Originally posted by bluewaterrider
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8QpmmiFhfPQ
Originally posted by bluewaterrider
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8QpmmiFhfPQ
The fact of these being 10 to 20 minute games sometimes helps.
Were this an arena where my opponent had unlimited time to examine each move, the result might have been a lot different. Whatever the case, after he angled for my "unprotected" rook, I was able to put my "hanging" knight to good trade use (knight checks are unblockable and MUST be dealt with by fight or direct opposing king flight response). i then chased his queen with my knight, and then my pawn, and finally harassed his king for good measure.
My opponent was actually pretty good at countering in this game, save for 2 mistakes. The afore hinted one was going after my "unprotected" rook when he could have won a surer though lesser material advantage by targeting my knight.
But he thwarted my initial attempt to win HIS knight via "overloading" his queen.
Stopped my rook/queen tandem by getting his own rook into the mix.
So I figured, "All right, I'll take his end pawn, open up that file for my own pawn to march right on down. Another few maneuvers ended that.
Then I thought: "Well, maybe I can chase that Queen around with my knight until he makes a mistake or something..."
This time, he finally DID make a mistake, though he did indeed thwart my approaching with my own knight.
After this mistake, he resigned the game, and not merely because he realized I could take the knight he had just moved.
Can you see why?
Kinda proud of this game, even though the opponent, for this go-around, was ranked slightly lower than me. King's Gambit opening, accepted, is standard enough, but when he erred by leaving me a free piece, I let him, or his knight I suppose I should say, go free. When he got out of it by reversing attack on my bishop, I just went with my standard kamikaze, taking his king's bishop's pawn so as to get right in his face and force his king's response ...
The knight is pinned. It cannot move because, if it did so, my queen would have a clear shot at his king, which is the game entire. He tries to interpose a pawn, but it is backed by nothing and easily removed. Sparing it would normally be my way, but I'm down too much material to be generous anymore, especially since, if his knight WERE allowed to move, it would put me 6 points down by capturing my remaining bishop, and almost surely mean the loss of the game.
So down it goes.
My opponent uses the king itself to protect the thrice-imperiled knight, which almost works, and the only reason it doesn't is because I can use my own knight to attack his King AND prevent him from going to a flight square that would keep him in protector range.
So the knight is removed, as it probably should have been many moves prior.
Fortunately my kindness was backed by positional power even with a sacrifice thrown in for good measure. It all results in a king with exactly one place to go, hemmed in by his own would-be protectors, one or two moves away from forced mate ...
My opponent sees he either gets checkmated immediately, or gets forced into futile heroics with his queen and so resigns.
A victory for kindness and discretion, and that right there would be cause for some satisfaction, but chessbase has one feature that puts icing on the cake --
it lets you know when someone leaves the arena to formally study the game just played! THAT was a gratifying message to see, and know that not only did I play fairly, and generously and well, but I got him THINKING about me winning that way. Of course, it'll be that much harder to win if we ever play again, but that ever-increasing challenge is part of the draw of this game ...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MPZeqHHpxOM
Roberts, post mid mistakes x3; how to avoid
I think I finally cracked one determinant of the KMC visual display "code" here.
The "materials" processor will display two pictures per line if they are wide.
Up to 3 if all 3 are narrow.
Hitting "return" between lines of code can reset them.
Now I've got to figure out what combinations of wide and narrow do.
Like, you can't have 3 wide but maybe you can have 2 wide plus a narrow on a line? I'll test it out AFTER this particular post -- or simply refer to pages in the past where I've done that ...
... which it does.
Now, however, by just hitting "return" right in the middle of my URLs,
I should be able to get a 2 first line, 2 second line display:
... which would look the same TEXTUALLY, were someone to quote my post, as the URL grouping of identical pictures in my previous post, but obviously behave very differently in terms of actual performance.
