A Lot of Women Have Been Written out of the History of Chess

No, this is not a blog post about "Queen's Gambit," the recent Netflix series about a fictional female Grandmaster in the mid 20th century. I haven't seen "Queen's Gambit" yet, but I'm going to have to. I've heard very, very good things about it. I've heard that it's given a very large boost boost to the popularity of chess. And I gather that Garry Kasparov and Bruce Pandolfini were technical advisors. Pandolfini is the guy who was played by Ben Kingsley in Searching for Bobby Fischer. I've heard that the chess in "Queen's Gambit" is legit, which would make it unique among fictional representations, as far as I know. 

No, what I'm talking about is the aristocratic women who played chess in Medieval Europe. I've read in enough sources that chess was extremely popular among women of the upper classes, sources serious enough, that I believe it.

But the only names of those women I know are those I know for many other reasons. Names like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Elizabeth I of England. I could not name a single Medieval woman known primarily for her prowess in chess. I cannot refer you, gentle reader, to the moves of a single game of chess won by a Medieval woman, which have been recorded and preserved for their brilliancy.

I simply do not believe that, of all the games of chess played by Medieval women, none was brilliant enough that its moved were written down. I simply do not believe that, in an era of several hundred years when chess was played mostly by women, none of those women played the game well enough to become famous for that reason alone. That dog won't hunt.

When the best chess players' names do begin to be known, in the 16th century, the names are male, and competitive chess remained very strictly a He-Man Women Hater's Club until the 20th century, and it remains sexist, with several male players in chess tournaments for every female player taking part, even several years after the first showing of "Queen Gambit."

Nothing disappears without a trace. Perhaps some day traces of that Medieval, predominantly female game will begin to be recovered. And maybe we will begin, someday, to learn of other things those clever ladies were doing, perhaps things they weren't supposed to to be doing, like reading and writing in Latin, and philosophizing.

Mathematics, AI and Chess

Shannon's number is an estimate of the possible number of games of chess, arrived at by the mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon (1916-2001). Shannon postulated an average of 1000 possible moves for one move by White followed by one move for Black. Then he postulated a typical length of a chess game of 40 moves, and came up with his very famous number, his very famous estimate: there are at least 10 to the 120th power possible different chess games. 

I think Shannon's number is complete garbage. I think it tells us little beyond the fact that Shannon and other mathematicians didn't know much about chess, and that few chess players know much about math. Otherwise, Shannon's number would never have become famous to begin with, and, chastened by so much derisive laughter, he would've headed back to the drawing board to try again. 

In some positions on the chess board, there are many possible moves. For White's first move, there are 20 possible moves: 16 by the Pawns and 4 by the Knights. 20 choices also for Black's first move. There are other position in which a player would have far move than 20 possible moves. For example, if a player had 3 Queens, 2 Bishops, 2 pawns and a lot of space.  

In other positions, a player has only 1 possible move: if his King is under attack and there is one 1 possible way to defend it. Or if there is only 1 possible move which would not expose his King to attack. And there are positions where only 2 moves could defend the King against attack. Or 3, or 4, and so forth.

Or, instead of threats to the King, the number of moves could be limited by his pieces being blocked by his opponent's pieces, or by his own pieces. 

How would one get an average number of moves out of all of these different kinds of positions? How many different positions are there with just 1 possible move? How many positions yield 50 or more possible moves? I have no idea. Not the faintest idea. Furthermore, I have yet to see anyone even asking this very basic kind of question when trying to determine the number of possible chess games. I'm not saying I'm the only person who's asked these questions. I'm saying that not enough people have been asking them insistently enough for the evidence of their existence to have come to my attention.

