Moving my King's bishop pawn up 2 spaces protects my knight from White's Queen, but he follows with an attack from his light-square bishop.
I have to retreat again; I'm in NO shape to engage in any trade-offs. Run, Horsie, run!
My opponent follows by chasing my Queen away with his dark-square bishop, and then by castling. Doing so prevents any possibility of my applying more pin pressure in that area, 'cause his King is no longer behind forces that have to stay put to shield him.
I follow suit in castling.
I've teased frequently in this thread that it's for sissies, but with literally everything on the left side of my board devastated now and his own king temporarily out of reach, I'm too lacking in options not to do it. The process is costly, and one of my knights falls to the knight I had pinned for so much of this game earlier, but it gets my king to RELATIVE safety.
Now my opponent targets my knight again, x-raying the rook behind it besides. From a purely material standpoint, I should probably opt to let it get taken, and just move my rook in position to simply avenge it when it does. Doubtless this is what my opponent expects to happen; rooks are worth almost twice as much as knights, and I've already lost my other ...
Of course, I do NOT do that; no one who has read my entries to this point should have expected that I would.
I do not want my opponent thinking he is playing someone with good sense --
I want to keep my horsie!
Run, Horsie, run!!
My opponent takes out my other rook as expected. Playing against this bishop is starting to feel like watching the knife assassin in Donnie Yen's Sha Po Lang. An uncannily dangerous madman dressed in white taking out people armed with guns though he has and is only a knife. He continues until he finally faces the "King" of martial arts himself (warning: violent), where he's finally put down like the mad dog he is.
Unfortunately, my opponent still has the upper hand. I move my Queen in anticipation of what I know must follow ...
My opponent finally makes a mistake. After targeting the pawn at c5 with knight AND the white queen, he decides to take that pawn with the knight.
At first glance, this doesn't LOOK like a mistake.
For starters, he didn't make the fatal error of capturing that pawn with the White Queen. That would have allowed me to checkmate him in 1 move; Qxg2, taking the pawn directly in front of his King, for the White Queen is the only thing stopping me from doing that.
What he HAS allowed, however, is for me to apply ANOTHER pin to one of his pieces, namely that just mentioned g2 pawn. So it can't capture when my knight moves to h3, forking both the White Queen AND the White King:
The move proves decisive.
Before it, I was nearly 10 points down, in a game where people frequently resign if they suddenly find themselves at even a 3 point disadvantage.
After it, though, my opponent makes decisions even costlier than the ones I made earlier. By the time it's over, I've reversed my standing and my opponent has given up. A testament to persistence, position, and the power of the pin.
Game won against a higher-ranked.
Not nearly so interesting as the previous game, though.
[WhiteElo "1915"]
[BlackElo "1854"]
[PlyCount "64"]
1. e4 {[%emt 0:0:4]} Nc6 {[%emt 0:0:7]} 2. d4 {[%emt 0:0:3]} e5 {[%emt 0:0:11]} 3. d5 {[%emt 0:0:4]} Nb4 {[%emt 0:0:3]} 4. a3 {[%emt 0:0:7]} Na6 {[%emt 0:0:4]} 5. Bxa6 {[%emt 0:0:11]} bxa6 {[%emt 0:0:2]} 6. c4 {[%emt 0:0:4]} a5 {[%emt 0:0:2]} 7. Bd2 {[%emt 0:0:15]} a4 {[%emt 0:0:3]} 8. Qxa4 {[%emt 0:0:3]} a5 {[%emt 0:0:7]} 9. Nc3 {[%emt 0:0:4]} Ba6 {[%emt 0:0:10]} 10. Nb5 {[%emt 0:0:38]} Bc5 {[%emt 0:0:15]} 11. Bxa5 {[%emt 0:0:9]} Ra7 {[%emt 0:0:28]} 12. b4 {[%emt 0:0:12]} Bxb5 {[%emt 0:0:7]} 13. cxb5 {[%emt 0:0:48]} Bd4 {[%emt 0:0:12]} 14. Rc1 {[%emt 0:0:14]} Qf6 {[%emt 0:0:5]} 15. Nf3 {[%emt 0:0:11]} Bb2 {[%emt 0:0:19]} 16. Rc2 {[%emt 0:0:15]} Bd4 {[%emt 0:0:35]} 17. Qb3 {[%emt 0:0:5]} Nh6 {[%emt 0:0:28]} 18. h3 {[%emt 0:0:3]} Qf4 {[%emt 0:0:20]} 19. Qd3 {[%emt 0:0:23]} c5 {[%emt 0:0:19]} 20. bxc6 {[%emt 0:0:7]} dxc6 {[%emt 0:0:18]} 21. Rxc6 {[%emt 0:0:13]} 0-0 {[%emt 0:0:5]} 22. Nxd4 {[%emt 0:0:9]} exd4 {[%emt 0:0:23]} 23. Qxd4 {[%emt 0:0:2]} Re7 {[%emt 0:0:6]} 24. Rc4 {[%emt 0:0:12]} Nf5 {[%emt 0:0:4]} 25. Qd3 {[%emt 0:0:15]} Nd6 {[%emt 0:0:9]} 26. Rd4 {[%emt 0:0:55]} Nf5 {[%emt 0:0:10]} 27. g3 {[%emt 0:0:19]} Qc1+ {[%emt 0:0:7]} 28. Qd1 {[%emt 0:0:8]} Qc3+ {[%emt 0:0:6]} 29. Kf1 {[%emt 0:0:8]} Nxd4 {[%emt 0:0:4]} 30. Kg2 {[%emt 0:0:29]} Rxe4 {[%emt 0:0:8]} 31. Qc1 {[%emt 0:0:20]} Qf3+ {[%emt 0:0:16]} 32. Kg1 {[%emt 0:0:9]} Ne2+ {[%emt 0:0:3]} 0-1
Noteworthy that a knight fork of King and Queen effectively decides the match in Black's favor. However, UNLIKE the previous game, the proper course is NOT to follow up with the knight taking White's Queen.
