A spectacular game

This is one of my three favorite games that I have played. The others are K.Thompson-Rhine, 1992 and Rhine-Sprenkle, 1981. This is the only one of the three that isn't published in Chess Informant I should've submitted this one too, but I got lazy. It's a beautiful game, primarily because of my opponent's efforts - he sacrificed, or offered to sacrifice, a pawn, knight, bishop, rook, and queen - literally every kind of piece except his king. The cold, dispassionate engine (Houdini 3) tells me that had I played slightly differently (23.Qc2!), I would have had a large advantage. But as "Kinghunt" once observed on chessgames.com, "This is a King's Indian Defence - Black is always objectively lost until suddenly Black wins." Or draws, in this case.

Up through 15.c5, the game was all book. My opponent's 15...c6!? was a novelty. I was quite happy after 23.Qb3, thinking that I was a pawn up for little compensation. I could meet 23...f3 with 24.g3 Qh3 25.Bf1. Boerkoel's 23...Ne3!! came as a huge shock. The main points are that Black threatens to win with both 24....Nxg2 25.Kxg2 f3+ and 24...f3 25.g3 Qh3 26.Bf1 Nxf1, and if White plays 24.fxe3, 24...fxe3 threatens 25...Qxh2#, 25...Qxe4, and 25...f2+. The subtle 23.Qc2! would have avoided this shot; since it would have guarded my knight, I could have met 23...Ne3?? with simply 24.fxe3 fxe3 25.g3 and wins. I still thought I was winning after 26.Kxf2. After 26...Bxg3+!, the light finally dawned: I had to allow perpetual check.

Nothing new under the sun

The same tactical themes are seen again and again. Compare the finishes of these two games. They reached identical positions except for the side on which White castled. In both, 15.Nxc6! is the killer, with the point that 15...bxc6 is met by 16.Qa6#, while 15...Qxe2 is met by the unusual checkmate 16.Nxa7#. The first game is No. 314 in Chernev's classic The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess.

Over sixty years later, I played this blitz game, without knowing of its predecessor:

The astute observer will notice that in my game, 14.Nxc6! was already possible. In fairness to Albert, who was my teammate on the Lane Tech High School chess team, this result was highly atypical of our games at the time. He was much stronger. Later we both became masters. Many years later, he co-founded the chessgames.com website.

A typical sacrifice

In the game below, White was already in big trouble when he attempted to exploit the pin on my knight with 8.Ne4?? 8...Nxe4! was a typical sham sacrifice. After 9.Bxd8 Bb4+, Black will regain the sacrificed material with interest. In the final position, the threat of 15...Nd2 double check and mate was enough to induce my opponent to resign.

Still another Englund Gambit trap

I have previously written several posts about traps in the Englund Gambit (1.d4 e5? or, to be charitable, 1.d4 e5?!). There are two "official" refutations of the main line of the gambit: after 2.dxe5 Nc6 3.Nf3 Qe7, one begins with 4.Bf4 (or 4.Bg5) Qb4+ 5.Bd2 Qxc3 6.Nc3!, the other with 4.Qd5. As I've previously noted, indiscriminately combining the two can lead to disaster. Below is another instance of this. After 5.Bg5?? (5.Nc3!) Qb4+!, White is losing after either 6.Bd2 Qxb2 7.Bc3 Bb4, as in the game, or 6.Qd2 Qxb2 7.Qc3 Bb4. The final position is very reminiscent of that arising after the classic Englund trap, 4.Bf4 Qb4+ 5.Bd2 Qxb2 6.Bc3?? Bb4! 7.Qd2 Bxc3 8.Qxc3 Qc1#.

Mate by castling

Over four years ago, I published a game where I administered checkmate by capturing en passant. Here I deliver another very rare form of checkmate: mate by castling. This appears to be comparable in rarity to mate by en passant. The only other examples of it that I've been able to find are P. Morphy-A. Morphy, New Orleans 1850, and Kvicala-NN, Prague 1875. The famous game Ed. Lasker-Thomas, London 1912 is not an instance of this, since Edward Lasker in that game chose to play 18.Kd2# rather than 18.0-0-0#. Nor, it appears, is Prins-Day, Lugano (ol) 1968, despite the score of that game given at chessgames.com, which shows the game ending with 31...0-0-0#. According to Day, the winner of the game, who should know, the game actually ended after 28...Qe4+. He writes, "And my opponent resigned, unwilling to investigate 29.K-B6 Q-B4+ 30.K-N7 Q-N3+ 31.K-R8 and Black has a choice of absurd mates." Raymond D. Keene (ed.), Learn from the Grandmasters, p. 108. Mate by castling is thus sufficiently rare that I have been unable to find an example of it occurring in the entire 20th century!

Hello world 2.0 - July 2014

*Wakes up from 6½-month hibernation*

Kindly check out the Chicago Chess Center Blog: I'll be hanging out there for the foreseeable future. As with all new web spaces, it may take us a little time to get up to speed....

Jim Froelich's Chicago Area Chess usergroup on Facebook is a great place to chat and gossip, and the Illinois Chess Association's tournament calendar, maintained by the indefatigable Maret Thorpe, keeps you up-to-date on where to play. It's because of these two great resources that I didn't feel guilty about a sabbatical.

I'll certainly keep this blog up, and I may occasionally post things over here that are incompatible with the CCC's nonprofit mission. And of course, my very nice co-editors are always welcome to continute to use this space for anything of interest to the Chicago chess community or to woodpushers in general.  Thanks to Keith Ammann, Vince Hart, Matt Pullin, Tom Panelas, and especially NM Frederick Rhine for their contributions. 

And thanks to you folks for visiting this site and giving us useful feedback! Your thoughts are always welcome: my personal email is billbrock1958@gmail.com and my Chicago Chess Center email is billbrock@chichess.org.

Another trap in From's Gambit

DO NOT play 1.f4 unless you have an answer ready for From's Gambit, 1...e5!? King's Gambiteers can happily play 2.e4. The line White played in the game was fine up to a point. IM Tim Taylor in his book Bird's Opening recommends 7.d4 Ng6 8.Nxg6 hxg6 9.Qd3! Nc6 10.c3! Bf5 11.e4 Qe7 12.Bg2 0-0-0 13.Be3 Bd7 14.Bf2!, when Black doesn't have enough compensation for the gambit pawn. Another line is 5.d4 g4 6.Ne5!, heading into a slightly better ending for White after 6...Bxe5 7.dxe5 Qxd1+ 8.Kxd1. Instead of playing these reasonable lines, most of my blitz opponents have played ridiculously and gotten crushed. A case in point:

King's Gambit silliness

I recently got GM John Shaw's amazing new 680-page tome The King's Gambit. It may be the greatest book ever written on a single opening! Well worth getting if you play either side of 1.e4 e5, and maybe even if you don't.

You might even want to give the King's Gambit a try. No doubt you'll lose some games, but on the other hand you'll win others like this. I guarantee that you're not going to win many 13-movers with the Ruy Lopez! A lot of people, even strong players, don't take the King's Gambit seriously, and spend little if any time preparing against it. Just take a look at the games that GM Joe Gallagher (author of an earlier book on the King's Gambit) won in 20 or fewer moves.

The rarely-sprung trap

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 e6?! 4.c4 Bb4+?? is an ingenious but bad way of playing Alekhine's Defense. It is seen 19 times in Mega Database 2013. Some good players had White, including the Filipino GM and former Candidate Eugenio Torre, and two other players rated over 2300. In 16 of those games, White played 5.Bd2; in the other three, he played 5.Nd2. In none of the games did White play 5.Ke2!, winning a piece, since after either 5...Nb6 6.c5 or 5...Ne7 6.a3, Black's bishop is trapped and will be lost. White, modestly rated 1197, did find the sockdolager (as the old-time writers liked to say) in the below correspondence game, presumably aided by the greater time available for reflection.

This game is from Karsten Müller and Rainer Knaak's book 222 Opening Traps After 1.e4, p. 18. I first learned of this trap in Tim Krabbé's wonderful Open Chess Diary (scroll down to No. 381). As I have previously noted, I have myself won with the mirror image of this trap, 1.d4 Nc6 2.d5 Ne5 3.e4 d6 4.f4 Bg4?? 5.Qd2! and Black loses a piece just as in the original version.

More Internet silliness

As usual, passive play in the Queen's Gambit Accepted is brutally punished.

Enlightened by Houdini

It's always educational to analyze one's games, even "stupid" games like online blitz games, with a strong engine like Houdini. In the following game, for example, I made a major tactical hiccup on move 10, which should have dropped a piece - to which I, and apparently also my opponent, were oblivious. Then I did something right, exploiting his inaccuracy on move 15, and got "an easily won game." I blundered on move 23 with a "loose" move, which he exploited with a tactic that should have left me scrambling for a draw. But just two moves later he fell into a back-rank trap that left me in an ending an exchange up. Thanks to the wonders of premove, I was able to convert it into a win despite the dearth of time on my clock.

