Dodged a Bullet-Shaped Fork

 I've been playing a 15 minute game each night on lichess and just crossed 1450 points. This is a surprise because over the board I'm about 1150.  I'm either getting lucky or my tactics/puzzles skills are punching above their weight on lichess.  I just won another game due to a surprise resignation two moves after this situation occurred.

I made the bad move shown by the red arrow, which would have led to a game-ending fork; do you see it? His knight would take the pawn on d4, forking my king and queen. And the e3 pawn could not take the knight because that would put my king in check!  I walked right into that move and, very lucky for me, my opponent didn't see it, despite having all the time in the world on his clock!  It's possible they quit because they realized what they'd just missed and in a fit of annoyance at themselves -- pulled the plug.

 

Crazy game ends in surprise victory

 This game was pretty wild! I started with the very unusual b3 (called the "Nimsowitch-Larsen attack") because chess.com has badges/awards/achievements for doing certain openings. This was the last "easy" one to get because it only required me to play this particular first move. Most of the remaining badges I need to get (yes, need!) require the other person to play certain responses to my moves, and that's impossible to guarantee.

Oh, and I missed checkmating him TWICE around move 21.  But I am sort of proud of the rook sacrifice I did to hit his king at the end; something told me to go for it because I had another rook ready to jump in, and lucky for me it worked out. That's a terrible way to play chess though :)

Analysis showed we both played with about 30% accuracy, which is awful, and I lucked into a checkmate that I had no idea was coming - I thought I was just checking his king; this kind of thing happens when you are running low on time in a three-minute game!

Beginner's Luck with the English Opening

 I looked through the Awards section of chess.com to see what other badges and trinkets I could earn for my account. I noticed a section I hadn't paid much attention to: the opening books. They give you a little badge for opening a game in a certain way; some of them are multiple moves, but other's such as the English opening just require your first move to be a particular one. You might even earn some of these by accident!

I picked the English opening, 1. c4, and thought "I'll just blast through a game and see what happens; if I lose I'll still get the bade. Lucky for me the game went really smoothly with a nice finish!

Can you see the mate in 2?

That was fun! I'll try and get the other opening book badges too, which will let me get a taste for other openings. I'm currently doing London system as white and as black I'm playing the French against 1. e4 and a kind of semi-slav (which is close to a reverse London system) against everything else.

Your Opponent Can Mess Up Just Like You Can, Only Worse!

 Here's a great example of why it's good to keep playing, despite how hopeless your situation may seem.  

This game went downhill pretty quickly for me after the opening; it's a "daily" game, so each player has up to 24 hours to make their move. I messed up my first attack and all my attempts to trick my opponent into letting me back into the game failed, until the point above.  Analysis shows I was at -10, a crushingly imbalanced position when he castled and I moved my queen to here.

I assumed he would check my king with his queen, and I'd slip through my wall of pawns and hopefully be able to deliver the coup de grace and win the game if I could just avoid getting checked on one turn myself.

Luckily for me my opponent went Nf5, leaving me a nice mate in 2. Can you see it?  In a daily game you have time to use the analysis board and play the moves out, even the stuff you assume will work, just to be sure!

Turn off TV video/screen but keep the sound on

 Here's a useful tip a situation where you want to listen to music through your TV, or the speakers connected to it, but don't want to have the TV screen on while you do so.  My TV has this as a hidden feature that isn't even described in the manual - maybe yours does too?

Do a "long press" of the audio mute button - they usually have an image like the one above. Point the remote control at the TV and HOLD that button down for a second or two. If you're lucky the audio will actually stay on but the TV screen will switch off.

A winning game at a live tournament

 Our chess club meets every Tuesday night and the last meeting of each month is an official tournament. Our scores are entered into the US Chess Federation database and it usually brings some very strong players out of the woodwork that are working on their ratings. 

My first game was against a ten year old with a rating of 1950 (I'm about 1100). Our ratings meant he had a 99.7% chance of beating me . . . and he did, easily!

I want to post the third game I played that night because it encapsulates a lot about where I am as a chess player. 

https://lichess.org/pzFgEQkY 

Pawn to b5 was the key error in this game, allowing the devastating Nxc6

The game was fairly even until he allowed me to take his knight (free) AND fork both his rooks (also both unprotected)! It was a heck of a moment :) I remember seeing that square one move before, seeing that his b pawn was preventing me capturing and I thought "I know I shouldn't be playing hope chess, but I *really* hope he moves that pawn!" And then he did!" I looked at it closely to see if it was a trap, of course, but it wasn't :)

Interestingly computer analysis says I was winning until I pushed pawn to a3, but lucky for me that his response of b5 push swung threw the game back to me, and I maintained that strong lead to the end of the game. He allowed me to get his bishop cheaply too, which made the endgame easier.

I had played the same opponent in a crazy casual game the week before where I blundered (lost stupidly) two queens against him and he pulled a draw out of what was clearly a win for me, I knew I would have to be VERY careful to finish this game well. That memory is what made me move my knight and rook away from the queenside around move 44 - I could just "feel" I was going to lose a piece if I let his king get amongst my pieces!