Okay, now, the number of moves in a game. Average it out at 40, like Shannon? That's ridiculous. Checkmate can happen after 2 moves, or 4 moves. It's not unheard of for checkmate to happen after 10 or 15 moves, or 20 or 30. Conversely, some games have gone on for hundreds of moves. Has anyone even attempted to calculate the number of ways in which a game could last for over 100 moves? Or the number of different ways in which a game could go on, limited by the rule that one player can claim a draw if 50 moves go by during which neither player captures and piece or moves a Pawn? Did you notice that I said that a player CAN claim a draw under those conditions? We may have to make such draws mandatory and automatic if we wish to make the number of different games finite -- or perhaps not, I'm not competent to say.

These are just a few examples of the different numbers which would need to be calculated before one could attempt to combine them all and come up with any sort of reasonable estimate of the number of possible chess games.

I don't believe that AI is here. I haven't seen a product designed by AI which wasn't hideously ugly, haven't read a poem written by AI which wasn't ridiculous, haven't interacted with a search engine or automated call center which wasn't infuriatingly stupid. 

And I haven't seen an impressive attempt yet to estimate the number of possible games of chess, let alone solve the game by coming up with the moves which will always win, or always draw against perfect moves by the opponent, the way that checkers has just recently been solved. And when those things finally do happen, which they will if we don't kill ourselves off first, it being ultimately just a matter of crunching very, very big numbers, actual human-like communication and creativity will still be far off, or, perhaps, ultimately inaccessible to mathematics.

Buy books about AI and chess on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4jaiCKx

Carlsen and Fischer: Two Different Kinds of the Best

Magnus Carlsen has been the highest-rated chess player in the world since 2011. His highest rating was 2882 in 2014, currently his rating is 2835. He became world champion in 2013 at age 21, successfully defended his title several times, and earlier this year, he declined to defend his title, which is to say: he's retiring as an undefeated champ. Going out on a high note. And good for him. 

Among many other world's-best achievements, Carlsen has the longest unbeaten streak in the history of elite chess, going unbeaten for 125 consecutive games from 2018 to 2020. For my readers who are not chess aficionados, let me clarify: Carlsen did not win 125 games. The majority of elite-level chess games end in draws. Over the course of 125 games, Carlsen had 42 wins, 83 draws and no losses. His longest winning streak during the unbeaten streak was 5 games. And winning 5 games in a row against the best chess players in the world is quite an achievement. 

As a wise man once told me, "Chess is a game of mistakes." If your opponent makes a bad enough mistake, and you know how to take advantage of it, you win. If you're aggressive and do something unexpected, maybe you'll shake up your opponent and win, or maybe it'll come back and bite you, maybe you'll over-extend yourself, and your opponent will keep their head, weather the storm, take advantage of your carelessness and beat you. Or maybe neither of you will make any noteworthy mistakes and the game will end in a draw.

A long time ago, before I realized that most Grandmaster games end in draws, I read somewhere that Bobby Fischer's playing style was to try to win every game. This confused me. I thought: why wouldn't you try to win every game? But most top-level players play a little differently: they try very hard not to lose, not to make any mistakes. If they catch a bad mistake by their opponent and win, so much the better.

Carlsen is an extremely precise sort of player. Very few mistakes. Very little rolling of the dice, compared to Fischer. Fewer Queen sacrifices. Less drama.

One of the few top Grandmasters who may have been even more aggressive than Fischer was Mikhail Tal, World Champion from 1960 to 1961. Someone, I wish I could remember who, once wrote that Tal "tried to win every game with every move."

That 125-game unbeaten streak by Carlsen is an amazing achievement, arguably the pinnacle of one of the best careers in the history of chess. But there is another streak in chess history which, in the opinion of many, is much more astounding still: in 1970 and 1971, in the process of beating all the other candidates and thus qualifying to take on Boris Spassky for the world chess championship in 1972, Bobby Fischer won 20 consecutive games.

Some will tell you that he actually won only 19 in a row, since one of his opponents, Oscar Panno, sat out the game in protest of his game against Fischer being rescheduled. I don't think Panno had a chance anyway and that people are giving him way too much credit. His major claim to fame today is this silly protest. 

But, po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, 20 wins in a row or only 19, either way, no one else has come close to what Fischer did there. He won his last 7 games (or "only" 6, if you insist on seeing it that way) in a tournament determining who would be the final 8 players to fight it out for the chance to play Spassky for the world championship. 

With the chess world's minds already blown by this winning streak, Fischer went on to beat Taimanov 6-0, six wins, no draws, in the quarter-final match. And commentators, quite accurately, said that nothing like this had ever been seen. 

And then Fischer beat Larson 6-0 in the semi-final round. 19 wins in a row.

Then, in the final round, against Tigran Petrosian, who had been world champion from 1963 to 1969, Fischer won the first game. 20 in a row. Then Petrosian, very much the opposite sort of player from Fischer, all caution, sypremely solid, waiting to pounce on the opponent's mistakes, won the second game, and he managed several draws, but Fischer won the match 6 1/2 games to 2 1/2.

And then, in the famous world championship match in Iceland, in what was perhaps a severe case of nerves, or perhaps a bit of understandable burn-out after having played at an unheard-of level for a year and a half, Fischer lost the first 2 games. Many said at the time, well, that's it, that remarkable run is over. Being down 2-0 in a match where he needed 12 1/2 points to win and Spassky needed 12 to keep the title, looked to many like an insurmountable obstacle.

But Fischer won the match 12 1/2 games to 8 1/2. 

And that was the end of Fischer's chess career. He made demands for his next match which FIDE, the world chess governing body, were never going to accept. Fischer retired, without officially retiring. In 1992 there was a return match against Spassky which made both players lots of money, and made most of the spectators sad. And that was it, as far as Fischer professional chess career was concerned. 

But that run, from the 20-game winning streak to the lopsided end of the world championship match, is just so very far beyond unequaled. 

It was like the 1977 Sears Point AMA motorcycle road race. Kenny Roberts was so much better than everyone else in US road racing at that point, that no-one knew HOW much better he was: he would go out to a comfortable lead in each race, and then slow down to a comfortable pace, and as long as his bike didn't break, he won, no drama, easy-peasy. 

In 1977 at Sears Point, just as the race was about to start, officials noticed that Roberts' Yamaha was spraying oil from a busted gasket, and so, safety first, they moved him from pole position at the start to the last row, and we got to see some drama.

Roberts started last and four laps later, he was in first place. DiMaggio got base hits in 56 straight games. Mike Tyson laid out the next-best heavyweights in the world in one or two minutes. That's the sort of head-and-shoulders-above-everybody dominance Bobby Fischer displayed at the end of his career.

Amateur and Professional Sports

Chess has existed for well over 1000 years. Tennis has been around for at least 600 years, golf for at least 500. In western Europe, all three of these sports were originally exclusive pastimes of the aristocracy. Playing golf has continued to be primarily the preserve of what Veblen called the leisure class, a status symbol affordable only by a small portion of the population. Tennis, by comparison, has become somewhat less exclusive, and chess is now a mass phenomenon.

 

All three of these sports, as well as other Medieval aristocratic pastimes such as tournaments (jousting) and horse racing, are individual sports. The most popular team sports of the present day did not become popular until the 19th century: baseball, rugby, what Americans call football, what the rest of the world calls football and Americans call soccer, basketball, handball and so forth.

These team sports grew simultaneously in two categories: amateur sports for the upper class, as sports had been, and, something new, professional sports which were much more open to the entire society, and which, indeed, were often looked down upon by the aristocrats and the rich middle class wishing to join the upper classes. And large-scale amateur sports persist to this day in the US in the form of school sports, including college sports.

And perhaps it is better to call them "amateur" sports, in quotation marks, because, right from the start, university football and baseball and basketball teams cheated, and included players who were not really university students. 

Back in the mid-19th century in the US, attendance at universities was still mostly confined to relatively wealthy white men. It was a status symbol of the upper classes, as sports traditionally had been. However, as team sports grew explosively in popularity, and they began to generate huge amounts of revenue from ticket sales, and as college sports began to gain fans who had never been to college, the code of exclusivity was regularly broken, and the pool of players expanded far beyond the upper classes, in order to find the very best players. 

And from the mid-19th century until today, most people have known that the claim that most of a college's athletes are actually students, is untrue. 

In the rest of the world, many sports -- above all soccer, by far the most popular sport in the world -- developed in an entirely different way, with none of this pretense of amateurism. The revenues are openly shared with the athletes, not just in the "major leagues" as is the case in the US, but in all leagues. 

Baseball still has its minor leagues, although these have been mostly replaced by college baseball. Each major league team owns or is closely and exclusively associated with teams in several minor leagues, which form a pool of young talent for the major leagues to pick from. 

Most of the soccer teams outside of the US are independent entities. Typically, a country will have many soccer leagues, and a team can move up to a higher, more prosperous league by leading the league below it, while the team which did worst in the higher league moves to the lower league.

It's a much more sensible way of doing things. The American system is much more like a battle royal, with millions of children competing for a few thousand positions in which their financial compensation may begin to reflect the revenue they generate for others. There are only a very few, very impoverished and unsuccessful independent minor leagues in American football and basketball. Quite a few American athletes have figured out that they will be better treated in other countries, where basketball and baseball leagues and leagues in still other sports are modeled upon the soccer model.

And so, ironically, in the US, which supposedly was founded upon a rejection of things like aristocracy -- although that's a pretense about as transparent as that in which college athletes are supposed to be students -- amateur sports has become a very cruel exploitation of young poor people. 

Perhaps even more ironically, one of the few other parts of the world who indulged in a lie about amateur sports was -- the former Soviet bloc. Were they doing this in order to compete with their great rival and enemy, the US? I don't know.

Chess Log: Coming from Behind to a Knight Checkmate

It's been a long while since I posted one of my chess games on this blog. Years ago I switched from FICS to Lichess, and it took me this long to figure out how to cut and paste the moves from a Lichess game. 

And even now it's somewhat difficult, because this cut and paste results in a continuous stream of numbers and letters with no spaces and no periods. Spaces and periods are important sometimes. I had to put them all back in manually. 

There may well be a much easier way to do this, and I may eventually find it. People ask about this in the discussions on Lichess, and the answers typically contain 5 words of IT jargon in every 10 words. Eh. Anyway, on to the game. 5-0 blitz, I played White:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Bc5 6. c3 O-O 7. b4 Bb6 8. Bb3 h6 9. h3 d6 10. a4 Be6 11. Bxe6 fxe6 12. Qb3 Qe7 13. Nh4 Nxe4 14. Nf5 Qd7 15. Ng3 Nxg3 16. Kh2 Nxf1+ 17. Kg1 Rxf2 18. d4 Nxd4 19. Qc4 Ne2+ 20. Kh1 Nfg3+ 21. Kh2 Rf1 22. Qxe2 Bg1+ 23. Kxg3 Rxc1 24. Qd2 Rf1 25. c4 Rf2 26. Qe1 Qf7 27. Qxg1 Qg6+ 28. Kxf2 Rf8+ 29. Ke2 Qe4+ 30.Qe3 Qxc4+ 31. Qd3 Qxd3+ 32.Kxd3 Rf2 33.Nc3 Rxg2 34. Ne4 Rh2 35.b5 Rxh3+ 36. Ke2 d5 37. Nf2 Rh2 38. Kf3 g5 39.bxa6 bxa6 40. Rb1 Kg7 41.Rb7 Kf6 42. Rxc7 Rh1 43.Nxh1 e4+ 44.Ke3 Ke5 45.Ng3 d4+ 46. Ke2 g4 47. Rc5+Kf4 48. Nh5#

Another come-from-behind win for me, another illustration of why you shouldn't resign unless you and your opponent are both rated much higher than I am. And even if you don't win as I did here, the experience of fighting every move to the end is educational. 

