Ready when you are.
[Event "Muse Academy Eterna-ment"]
[Site "MuseBlog, NET"]
[Date "2010.04.16"]
[Round ""]
[White "Jakob Wonkychair, "]
[Black "muselover, "]
[CBBWhiteId "Jakob Wonkychair"]
[CBBBlackId "muselover"]
[Result "1-0"]
1.f4 g6 2.Nf3 a5 3.g3 f5 4.Rg1 Nc6 5.Bg2 e6 6.e3 Bb4 7.c3 Bc5 8.d4 Ba7 9.Nh4 h5 10.Nxg6 d5 11.Nxh8 Nh6 12.Qxh5+ Nf7 13.Nxf7 Ne7 14.Nh8+ Ng6 15.Qxg6+ Kf8 16.Qf7++
[Site "MuseBlog, NET"]
[Date "2010.04.16"]
[Round ""]
[White "Jakob Wonkychair, "]
[Black "muselover, "]
[CBBWhiteId "Jakob Wonkychair"]
[CBBBlackId "muselover"]
[Result "1-0"]
1.f4 g6 2.Nf3 a5 3.g3 f5 4.Rg1 Nc6 5.Bg2 e6 6.e3 Bb4 7.c3 Bc5 8.d4 Ba7 9.Nh4 h5 10.Nxg6 d5 11.Nxh8 Nh6 12.Qxh5+ Nf7 13.Nxf7 Ne7 14.Nh8+ Ng6 15.Qxg6+ Kf8 16.Qf7++
Your move, Jakob. (Duh.)
I know.
Man, I’m so bad at chess. I lose to almost everyone…Your move.
Wait! I was just unconciously employing the self-deprecation-to-lull-the-opponent-into-a-false-sense-of-security tactic! Go figure!
Dang it. It’s working. Nooooo.
Hehehe… your move.
I guess I’ll use the old “wall of pawns” tactic.
After wasting several moves trying to protect my bishop, I finally get down to business.
To quote the Genie, “Your move…that’s a good move.”
I think you just essentially won the game.
How?
JW: On your 13th move, did you consider taking the knight with your queen?
Oh. I see. Darn, I forgot about my knight. Ah well.
Gah! Check! I think that resistance is futile in this case. I’ll let you win the game, though. Abandoning it would be cowardice.
muselover: In that case, you need to move your king out of check. You have three possible moves.
Good game. I have no idea how I won, I just moved random pieces.
I should try that strategy…
Actually, Jakob’s strategy was a little more sophisticated than that. He attacked Black’s bishop with pawns, and and he looked for undefended pieces (the pawn on g6, the rook on h8) and captured them at every opportunity.
Attacking pieces with pawns works because pieces are more valuable than pawns are. So if you can coax your opponent into trading a piece for a pawn or two, that’s usually a good deal for you. Among pieces, it’s usually advantageous to lose a knight or a bishop in order to capture a rook, or to lose any other piece to capture a queen.
Jakob was a little inefficient in constructing the “mating net” around Black’s king. On move 13, he could have had checkmate right away if he’d taken the black knight on f7 with his queen. On move 14, moving the knight to uncover a check from the queen (“discovered check” is the technical term) was the right idea, but it would have been better to move the knight to e5 to keep the black king from escaping to d7.
As for muselover, clearly he shouldn’t have let White take all those undefended pieces. He also could have put up more of a defense toward the end. Interposing the knight on move 14 didn’t solve the problem of checkmate, because the queen could just take it. It would have been better to move the king to d7. Once the king was back there, White would have had to do some work to pry it loose.
My base strategy was the bishop/rook capture from the baseline, and I just waited for that opportunity and played with pieces.