The 2,000,000th post game

Adams, Scott

Arp, Halton

Blair, Eric (b.k.a. "George Orwell"😉

Carlson, Tucker

Chomsky, Avram Noam

Chrysler, Walter P.
-- Life of an American Workman.

Clay, Cassius (b.k.a. "Muhammad Ali"😉
-- ABC Wide World of Sports. Howard and Ali.

Clemens, Samuel (b.k.a. "Mark Twain"😉

Diop, Vieux

Ferguson, Craig
-- honest talk about alcoholism and his own personal struggles

Foreman, George

Geisel, Theodore (b.k.a. "Dr. Seuss"😉

Harket, Morten
-- A-ha. Take On Me (extended version)

Hayakawa, Samuel Ichiye
-- Language in Action (.pdf)
-- Language in Action (text only)

Hirsch, Jr., E.D.
Creating a Curriculum for the American People

Hulse, Elliot

Khan, Salman
-- Khan Academy on NBC Nightly News, 3/11/2011.

Klavan, Andrew

Lattimore, Richard
-- Introduction to the Iliad of Homer

Ming, Yao

Nimzowitsch, Aron
-- My System, 1930.

Nixon, Nuke

Parsons, Michael

Ramsey, David

Roberts, Marc

Shapiro, Benjamin

Sowell, Thomas

Suso, Muhamadou Salieu

Traub, James
-- Our Lost Best Chance. 9/24/1998.

Trubridge, William

Trump, Donald

Willingham, Daniel T.

England-Soller gambit game that I played as Black. My starting "elo" for this one was 1942; the site automatically gives your newest adjusted total regardless of what it actually was at the time a particular game was played. I'm pleased to find I can still beat higher ranked people with some regularity, though, of course, ever so slowly, I'm becoming higher ranked myself.

1. d4 {[%emt 0:0:5]} e5 {[%emt 0:0:2]} 2. dxe5 {[%emt 0:0:4]} f6 {[%emt 0:0:1]} 3. exf6 {[%emt 0:0:3]} Nxf6 {[%emt 0:0:1]} 4. Nc3 {[%emt 0:0:4]} Bc5 {[%emt 0:0:2]} 5. e3 {[%emt 0:0:7]} c6 {[%emt 0:0:8]} 6. Nf3 {[%emt 0:0:6]} Bb4 {[%emt 0:0:5]} 7. g3 {[%emt 0:0:6]} Qa5 {[%emt 0:0:3]} 8. Bd2 {[%emt 0:0:5]} d5 {[%emt 0:0:17]} 9. Bg2 {[%emt 0:0:7]} Bg4 {[%emt 0:0:8]} 10. 0-0 {[%emt 0:0:6]} Nbd7 {[%emt 0:0:20]} 11. a3 {[%emt 0:0:1]} Be7 {[%emt 0:0:13]} 12. b4 {[%emt 0:0:13]} Qc7 {[%emt 0:0:11]} 13. Bc1 {[%emt 0:0:15]} h5 {[%emt 0:0:3]} 14. Bb2 {[%emt 0:0:14]} 0-0-0 {[%emt 0:0:14]} 15. Ne2 {[%emt 0:0:16]} Ne4 {[%emt 0:0:30]} 16. Qd4 {[%emt 0:0:44]} Bf6 {[%emt 0:0:15]} 17. Qxa7 {[%emt 0:0:8]} Bxb2 {[%emt 0:0:5]} 18. Rab1 {[%emt 0:0:7]} Bf6 {[%emt 0:0:27]} 19. Rfd1 {[%emt 0:0:2]} h4 {[%emt 0:0:11]} 20. Nfd4 {[%emt 0:0:8]} hxg3 {[%emt 0:0:18]} 21. f3 {[%emt 0:0:14]} gxh2+ {[%emt 0:0:8]} 22. Kh1 {[%emt 0:0:3]} Nf2# {[%emt 0:0:5]Mate} 0-1

Got an error message from TurboImageHost while trying to upload these ...
Should I perhaps make a duplicate set ...?

mmm Hmm. Clicking on the images had them displaying, but it seemed to take forever ...

On the other hand, it took a similarly long time for previously uploaded images to show, too. It doesn't matter either way; the first 5 moves are standard Englund Soller Gambit opening. Only the sixth is s little unusual; at least for White.
My opponent seemed to understand almost instinctively that he needed to block to prevent me from kamikaziing his king pawn or trying to set up a quick, sacrificial mate. E3 did just that.

