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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.
Here is the whole game.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott