation.
From the crocodile’s jaw (PZR is black).