And earlier on this bog I said that, unlike fictional depictions of chess in movies and TV, only very low-level players don't see checkmate coming on the very next move. I need to qualify that. This changes, of course, when a player is under time pressure. I don't remember how much time I had left at the end of this game, but my opponent was under 10 seconds and I was moving as fast as I could, and I wasn't sure whether the last move was checkmate. 

It has recently become more clear to me how powerful a line of Pawns on the same rank can be. I first noticed this technique about 12 years ago in a chess club, watching a chess Master destroy all comers and frequently lining up two, or three, or four Pawns next to each other on the same rank to extremely good effect. 

A mere 12 years or so later, and it occurred to me that I, too, might be able to use this technique. I'm becoming a better chess player. Very, very, very gradually.

Anyway, in this game, I was down severely, but didn't give up, and my opponent may have become overconfident toward the end. This allowed me to trap his King with a Pawn wall on one side and checkmate him with my Knight from the other side.

Chess Log: A Quick One

First off, an apology to those of my readers whose interest in this blog is mainly chess. I know, it's been years since I've posted about chess. This has to do with technical difficulties, with IT. I am old and not very good with IT. I'm more interested in chess than ever. Will I post more often about chess in the future. I don't know. I hope so. In brief, the problem is copy-and-paste: When I played at FICS, I could copy and paste my games into my blog posts. I haven't figured out how to copy the moves on lichess. Apparently I'm one a them there OK boomers.

Anyway: the following was short enough for me to easily copy out by hand. With a pen. Some of you younger readers, maybe you can ask a boomer what a pen is. This was a 5-0 blitz game, I played White:

1. e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qe6+ 4. Qe2 Nf6 5. Qxe6 g6??? 6. Qxc8!#

Advanced chess players might spot several mistakes made by Black, but surely the biggest one was not taking my Queen on his 5th move.

"How many good documentaries about chess are there?"

That's what I'd been asking myself lately. Finally, a couple of days ago, I actually remembered to google best documentaries about chess, and people, there are a ton of documentaries about chess, and lots of them are really good, and you can see a lot of them on YouTube, the whole movies.

The thing is, I'd seen chess in movies, and while some of the movies were good movies, such as Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and Searching for Bobby Fischer (meh, it's not terrible), the chess in them isn't really worth much.

So then we go to the documentaries, and in the ones which are made by real chess players, everything that's said and shown about chess is way over my head.

So if I were going to make a documentary about chess, it would have to have the same problem I was just complaining about: it wouldn't be about chess per se, as about the personalities of people involved in chess and what have you.

But maybe I could write about people who make documentaries about chess. And those of them who are half-decent chess players themselves, I could try to find other interesting things to say about them, rather than do something humiliating such as filming them trouncing me in chess.

How about a chess tournament where all the players have made movies about chess? And then make a documentary about that tournament? Eh? Eh?

Let me answer the question many of you are asking yourselves: no, I see no evidence that I would be good at making a movie, about chess or anything else, a documentary or not.

I could write a novel about a fictional chess tournament contested by real filmmakers who have made good documentaries about chess. A novel which actually has nothing to say about chess. "A spine-tinglingly mellifluous melange of fact and fiction, dreamy fantasy and necessary substance. A masterpiece." (The New York Times)

Another idea for a documentary: a documentary about people who are fascinated by chess but who are terrible at it. Like me.

More Chess Informant

Maybe I actually am getting better at chess. Or maybe the following game, or at least the end of it, is particularly easy to understand.

