The Brilliancy That Wasn’t
I don’t think I reported on last Thursday night’s game at the West Chester Chess Club. I played a boy, P.D.—perhaps ten years old—and won, but I had a chess hallucination and made the win more difficult than it should have been. I had White, and the game began 1 e4 c5 2 Nc3 e6 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 d4 cxd4 5 Nxd4 Bb4 (I wasn’t really familiar with this variation, but the way I handled it worked out well.) 6 Qd3 Ne5 7 Qg3 Ng6 8 Nb5 d6 (I was expecting 8 … e5, after which might have followed 9 Bg5 Nf6 10 O-O-O) 9 a3 Bxc3+ (9 … Ba5 Nxd6+; 9 … Bc5 10 b4 Bb6 11 Nxd6+) 10 Qxc3 Kf8 11 Be3 a6 12 Nxd6 Qf6 (12 … Qxd6 Bc5) 13 Qc5 N8e7 14 O-O-O Ne5 (It’s here that I hallucinated. I thought I could play 15 Nxc8 Rxc8 16 Bg5 Qg6 [16 … Rxc5 Rd8#] 17 Qxc8+ Nxc8 18 Rd8#, winning brilliantly. Unfortunately, the e5-knight now blocks my queen’s coverage of the square g5.) 15 Nxc8 (I should just have played Bd4, winning the e5-knight) Rxc8 16 Qc7 g5 (A good response.) 17 Rd8+ Rxd8 18 Qxd8+ Kg7 19 Qd2 (I wanted to keep pressure on him and not let him attack my king along the c-file.) h6 20 Be2 N7c6 21 Rf1 Rd8 22 Qc3 Ng6 (I thought his letting me trade queens was a mistake, since I could win the pawn-up, two-bishops-for-two-knights ending; I thought he needed to try to generate pressure against my king) 23 Qxf6+ Kxf6 24 Rd1 Rxd1+ 25 Kxd1 e5 26 c3 (taking away Nd4) Nf4 27 Bf1 (preserving the two bishops; a question I’ll try to remember to ask the club master is whether I should have done so or whether I should have played 27 Bxf4, reducing the number of pieces on the board) Ke7 28 Bc5+ Kd7 29 g3 Ne6 30 Be3 Ke7 31 Kc2 Kf6 32 Kd3 Kg6 33 a4 Ne7 34 b4 f5 35 exf5+ Kxf5 36 Bg2 Nd8 37 Bc5 Nec6 38 Bb6 h5? (permitting me to win a piece) 39 b5 axb5 40 axb5 Nf7 41 bxc6 bxc6 42 Bxc6 Kg4 43 Bd7+ Kf3 44 Be8 Nd6 45 Bxh5+ Kg2 46 Bc7 e4+ 47 Ke3 Nc4+ 48 Kxe4 Kxf2 49 h4 Black resigns. So, I thought I would win brilliantly, and then had to grind it out. 15 Bd4 would have been much better than 15 Nxc8 was!
I don’t know what causes chess hallucinations. I’ve miscalculated combinations by looking at a bishop sacrifice and then, later in the combination, foreseeing myself using that same bishop. This time, I missed that his e5-knight blocked my queen’s coverage of g5—I had been eyeing Bg5 for a while, and didn’t notice that it was impossible. It would have been really lovely had it worked!
Meanwhile, I’ve been adding to my Web site ( www.holycyclops.com ). I now have five “little lessons” on my site—Playing for the Endgame, Building Walls, Tempo Moves, Outflanking, and Entombed Pieces. And I’ve just learned how to make the squares different colors! Maybe I’ll go back and do a little tinkering with diagrams.