Even the mate came as a surprise to me - I thought I was just checking him!

--


My victories usually come not because I engineered some amazing strategy and won, but rather that I saw an error my opponent made and I'm able to capitalize on it. I like to put it as: "I didn't win; my opponent lost."

Bryan Tillis, the club founder, said in response to this: "The lower the level, the more the evaluation of the game looks like a ping-pong match. It is not who blunders the most, it is who blunders last. I don't see players imposing their will on the position until 1600+. Before that rating range it is mostly blunder checking to get wins. I was once told by a strong GM that anyone can make it to USCF 2000 by simply not blundering; getting to master, though, requires a mass amount of loss and effort to learn a new skill set to work the position much like a boxer works in the ring."

So it turns out I'm pretty normal at this point :)

Double fork leads to resignation

 I greatly enjoyed this moment in a blitz game. The situation felt pretty even, and complicated, with a lot pieces near each other. 

 I noticed his queen and king could be forked by my knight, but sadly that square was defended. Then I saw I could bring my second knight to attack the same square - Nf4!  Would it work?

Yes!

I brought my first knight to e6, he captured it and then I brought the second. He resigned :)

Playing a lot more chess

I have a spent a lot of time playing chess over the past couple of months.  It kicked off when a new trumpet player joined our band and told us he was a professional chess coach.  I chatted with him and he told me there's a chess club that meets every Tuesday and I should come along and try it out.

My chess skills are stunted in a weird way; I know I'm good at tactics because I do a lot of puzzles I reached 2500 rating) , but I have been staying away from playing actual games against people (except for the slow tournament I did in June 2020). I don't know why; I just had a weird block about not wanting to know how good, or more likely, bad, I actually am at the game itself!

I took the invitation to join the club as the incentive I needed to kick myself into gear, find out my real Elo scores and get some advice on what I need to work on. I also signed up as a member of the US Chess federation so I'd be able to play in tournaments and get an official Elo rating (currently 1281 after last weeks tournament, where I beat two 1500 players!)

The people at the club were excellent; many of them are chess teachers and gave me advice on what I needed to work on. They said my tactics skills were indeed strong, but I had too many blunders (giving away pieces in "silly" mistakes) and needed to get those out of my game.

As for openings I was advised to keep going with the London system for white, learn the French defense for black against 1. e4, and to learn a "diamond structure" for black against everything else.

League of Legends

I was prepared to settle down and do some serious, slow study, but then I found the chess.com League system!

It's a kind of rewards system that the chess.com site added a while ago to encourage people to play games against each other. You get rewarded for winning and, importantly, there is NO punishment for losing. You are randomly assigned into a group of 50 users and whoever finishes in the top few spots will be promoted to a higher league. You will never be demoted - you can only go up and that's very appealing to me!  Its trivial to get out of the first couple of leagues but the higher leagues take, I estimate, up to an hour of day of play to earn the points needed for promotion.

You get points by winning short games against other people - the 1 minute bullet and 3 minute blitz are the most efficient ways to earn points.  

You see my dilemma; I was preparing to settle into slow study sessions and here comes this shiny trophy system encouraging me to play lots...and lots... of bullet/blitz.  As I write this post I'm a few hours away from winning the final promotion to the highest league, Legends. The stats page show I've played 470 games in the last 7 days. It's close to 1000 in the last 30 as well.

At least I know where my Elo ratings are now - I'm about 900 in bullet (1 min) and 850 in blitz (3 or 5 min).

Bonus Points

It turns out to be relatively easy to win promotion - chess.com offers bonus points (see the red circled bit above) for playing your games in their tournament/arena format, instead of against a random individual. It makes no difference to you - you can join and leave the tournament any time, but a win earns 2 or more extra points. So a 1 minute bullet win goes from being worth three points to five! That's a serious increase when you're playing hundreds of games. In my example here I have 612 points from bullet, 300 from blitz, and 592 bonus points. 

It's easy to join - simply click the Play button, then click "Tournaments" and pick a "1-0 Bullet" or "3-0 Blitz" tournament (they usually have hundreds of players) and then click the "Join" button. You'll be instantly matched with someone of similar skill and the game will start.  When the tournament ends (they last only 30 minutes or so), just join the next one and keep going. There is always a tournament of those two formats available.

It turns out that I'm the only player in my group of 50 that has earned any bonus points! Here's the player in second place - they have worked very hard to get here, but without those bonus arena points...well, I'm getting 5 points in 2 minutes where they are getting 9 points in six minutes.  I'm running  in second gear and they're still in first!

I think I have learned some basic raw chess skills from these hundreds of games; playing the same opening over and over again gives you insight into the traps you might fall into.  I'm ready to work more on the French Defense and also a more aggressive other opening for black. After I reach the Legends league I think there's actually no incentive to keep playing these short, fast games, so I'll have done what I set out to do and can settle back to study and working on my ratings.

In future posts I'll show some game highlights - despite the fast pace and huge numbers of errors, there's some fun moments in these games.