Near the front of every issue of Chess Informant is a list of the best games of the previous issue as voted upon by several particularly distinguished Grandmasters. Yesterday I noticed that I actually had 2 consecutive issues here, 19 and 20, so that I could look at some of 19's best games as announced in 20. Chess Informant 20 has the list of the 10 best games in 19, as elected by some of the leading lights of the chess world in 1976: Dr Euwe, Averbakh, Barcza, Dr Filip, Geller, Kotov, Pirc, Polugayevsky and Schmidt. Their 1st choice is a rather long game, and it has no illustration in no 19, but their 2nd choice, Vaganian -- Planinc, Hastings 1975, game 533 in Chess Informant 19, is just 22 moves long and the position after White's 19th move is illustrated. In Chess Informant 19 it has analysis by Vaganian, who lost. Of Vaganian's analysis, I have given here only his evaluation of several moves: he gives a ?!, meaning "a dubious move," to his own 6th and 12th moves; a ?, meaning "a mistake," to his 13th move; and a !!, meaning "an excellent move," to Planinc's 19th and 22th moves, the latter of which persuaded Vaganian to retire. I have not given Vaganian's analyses of alternate lines because I have nothing intelligent to say about them. Maybe I would if I dropped everything for several days and did nothing except study this game. Or maybe I wouldn't.

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. Nf3 cd4 4. Nd4 e6 5. Nc3 Bb4 6. Ndb5?! O-O 7. a3 Bc3 8. Nc3 d5 9. Bg5 h6 10. Bf6 Qf6 11. cd5 ed5 12. Qd5?! Rd8 13. Qf3? Qb6! 14. Rd1 Rd1 15. Nd1 Nc6 16. Qe3 Nd4 17. Qe8 Kh7 18. e3 Nc2 19. Kd2!! Bf5 20. Qa8 Qd6 21. Kc1 Na1 22. Qb7 Qc7!! (White resigns.)

Most of the analyses of chess games I've seen, apart from drawn games, have been either by the winner or by a 3rd party. It's impressive when someone analyzes a game they've lost, as Vaganian does here, because there's a strong tendency to want to forget a loss rather then overcome one's ego and learn from it. Analyzing a game one has won is also often quite egotistical: "Look how smart I am, look how I crushed this chump!"

Far from understanding all of the moves in Grandmaster games, it usually takes me more than one try just to follow all of the moves correctly, reading them and moving the pieces on a board. (And just reading the moves and seeing an entire game in my head? I don't think that's ever going to happen for me.) I looked at this game on an analysis board at lichess.org. This has a great advantage, for me, over a conventional chess set: when I move the pieces on the analysis board, the website writes out the moves for me, and this makes it much easier -- for me, at least -- to check what I'm reading against the moves I'm making and make sure I'm making the written moves.

I tried to move the pieces for this game on an analysis board last night, but I think I may've gotten the 22nd moves wrong. This morning I finally got all of the moves right.

And then, after looking at the final position for a couple of minutes, an amazing thing happened: I understood why White resigned! If he didn't take Black's Queen, instead moving his King out of check, Black would take the White Queen; but if he did take Black's Queen, then Black would move 23. [...] Nb3, checkmate.

This is still very, very far from understanding the entire game. For example, I don't understand why White was unable to develop many of his pieces, so that his white Bishop, King's Rook and f-, g-, and h-Pawns were never moved, and were all just about completely useless to him at the end of the game. (Assuming that I'm correct in judging that they were useless to him.) There must have been some threat which was too urgent to allow White to develop the pieces on his King's side. What that threat was, I don't know. Maybe the answer is somewhere in those alternate lines. Who knows? Not me, that's who. Not yet. I would compare my achievement here to watching an NBA player on video in slow motion, making a basket, and after watching it in slow motion 5 or 6 times, you notice the head fake which threw the defensive player off. That might be a great breakthrough for you as an observer of basketball, but it doesn't mean you're ready to try out for the NBA.

I apologize for not being able to show you the final board, or even, for my readers whose 1st chess language is not English, to list the moves with the little pictures of the pieces instead of their English abbreviations. But if you google vaganian planinc hastings 1975, you can find a number of websites which show the entire game move by move. If I right-click on the final board on those sites, and choose "save image as," all I've saved is a tiny black square. The struggle continues, the struggle to understand chess, and to understand IT and to understand other things.

