Below I've posted the game. I'll post the full notes in a replayable window (how I wish I had the current version of ChessBase for that purpose!), but I'm also going to pull a few positions out for particular comment.
Thanks to Peter Dyson for organizing the tournament, and to IM Javad Maharramzade for picking my game out of the masses for a prize. I'm unlikely to win another one of these!
The first position comes with White to play his 14th move.
Durham, Todd (1748) - Mayes, Timothy David (1684)
I had struck in the center with 13 e4 and Mayes responded with 13...Bb4. Honestly, I hadn't even considered it, but I wasn't worried. My position simply couldn't be worse. After ten minutes of thought I played
14 e5 Ne4
15 Nxe4 Bxe1
16 Nd6
The position of the queenside knights is worth pointing out. Black took three moves to get his knight to g6. I took three moves to get mine to d6. I see this all the time in my games, both the ones I win and the ones I lose. In the crushes especially, the winning side's pieces move with vigor and purpose, and the losing side's pieces kind of wander around aimlessly. Having a plan for one's pieces is probably the best single bit of chess advice one can remember at the board.
Here my opponent missed his best try, namely 16...Bb4. To be honest, it didn't occur to me, either. Black comes out in bad shape in that line, too, but in much relative better shape than either the game line (16...Re7) or the line I assumed he would play (16...Bxf2). As my friend Paul Leggett likes to say, the silicon beasts make fools of us all. More on that topic directly!
A few moves later we reached this position.
After 22...Nc8
White has a dominating position, crushing, in fact. I've got an abundance of choices for how to continue. What would you chose?
During the game I had been working on a sacrificial idea for this position. My previous move (22 Bc3) had been designed to not draw any attention to my idea, in fact, though the move did have a purpose of its own, namely to shut down any possible action by Black on the a-file. But what I really wanted to do was crush Black's king, and now I took my shot!
23 Nxf7
Nice enough, but I can't give it an exclamation point, for reasons to be revealed shortly. The point is that if Black plays 23...Rxf7 I'll play 24 Bxe6. We will reach a position where once again the piece distribution is the same for both sides, but I will have two extra pawns, including the monster passer on e6, a much safer king, better pieces, etc. And if he plays
23 ... Kxf7
24 Bxe6+
decides things quickly. Play continued
24 ... Kxe6
25 Qg6+ Ke7
26 Qxg7+ Ke8
27 Qg8+ Ke7
29 Qf7+ Kd8
30 Qf8#
Final position
I like how almost the entirety of Black's army is cowering behind their king - if only I could have picked off that h-pawn!
But I've got two remaining bits to show. First, my 28th move, while sufficient to win, wasn't the quickest path to victory.
Position after 27...Ke7
I don't think any human, seeing that 28 e6 would win would easily (though Mayes didn't play the best moves available) would keep looking for a better move, but there's one here, namely 28 Ng5!
Position after 28 Ng5!
White simply threatens to play 29 Qf7+ and 30 Qf8#. And if Black takes the knight with 28...hxg5, White responds with the crusher 29 Bd2!
Position after 29 Bd2!
It didn't even occur to me to look, and I'm not ashamed to admit it! A likely final position in this case would be something like this.
Position after 32 Qe6#
This is even more dominating than what happened, but I do prefer the final position of the game to this. That's no doubt personal bias speaking.
But that's not really the surprising thing, that a B-player missed a neater finish. The surprising thing comes with the start of the final assault. Remember this position?
Position after 22...Nc8
A night or two after the tournament ended I put my games into ChessBase. I do that for all the usual reasons - analysis, checking the scoresheet for accuracy, etc. But for whatever reason that night I left Chessbase open on this position with Stockfish running in the background. The next morning when I realized I had left it running all night, I discovered something funny. It turns out 23 Nxf7 isn't the best move in the position. Stockfish primarily preferred either 23 g4 or 23 Bd2 with a slower assault on the kingside. The moves had significantly higher evaluations than the move played.
Okay, fair enough, I suppose. White really does have a crushing position here, it's not surprising that there's more than one way to bring home the point, or that there are better methods than what I chose.
No, the surprising thing is that 23 Nxf7, which is completely winning, is only the 33rd best option for White in this position! That's right, I had 32 better moves in the position! ("Thirty seven?!" might ring a bell for movie buffs, but this is only 32.) I wouldn't have even guessed I had that many reasonable moves in the position. Allegedly, 23 Nh2 is better than what I played!
The lesson here is that computers are making us class players looking even more ridiculous than we already are, and it's only likely to get worse.
That said, my first two games had been long, grueling affairs, and this one was over quickly. I had enough time to run back to my room, change into my swimming trunks (to sound even older than I am), and jumped into the pool for fifteen or twenty minutes before it closed. In a pool under the moonlight on a warm spring night - if I'd had more time I'd have had a beer right then and there, too. Let's see Stockfish do that, huh?
I then showered, transcribed my game score and submitted it for the brilliancy prizes. For which I did win third place, for which I'm very grateful! I expect that it'll be the only such prize I ever win, which is one reason I went over the game with such a lengthy post. And if you think this is bad, wait until you see the entirety of my notes below.
No comments:
Post a Comment