Chess thread

[EvilPie]

Was there any time pressure involved? Even I saw this one without too much bother.

[Tal]

Was there any time pressure involved? Even I saw this one without too much bother.

Not that I am aware of. The first time control is usually somewhere between the 30 and 40 move mark (in higher level games, towards the latter), so 41 would be after the time control AFAIK.

Over the board, it is so easy to miss something like that, tho. White had been trying an attack and had a combination of ideas in mind. I suspect he missed the perpetual check (where a player can't escape being checked back and forth so the game is drawn as neither side can make progress) by Black and believed that f6 was a good way of clearing Black's remaining defence.

Once you have a plan in mind (and remember that this would have been three, four, eight moves before this position), it can be hard to force yourself to see whether there is a better one along the way.

[EvilPie]

Has anyone ever had a time advantage and used a perpetual check to angle out a win?

[kinboshi]

Has anyone ever had a time advantage and used a perpetual check to angle out a win?

You mean use perpetual check moves until the other person's clock runs out?  Can't really happen - as the repetition of the moves will mean it's a draw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_repetition

[Tal]

I would always encourage someone to look for and play the best move on the board.

However, when the villain is short of time, some people (ahem...) will play a move instead that is designed to make villain think more - to use more time - and thereby increase the risk of them not making their required 40 moves in time. Typically, this will be a non-check and the reason for that is that a check can generally be answered either by an obvious king move or an even more obvious blocker. A non-check makes villain have to think of their own idea without making their own position worse in the process.

Another tactic is to avoid swaps and to keep the pieces on the board, thereby increasing the number of possibilities the villain has to consider in his fading time. This, of course, carries its own risks that the villain stumbles across something you haven't seen and you are hoisted by your own pétard.

If you are miles ahead on the clock, a clever tactic is to take your time. It is really hard to keep the adrenaline pumping and the concentration levels high for more than a few minutes. The temptation as the hero is to play quickly and prevent villain from having time to consider his response but your job is to play the move Magnus Carlsen (or Mr Shredder) would play, so why make anything less than the Max EV play?

In villain's seat, he has no idea whether you are going to take 1 minute or 20, so he can't invest too much time on one possible variation, else his time might be completely wasted if he doesn't have the chance to look at the others.

Play the best move on the board wherever you can.

To quote Vanilla Ice, anything less than the best is a felony.

[kinboshi]

In that vein, I have used tactics that could be described as 'angle-shooting' in chess.

I was playing in the Lloyds Bank U12 comp, which at the time was pretty much the English championships. Think it was a fourth round match, and my opponent was a bit of a cocky git (who also looked a lot older than 11, but never mind). He was also beating me, which was annoying. I think he was a couple of pawns up and as the game was going to inevitably progress I'd probably suffer a slow and painful death to lose in the endgame.

However, he had an Achilles heel. He'd constantly forget to press his clock after he moved.

I think the first time, I told him.  The second time I waited as I thought, and he eventually he glanced at the clock and realised it was his ticking down not mine, so pressed the button.  Anyway, he had about 15 minutes left on his clock, and I had about 45 minutes. My only 'out' was to see if I could get him into severe time-trouble and then get him to make a mistake or even run out of time completely.

After a few more times of forgetting to press his clock, he was down to under 5 minutes (these were analogue clocks and it's pretty difficult to know exactly how long is left as the flag starts to lift, before it falls when the time's expired.  I still had over half an hour left.  My plan was to try and make the position on the board quite complex, and then to make a move that would make him think.  When the position felt right, and after I'd thought through the variations of what could happen and taken a good fifteen minutes thinking - I made my move.  It was a bishop sacrifice that I'd worked out would probably fail, but he'd have to play things pretty much spot on otherwise he could easily make a mistake and find himself in trouble.

Of course, he was already in trouble in terms of the time left on his clock. So he thought for a couple of minutes and made a move.  It was one of the ones I'd expected, so I immediately made my response and hit the clock. He wasn't happy as he had to tank again for a bit, and then moved again. Like before, it was a move I'd anticipated (and was actually his best line that in a vacuum would lead to him winning comfortably), and I moved immediately.