Chess Informant

I have a few issues of Chess Informant, a periodical published in Belgrad, which is constructed like a large-format paperback book -- a rather high-quality book, or at least it was as recently as 1995, when Chess Informant 65 was published, the most recent issue I have. In 1995 the pages were still sewn together in signatures, instead of just glued to the spine, which is far more common for paperbacks, and cheaper, and much less sturdy. I have not heard anything about the quality of construction decreasing since the 1990's. Chess Informant 1 was published in 1966. At first 2 issues a year were published, then 3, and now they're publishing 4 issues a year.

(Yes, the name Chess Informant is somewhat comical, and was even stranger to English-speaking ears coming from the Soviet bloc back during the Cold War. I have no doubt that it unnecessarily raised the blood pressure of more than one FBI agent who was not familiar with the world of chess. A better translation would no doubt have been something like Chess Information. But it's far and away the most prominent publication of its type, and the name has stuck. They're not going to change the English translation now.)

What it is, is a collection of those of the most recent top-level Grandmaster chess games which the editors have deemed to be the best. These are presented with commentary, sometimes by one of the game's players, sometimes by some other Grandmaster. The games and the commentary are all presented without words: The editors of Chess Informant were among the first to devise non-lingual signs for chess pieces, moves, and evaluation by commentators. Near the front of each volume all of these signs are explained in various languages. They're all easily understandable, even to someone like me. The number of languages has increased as time has gone by. Until recently, the name of the periodical has appeared in each one of those languages on the cover. I haven't been able to find a picture of the very first Chess Informant. But I believe this is Chess Informant 2,

and it is presented in 6 languages. The name of publication in the editors' native Serbo-Croation is in large white letters running vertically from the bottom to the top; and to the left of that, the title is translated in smaller script into Russian, English, German, French and Spanish. In the 10th issue, published in 1971, Italian and Swedish were added. Chinese was added in the 23rd issue in 1977, and the 25th issue, from 1978, has the same assortment of languages. I can't see numbers 26 through 37, but number 38 from 1984 has Arabic. The 125th issue, from 2015, is the newest one I've been able to see a photo of which still lists all the languages on the cover in this manner, and it still has the same languages as #38 in 1984: Serbo-Croation, Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Chinese and Arabic. Not a bad international reach. Here's Chess Informant 95 from 2005, displaying those 10 languages on its cover:

And all of the chess in all of the volumes is at a level far above my head. I've studied 1 of these games, game 120 from Chess Informant 20, Kovács L -- Benkő, Debrecen 1975, going through all of the moves and all of commentary over and over, and I don't understand what happened. It's a short game, checkmate by Black on the 26th move, and there's a diagram of the position after White's 22nd move. Both the shortness and the diagram encouraged me to choose this game to study. I'm convinced by now that I have moved all the pieces as recorded. But I'm not sure about very much at all beyond that. As usual, much of the commentary explains what would've happened if different moves had been made at this or that point. But there is no commentary at several points where I cannot understand why the game's moves were made. Presumably, when there is no commentary, the commentator assumes that it is obvious to the reader why the game move was made. (Not that the existing commentary leaves me unmystified.)

Anyway, that's 1 game out of 724 games in Chess Informant 20. Chess Informant passed 100,000 games presented some years ago, and I think it's safe to say that I would not be able even remotely understand a single one of them.

PS, 8 April 2017: Finally found a picture of the very first issue of Chess Informant!

Chess Log: Computer Problems

Last night I was playing chess on the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), as I have almost every day for, I believe, 12 years. Right now I can't check how long it's been. Ordinarily I'd just go the main console of the Babaschess interface, enter f and my profile would appear, with my overall record for the whole time I've been playing there, my highest official rating, and more info, including the date I joined.

But now when I go to Babaschess, instead of seeing my FICS setup, I see a screen which is grey from edge to edge. I don't know if I did that, or if there's a problem because of the Recent Big Update, or if FICS has closed up shop. I'm pretty sure I did it. More often than I'd like, I unintentionally hit a wrong key and change what's on my PC screen -- the size of a chessboard for example -- and have some difficulty changing it back. Often when I try to change things back I just make things worse.