Can you see the better alternatives?
There are only 2 moves White's King can make from here, and note that he has to move his king because knight checks cannot be thwarted by enemy OR friendly pieces getting in the way:
1. White King to f1.
2. White King to h2.
I know, I know ...
You want to take that Queen out with the knight.
The proper solutions, however?
Case 1: White King to f1. Black Queen takes White Rook. Checkmate.
Case 2: White King to h2. Black Queen takes pawn on g2. Checkmate.
Traditionally, Western playing cards are made of rectangular layers of paper or thin cardboard pasted together to form a flat, semirigid material. They are uniform in shape and size and small enough for several to be held together in one hand, frequently fanned out so that the identifying marks on each card can be seen. One side of each card—its front, or face—is marked so as to render it identifiable and distinguishable from its fellows, while the back, or reverse, is either blank or bears a pattern common to all. The corners are usually slightly rounded to prevent fraying. In the second half of the 20th century, it became common to add a plastic coating to resist wear and even to produce all-plastic cards.
Card games typically exploit the fact that each player can identify only the cards he holds, not those of his opponents. This same characteristic also applies to dominoes and to the gaming tiles of mah-jongg. In fact, British domino players often call dominoes “cards,” mah-jongg may itself be the ancestor of card games of the rummy family, and in China there is no clear-cut dividing line between cards and dominoes, the latter being made of lacquered paper.
Playing cards first appeared in Europe in the 1370s, probably in Italy or Spain and certainly as imports or possessions of merchants from the Islamic Mamlūk dynasty centred in Egypt. Like their originals, the first European cards were hand-painted, making them luxury goods for the rich. The account book of King Charles VI of France (now lost) is said to have noted a payment of 56 sols parisiens to Jacquemin Gringonneur for painting a deck of cards “pour le divertissement du roy” (“for the amusement of the king”). Cards gradually spread along the inland European trade routes during the 15th century as a favoured pastime of the upper classes.
The German invention of wood-block printing in the early 15th century significantly reduced the cost of production, which was further reduced in France in the 1480s by painting through stencils, a practice resulting in the distinctively simplified design of suitmarks technically designated French but now generally called international because of their worldwide popularity: pique, coeur, carreau, trèfle—known in English as spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs.
Cost reductions further expanded the social appeal of card games and enhanced their inherent advantages over traditional indoor games. In particular, cards lent themselves to the development of games suitable for different numbers of players—hitherto the choice was between two-player board games like chess and multiplayer gambling games played with dice—and for different mentalities and temperaments, from unskilled dicelike gambling games to the more refined and intellectually demanding trick-taking games—albeit still played for money; the practice of playing games of skill strictly for fun is historically recent. Crucially, playing cards held more appeal for women, and associations between card play and seduction became widespread throughout European literature and painting. This factor, together with the proliferation of gambling card games, resulted in frequent denunciations of card playing by church authorities and prohibitions of specific games by civic authorities.
The associations of cards with gambling also led many a government to seek a piece of the action. In 17th-century France, King Louis XIV’s finance minister Cardinal Mazarin nourished the royal purse by virtually turning the Palace of Versailles into one vast card-playing casino. Some countries made card manufacture a state monopoly under pain of fine, imprisonment, and even death to forgers. Others contented themselves with charging a tax on manufacture. The elaborate design of the ace of spades in British decks of cards recalls the (now defunct) 18th-century convention of applying the tax authorization stamp to this particular card