He was now down to less than a minute, and so with an anxious look at the clock he had to move again quickly.  We were still quite a way off the 40th move (or whatever move it was when additional time was added to the clocks), and now the game had become like a blitz match.  I didn't want to take too long making my moves as it would be giving him valuable time to think about his next move. I had nothing to lose, as I was already in a losing position, whereas if he misstepped he'd be handing me a win that I didn't really deserve. The next 5 or so moves were a blur, as pieces were moved, the clock hit, pieces taken and then used to hit the clock, and the tournament adjudicator had come over to monitor the clock and number of moves we were on, etc.

His flag was about to fall, and although he still had the lead in the game I was now in the driving seat. He played a move and said "Do you want a draw?" - the clock now ticking for me, although I still had over 5 minutes left on my clock. So I thought about it, a draw wouldn't have been a bad result from the position I was in - but now I wanted the full point. I was going to decline his offer, but wanted him to think I was thinking about it...right up to the moment I made a bizzare knight move and pressed the clock (meaning it was his go, I'd declined his offer and now it's on him to move).  The knight move wasn't expected, and after about 20 seconds of him working out if there was more to it than met the eye (there wasn't, it was a 'bad' move), he made a move but before he could press his clock his flag fell. 

I'd won.  I was an angle-shooting 11-year old. But it felt good

[Tal]

Kinboshi v Hellmuth on The Big Game

[kinboshi]

Kinboshi v Hellmuth on The Big Game

Maybe he didn't look - he just showed them to the folks at home?

Nah....

[Tal]

Tbf he did play it like a set...


Here's something for the pedants (I'm proud of being one myself). Chess boards in famous films being set up wrongly:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8610

Amused me anyway.

[titaniumbean]

Awesome link.


Always knew Kinboshi was a twatty :p


edit re position 1, I don't get why we don't just sacrifice the piece with that move?

[Tal]

Awesome link.


Always knew Kinboshi was a twatty :p


edit re position 1, I don't get why we don't just sacrifice the piece with that move?

If you mean Ne5+, that is exactly what he played. Black can't take the knight because white takes the rook and is left with Rook v Bishop (which in that position should be a win), so he moves the king instead. Then white swaps the rooks off and gobbles up the pawn on c6.

It isn't a mate, but the extra material in that position is critical, which is why little tactics in the endgame are so important.

All the solutions are linked at the bottom of the webpage, so you can see that they were all real games.

[Tal]

Here is the direct link to the solutions to the puzzles I put up the other day: http://chessbase.com/news/2010/misc/games/mastermoves02.htm

Position 4 is a crash-bang-wallop of a move. Nxe6 leads to mate against pretty much anything because of the bishop lurking on a3.

Having your pieces working together is so important and, from Black's perspective, castling before he got himself into this mess might have been an idea!

[TightEnd]

White to move, mate in 3

I can't get this one!

http://gameknot.com/chess-puzzle.pl?pz=14349&daily=1

[titaniumbean]

Awesome link.


Always knew Kinboshi was a twatty :p


edit re position 1, I don't get why we don't just sacrifice the piece with that move?

If you mean Ne5+, that is exactly what he played. Black can't take the knight because white takes the rook and is left with Rook v Bishop (which in that position should be a win), so he moves the king instead. Then white swaps the rooks off and gobbles up the pawn on c6.

It isn't a mate, but the extra material in that position is critical, which is why little tactics in the endgame are so important.

All the solutions are linked at the bottom of the webpage, so you can see that they were all real games.

ok so what I did was stare at the board for a solid 10 minutes, think oooh what about this and that, stare for 5 minutes more, open the solutions, stare at them for a month of sundays and still not understand.


i'm tez.



i'm getting close to getting a board out just to look at it properly because I can't understand it when I have to remember what pieces have moved and what pieces are covering different areas.


great thread though.

[The Baron]

White to move, mate in 3

I can't get this one!

http://gameknot.com/chess-puzzle.pl?pz=14349&daily=1

Took a while!