We play blitz

Beware of this sort of thing - White pieces converging on c7 - in the Sicilian.

More Internet silliness

White to play and win.

Assassinating the Sniper

Another Internet game

White makes some instructive mistakes in this game, in effect a Sicilian Dragon by transposition from the Sozin, Benko Variation (6...Qb6).

A trap in the Sicilian, Tal Gambit

Another game from my recently ended 151-0-0 winning streak on GameKnot.com.

Flogging the Fajarowicz

After three rounds of the Greater Midwest Classic this past weekend, Greg Bungo was the sole leader of the top section with 3-0. I was one of five players a half-point behind. We met on Board 1.

Greg surprised me - pleasantly - with the Fajarowicz Gambit, 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ne4?! The regular Budapest with 3...Ng4, though rarely played by top GMs, borders on respectability. Black usually regains the gambit pawn and it's hard for White to get much advantage if Black plays well. The Fajarowicz, on the other hand, has never made much sense to me. There are a fair number of traps at Black's disposal, but if White avoids them Black doesn't get much for the sacrificed pawn. His knight on e4 often ends up retreating to c5, and then sometimes to e6.

IM Timothy Taylor writes in his excellent book The Budapest Gambit (2009), p. 225, "I don't understand this gambit. Black is a pawn down but, unlike in the regular Budapest, has no threat to get it back and no significant lead in development." "[M]y recommendation for Black is simple: don't play it!" But it has its fans. GM Lev Gutman wrote a whole book on the thing. In the Chicago area, its adherents include NMs Steve Szpisjak and Bungo, as well as Dean Arond.

Greg recovered well from this debacle with a win in Round 5. Unfortunately, a last round loss kept him out of the major prize money. I drew in Rounds 5 and 6 to tie with David Peng, Aaron Jing, Karthikeyan Pounraj, and Maggie Feng for second prize, each of us earning $700. Audrius Macenis, whom Greg beat in Round 2, won his other five games to win the $1500 first prize outright.

Sacking the house

The following game is a bit sloppy, but the conclusion is entertaining. I'm now 149-0-0 on GameKnot. The streak will end very soon. Seriously.

Crushing the Kopec

In the Kopec System against the Sicilian, White plays 3.c3 and the odd-looking 4.Bd3!?, intending to drop the bishop back to c2, followed in due course by d4. I've faced it many times in blitz games, always finding it a bit annoying. I'd usually play ...e5 at some point and we'd end up in a Ruy Lopez-type position, which I'm not used to defending as Black. During this correspondence game, I consulted the database and discovered that Black scores much better with 5...Bg4! Often he plays ...e6 and ...d5, setting up a French-type pawn structure where he has already developed his light-squared bishop outside the pawn chain.

This game gives me a 122-0-0 score on GameKnot and a rating of 2015.

It takes two to "Tango"

My opponent in the following game found a new way to lose a pawn as White against the Black Knights' Tango (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6!?). He began with 3.d5!?, which IM Richard Palliser calls "The Lunge" in his book on the opening, tango! At first blush, the move looks strong. White hopes to chase Black's knights with his pawns and force them back in disarray, à la Borochow-Fine, Kujoth-Fashingbauer, Marshall-Rogosin, and various games in the Halloween Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nxe5?! Nxe5 5.d4). Something like that did happen in Tate-Orlov, 1995. But if Black plays correctly, White gets little or no advantage with 3.d5. 3.Nf3 and 3.Nc3 are much more commonly seen, and more successful in practice.

White's 4.Qc2 was not in the spirit of The Lunge. White should continue his aggression with 4.e4 (when 4...Nxe4?? 5.Qd4 wins for White) or even Tate's 4.f4!?, offering the c-pawn as a gambit (4...Nxc4 5.e4). White's 7.a3? was an unfortunate theoretical novelty. Another passive, time-wasting move, it dropped a pawn to the simple tactic 7...Bxd2+ 8.Nxd2 exd5 9.cxd5 Nxd5! The lost pawn should have been the extent of the damage. Surely no one would be so naïve as to take the knight, which would give me the choice of two mates in two, or a mate in four? To my astonishment, my opponent fell into it hook, line, and sinker. I'm now 110-0-0 on GameKnot, with an Orwellian 1984 rating.