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Something I have talked about over the years is my desire to one day use the method that Vladimir Zak allegedly taught in the Leningrad Pioneer’s Palace of taking between 13-17 hours to annotate a single game.
The formula essentially works out thusly:
Play the game over quickly in 15 or 20 minutes to “awaken your thoughts.”
Play it over the course of an hour to synopsize the key moments.
Analyze key moments in detail over three to four hours.
Analyze the opening for three to four hours.
Play the game over one more and write analysis for four to five hours.
I am fairly certain I can not analyze every one of my games in this fashion as I don’t have that much time. However, I have always wanted to do one.
Here is the game I have selected. I will show my work over some upcoming blog entries.
Feel free to critique me on this journey. I think it will be interesting.
While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.
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I didn’t post yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t training. I didn’t get to do any Sherlock’s Method, but that’s mostly because I work from the office on Tuesdays. So my “free” hour between 7:00-8:00 am that I use for training on Mon/Wed/Fri is spent dropping my dog off at doggy daycare (shout out to Dogtopia in Pewaukee, WI – they are awesome!)
However, I knew this going in. I will also have the same issue on some Thursdays since I work from the office on that day too. I also go to the chess club on Thursday night. I don’t think I will have a game tomorrow, so I might still get my positions in. Time will tell. The plan is to do at least eight today to get in yesterday’s and today’s four positions.
Here’s a position that exposes an interesting blind spot in my calculation. I used to have an issue where any time there was a pawn exchange in an endgame, I would “forget” that you can just push past and that you’re not forced to recapture just because you can. This issue is not the same, but in my mind it is probably related.
Here is the position. It is from a correspondence game in 2011.
I’ll try to replicate my thoughts as I had them.
“White is down two pawns, but the d5 pawn is hanging. So really, they can be down only one pawn if they desire.
So what about 1.Nxd5. If 1…Qxd2+ 2.Kxd2 I’m threatening a fork on c7 along with 3.Bxg7, winning material. Wait, no, there is no fork on c7 since the d6 bishop guards against it.
Oh, OK. I play 1.Nb5, and now I am threatening both the d6 bishop as well as taking on g7. If Black puts the bishop on f8, now the fork works! Except 1…Qxd2+ 2.Kxd2 Bf4+ and now c7 is still guarded and after I move my king, Black can guard against the capture on g7.
Wait, maybe this is a positional puzzle since it’s a correspondence game. What if I play 1.Qxd5, and then after 1…Qxd5 2.Nxd5 Black has to either play 2…Nf6 and give back the pawn, or play 2…f6, which looks not great. Plus, in this line there is no …Bf4+ since the d5 knight guards against it.”
At this point, I’m essentially through most of the time I had allotted myself to solve this one. So I decide my solution has to be 1.Qxd5. After all, that looks to be pretty level, and an engine will tell you it’s slightly better for Black if Black gives up the second pawn with 2…Nf6 3.Nxf6+ gxf6 4.Bxg6 0-0. Of course, I’d rather be playing Black since I think the queenside majority would be a factor in the endgame.
Of course, there is a huge hole in my calculation. Do you see it? Do you see why I say that it’s related to my old inability to realize there were two ways to do something with a pawn?
The solution and my explanation are below.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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What I am missing is that after 1.Nb5 Qxd2+
White is not forced to recapture with the King, allowing …Bf4+. Instead, just recapture with the knight and the dual threats against the bishop on d6 and the pawn on g7 remain, along with the potential for the fork on c7 if the bishop moves to f8.
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Here’s a position you don’t typically think of as move 24 in a Berlin:
So how did we get here, and how did I manage to blunder away all of my advantage? Let’s look at the game. Please note that I haven’t really analyzed this much so that’s why the notes are so sparse. This game was just played 12 hours ago.
So my rating continues to climb, but my openings continue to verge on nonsensical.
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I just got home from the Chicago Class, and overall I can say I am happy I attended the tournament. I don’t typically play in CCA events for reasons that aren’t that important to discuss here.
This was only my second one ever, and I have to say that I am glad that I went. The real idea here was to see my friends Ryan Murphy and Elshan Moradiabaddi. So on that front the event was a rousing success.
As for the tournament itself, there is definite room for improvement in my games, but I am satisfied with the overall results. All three games were draws, but with me giving up a significant rating differential.
I took a bye in round two to run one of my online events which I do for the company that Ryan and I own, the IAC. I also didn’t play the final round as I am exhausted and also have to work tomorrow until 9pm, so I decided to make the drive home and chill a bit.
So here are my games from rounds one, three, and four.
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Many chess players are familiar with the quote by the second world champion, Emmanuel Lasker, that “When you see a good move, look for a better one.”
Knowing the quote and taking the advice are clearly different things.
Thursday I was foundering in the opening, and so afterwards a friend of mine was showing me this line he plays as White against the Sveshnikov. After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5 6.Nb5 d6 7.Nd5 we reach this position:
Of course Black can’t take the “hanging” pawn on e4 since there’s a knight check on c7 picking up a rook
Wait a minute…it’s not just a rook. The only move is 8…Kd7 and now after 9.Qg4+ f5 10.Qxf5 is mate!
I start wondering if anyone has ever taken the e4 pawn, so I check. There are two games in my database. There’s this one:
And then there’s this one:
Notice that the first game is a blitz game, whereas the second game appears to be a classical tournament game. In that second game a player of almost 2100 FIDE strength misses a mate in two. My guess…he forgot to look for a better move.
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Part of my goal this year is to get every game I played annotated and published here. I have been semi-lazy about that goal, but here is the earliest game I have annotated for the year so far. It took place in the third round of my first tournament.
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Recently a former member of the Southwest Chess Club, Daniel Perelman, passed away at the untimely age of 18 in a plane crash as he was training to get his pilot’s license.
We changed the name of our most recent tournament to the Daniel Perelman Memorial. Here are my games with analysis. This was an up and down event for me. I won two nice games. I lost horribly in one, and I drew one after missing a free rook.
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In my Thursday game this past week I sat down to play Minghang Chen, who’s a solid 1800 player. I had a good feeling all day and was in a great frame of mind at the board.
I had the White pieces and in short order I achieved an almost winning position:
A few moves later we reach this position and now I’m thinking it’s time to get my material back and win some of my own.
After taking the d pawn, we arrive at
And now I can just bail out into a better position with Re6, but my idea is to capture on f6 with the d6 rook. So I do, and Black captures back.
Here I can just take again on f6 and then after …Bc3 Qb6 I have an edge
Instead I decide (correctly) that Qxe5 is much better.
Now I start thinking that Black might have something with …Bc3, and this is where chess blindness kicks in. Black plays the move.
The blindness takes two forms here. It starts with the fact that for some reason I’m not realizing that my rook on f1 is protected by the bishop. So I play what I feel is the forced 34.Qxc3 Qxc3 35.Nxc3 and offer a draw, which was accepted (I’m going to lose the c pawn, so I’m probably on the worse end of this draw, but my opponent had little time left on the clock.)
However, do you spot what I missed?
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Yep, I can just play 34.Qxb8 and I’m completely winning. The rook on b8 hangs, but since in my mind I think that my rook on f1 is hanging with check I don’t see this at all.
Chess blindness is a disease which must be eradicated.
While your here, let me ask for your help. I’d like to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.
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I am playing in the US Amateur Team Tournament and in round one my team faced the top seed.
I am on board four and was playing a kid rated 2066. I absolutely should have won this game. Here it is with no real notes. I’ll annotate and re-publish later.