Opponent fianchettoes his bishops. I don't know Italian, but I know that term is a shorthand way of saying he's placed both bishops on the longest home base diagonals possible on the chessboard.

Opponent then uses his Queen as a kind of spearhead targeting my pawns at either end. I can defend one but not the other ...

But the answer to that is "Here. I'll help you decide.
You want the one on my right. 'Cause you won't like what happens if you try to get to my pawn on the left ..."

So, to review, my opponent's White Queen just shattered through my castle's walls ...

... but it's only cause for a minor bit of alarm; besides tempo advantage and the fact that I'll have room to maneuver on subsequent turns, I've got my own lady and my lesser dark knight present to aid my defense ...

Opponent makes somewhat inexplicable decisions after this point.
He's higher ranked, so I assume they had a point, but ...

I guess I just don't quite understand them.

First he has his knight on f3 abandon post ...

... which allows my rook pawn to advance and damage his castle walls ...

... then he makes the fateful decision to fork my knight and bishop

... which choice allows my pawn to really knock him for a loop ...

... forcing him into a 50/50 scramble where he guesses wrong:

... and that same girl who was about to coronate standing like a wall and cutting off his flight from my knight. Check and mate.

1274 and 620.

11:35 AM. Allowing some randomness might be in order.
Alternate the discipline and organization with periodic chaos.

And TurboImageHost is making me nervous.
Acting up for about a week now.
Might be a good idea to use KMC's own IHPs for a bit today ...

Adler, Christina (a.k.a. redhead law )

The canvas of chess is not in the pieces but in the people of the kingdom
'The kingdom of heaven is like the heart of a child.'

Kurzgesagt. From beach to Challenger Deep.

Latvian Gambit. Probably my favorite formal chess opening since forever, as I'm sure I've stated numerous various times by now. Hailed as "possibly the worst opening in Chess" -- and fun to play for precisely that reason.

I was reminded of that here and of one other thing, and that one other thing being I'd heard or seen someone rate the value of castling to the value of a minor piece, i.e. to the value of a knight or a bishop.

Here that comment resonates remarkably strongly. Watch, throughout the next 3 posts (18 scans total), just how much moving my opponent's king is forced to do in comparison to me.

TurboImageHost out till roughly now in my area.
Learned, in the meantime, that TinyPic.com is going or actually went, out of business. Disappointing, to say the least.

Anyway, back to the game, which I've been unable to post for several hours:

A Latvian opens like a mirror of the King's Gambit, and is, I learned through a quick review of Wikipedia, a response to White doing a King's Knight Opening. I knew that on some level, of course, as I described it as something done in response to that style of setup; I just never had a formal name to put to it until now.

At any rate after its defined opening of:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5, which gets us to the following point

... my opponent and I trace through a variation that sees both pawns given up by Black, and a kamikaziing Black bishop to boot,

Although this is a lot of material to give up, even an old-style "rook odds" game probably not giving away more, the gambit has its advantages. For starters, it develops material at a rate faster than anything I can think of save the Englund-Soller. It also gives a 50/50 chance of either mating or winning a knight in 2 more turns. Perhaps most importantly, as most games against skillful players won't result in knight or game loss, it exposes the White King to intense pressure. To the extent that White may find his King is almost a 17th piece for Black to move around. Note that even the moving of my rook forces the king away, for it makes white's bishop a hopelessly pinned blockade to white if he lets his King stay there:

Mating net slowly drawn, but despite the advantage White actually has over me, he's not able to do much about it ...

The end position is striking.

White's looks almost as it did at the start, save for a translated White King, who moved more than 7 times to get where he was going, with many, if not most, of those moves forced.

My King, by contrast, moved only once, and that was to castle.

It's also interesting to note that White has a material advantage over me, equal to a knight. He has 2 knights and a bishop, and all the rest of the same pieces I have. I have only one and one in the knight and bishop area, but control of the board because I castled and developed pieces and he didn't and probably really couldn't, for his King being chased all over the place.

If the comment I heard that castling is at least equal to the value of a minor piece (bishop or knight) ISN'T accurate, it can't easily be disproved from THIS game. Blindly snagging material, as White did at the start, sometimes has a cost.

18.

19.

20.