The 2,000,000th post game

Pictorial take-through of logged game from the previous page.

I opened with Englund Soller Gambit as Black, which means I offered two pawns in succession to be captured by my opponent. Doing so loses those two pawns of course, but it aids in the development of pieces AND let's Black largely overcome White's inherent tempo advantage. (White normally has, and keeps, initiative or tempo throughout the game owing to the actual rules of chess saying White ALWAYS gets to go first.) Notice that, if I wanted to castle king side before my opponent, I could have, which is normally not possible.

As it is, I don't want to castle.

At least not right then and on the king side.

My idea, instead, is to find a way to open up the King rook file,
and get some pieces up into White's territory. Ideally, my queen, backed by that king rook or some other piece makes it there and I get the checkmate and the win.

My opponent seems to understand that.

He offers his queen bishop pawn.

If taken, my queen is forfeit. As well as my castling rights. He'll take her and my king will be forced to take in reply.

I don't want that. I focus on HIS on castle.
I need to find a way to dismantle it while I've still got move initiative.
He'll have a mini-bulldozer if he opts to take my own queen pawn now, which he does, but that's a concern for the future.
My bishop on dark squares will take out the corner "wall" (his H file pawn) if I manage to get his knight out of the way ...

So I take his King knight out.

So far, so good.

Except now he moves his "H" pawn up.

I would have been very happy to have kamikazed my dark squared bishop for it, but he seems to know by my actions that I'm a risk-taker and takes that option away from me ...

Now come the "bulldozers". Having started out with a gambit I'm already down material, and, by conventional wisdom, can't afford to trade off pieces just to dispatch something as lowly as a pawn.
He brings his King pawn right down the middle.
It'll have its choice of my knight or my bishop in one move, and I can't stop it.
A mini "bulldozer". And it won't take much maneuvering on his part to get his queen pawn to act like a second pushing machine ...

Actually, it's worse than that. My King is stuck on K8 for the time being, unavoidably "pinning" pieces to his defense if I unwittingly DO make that King pawn veer off course.

But, that's the plan. Trade defensive safety for offense that is ignored only at great peril. Want my knight? You can have it. Here, take it ...

Huh?

He ignores the proffered knight.

Didn't expect that.

He's taken every "free" piece to this point.

Maybe I can catch him with a fast one? Will he move to H1 if I check him?

No, he sees that one. A knight fork of King and Queen, if he goes to H1, virtually ending the game in my favor. No 2000+ rated player is going to fall for something like that, not under ordinary circumstances. And it won't take him long to think to retaliate by trapping that dark-square-traveling bishop of mine, either, to say little of my knight. Get horsie out of there ...

Horsie's safe.

I could get my dark squared bishop to safety, but shouldn't I make a play for his King while that bishop's in position to do some damage? Even taking out a pawn should turn his castle into a liability for him at this point, shouldn't it?
Let's see ... How about we move our rook to attack that bishop of his ...?

Wait, what?

He takes my pawn, effectively giving UP his light-square bishop?
And follows up with queen taking that and check ...

😖igh: Guess it's time to trade off some pieces ...

He's been targeting my queen for more than 10 moves, after all ...

Hmm. More pawn "bulldozer" action from him ...

Hey! Wait a minute! I see a chance for me to checkmate him in 3 moves!

Just got to get my other knight up here.

Yeah, I see you trapping my bishop now, but that's okay ...

Just stay put for one move ...

Darn. You saw it, too, didn't you?
That's why you moved that rook up to thwart me.

Well, I can at least free my bishop while your king's still in position. Your pawn is pinned from taking me by my King rook sitting down there ...

Whoops! King attacking directly! Time to go ...

Well, I've still got the option of castling queenside ...
Bring another rook there and I should be able to blockade those center pawns long enough for my minor pieces to harass his King into submission ...

Wait, what's he doing now?

F3? He's moving his King BISHOP pawn down now ...?

I don't get it. Doesn't that just give me the opportunity to fork his rook and king with my knight ...?

Ah. It does. And he thought that would have been decisive, too ...

Good game, man.

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3447

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J617wCAP1Zw

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lg-Kr1yR0Ds

While it lasts ...

Sanford Kelly, vs Puerto Rico Balrog and Justin Wong, respectively.

First to 5 exhibition sets.

Some time, when I get REALLY bored, I might investigate how "elo" systems work, the ranking algorithms of many a chess organization/website/etc.
Seems to be the case that 1% is added to your starting score if you beat someone of equal rank. At least if that rank is 1700.

Seventeen hundred. 100 sets of seventeen. So 1% of that total is 17.

And if you add 17 to seventeen hundred, you get 1717.

Which is exactly the score you'll see for me for the picto-log of this game after this current post.

I wasn't ranked that while I was playing, only afterwards; you can only get a truly accurate representation of "then" by actually recording "then".

That's a point I think about a lot concerning various fields, and something a lot of people miss. The way things were/was/wuz/what have you.

Stream of consciousness: Think I put an entry about the bulldogs of yesteryear versus the bulldogs of today along with other case examples to illustrate. Somewhere earlier in this thread.
And at least one other.

At any rate, I wanted to share the following, not just for the potential insight into Elo, but because it illustrated something to me about gambits. Namely that they can be refused, and, one thing I did not notice before, when they are refused, the person who tried the gambit loses tempo. Here below, for instance, I try the King's Gambit. I'm playing as White, which automatically gives me first-move initiative, and I offer my King's Bishop pawn (the gambit part of this opening), which, if taken, will give me a further advantage in tempo and development, though, of course, at the cost of that pawn.

But my opponent ignores it. He moves his knight instead.

And suddenly HE'S got the tempo advantage, as evidenced by the fact that he can castle on his next turn, and do so before me, despite the fact that, playing as White, I, de facto, started moving in the game first.

I capture my opponent's King's pawn with my King's Bishop pawn.
I want to castle king side, and, if I manage to, will have a good semi-open file for my newly-relocated King's rook. That's not necessarily likely to happen here, though. Given my opponent, just in taking vengeance for his King's pawn, ALSO got a central post for his knight, I've got far bigger and more immediate concerns. Given how he can empower my opponent's dark-square bishop and/or queen and/or be empowered by them in turn, I'm 2 moves away from devastating material loss, namely my queen, or outright loss by checkmate.

So I've got to break that knight's link to his fellows. I do so to start by attacking his dark-square bishop with my pawn, chasing that bishop away:

Next I want to get the knight himself out of there.
I move my queen, threatening to capture.

Unfortunately, the bishop I ran away was only run away.
He renews his attack, this time giving an un-ignore-able check to my King.

I'm forced to meet it via pawn defense, and my ability to castle King side is hampered:

My opponent unexpectedly attacks with his knight, forking my bishop, my rook, and my queen.

I'm forced to take.

He follows with a second check from his bishop.
The only viable option is to move my King, which I do.

Now my ability to castle is gone:

Game would have been interesting from here if my opponent at this point marched his H pawn down to rescue his otherwise stranded bishop.

But he didn't.

So when my queen moved to restore peace to my realm, he apparently, and if so understandably, abandoned the game.

1823.