It's possible that I have that problem unusually severely. That problem, the wetware interface, may be 100% responsible for the grey screen with no controls at my disposal.

I spent some time last night trying to fix my Babaschess connection, then trying to set up another FICs interface, and then I gave up. I said to myself that this could turn out great. For example, I told myself that I could spend all of the time I had spent on chess improving my Latin instead. (It wasn't the first time I had told myself exactly that.) Or maybe I could enjoy chess just by studying chess books.

So this morning, about 5 minutes after I turned on my computer, I looked for other online chess servers, and right away I found Lichess, which I hadn't known existed, and now I play at Lichess. The chess at Lichess is all on the Lichess website, there's no need to a player to set up his or her own interface.

I had been playing at FICS since around 2004, and Lichess launched in 2010, while I was right exactly in the middle of not looking for any other places to play chess.

Maybe I'll actually look around for still other online chess options (this is a very non-autistic thing to say). Maybe FICS is still around and I'll eventually figure out the interface issue. It's not a high-tech issue, or I never would have been able to set up an interface all by myself to begin with, but it's also not as low-tech as playing on Lichess' website. (But even at Lichess, I accidentally made the board much smaller, then somehow made it big again, and haven't figured out how to change its size since then. This is what my life is like.)

Maybe I'll also study those chess books more in addition to playing on line, and also work harder on my Latin, and have a happy well-rounded life. Who knows, maybe I'll even develop friendships to the point where other people, hypothetical future friends of mine, will visit my home and not mind taking a crack at fixing my interfaces and explaining why things suddenly vanish or change because I accidentally hit a key. Maybe they would even know how to change my PC to the point that accidentally hitting a single key would no longer have such disastrous power. It would be a friggin miracle if I could just change some settings so that I can no longer do something I don't want to do by accidentally hitting one key or swiping my mouse incorrectly or whatever the $%#$%#$@#* @#$%^&#$% ^%$# it is.

Maybe -- I have no way of knowing at this moment -- I would learn all about things like that in the first day of a computer class or the first page of a computers-for-dummies type book.

Maybe life will be wonderful even before I become rich and famous. Wouldn't that be weird.

Chess Log: Two Quick Ones

I played White both games.

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. ♗b5 ♘c6 5. ♘f3 ♗f5 6. ♘e5 ♕c7 7. ♘c3 a6 8. ♘xd5 ♕a5 9. ♗d2! ♕xb5?? 10. ♘c7! 1-0 {Black resigns}

I almost didn't think of 9. ♗d2. Not world-championship-level stuff here.

Even quicker:

1. e4 ♘f6 2. e5 ♘d5 3. d4 d6 4. ♘f3 ♗g4 5. ♗e2 e6 6. O-O ♗e7 7. h3 ♗xf3 8. ♗xf3 dxe5? 9. c4! 1-0 {Black resigns}

I suppose Black should have played 8. ... ♘c6.

Chess Log: 1. e4 e6 2. d4 c5 3. d5 ♕b6 4. dxe6 ♕xe6 5. ♘c3 ♕b6 6. ♗f4 ♘c6? 7. ♘d5! ♕a5+ 8. c3 ♘ge7? 9. ♘c7! ♔d8 10. ♘xa8 ♘d4? 11. ♗c7! 1-0

I don't recall having come across this one before.

What should Black have done? You're asking me? I don't know. Perhaps Black's 3rd move, moving the Queen out, should already have been marked with a ?. Little thought seems to have been put into the safety of the Black Queen.

Chess Log: 1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 ♘c6 3. ♗b5 ♘f6 4. O-O ♘g4 5. h3 h5

5-0 blitz, I played White:

1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 ♘c6 3. ♗b5 ♘f6 4. O-O ♘g4 5. h3 h5 6. ♘h2 d6 7. ♗e2 ♘d4 8. ♗xg4 hxg4 9. ♘xg4 ♗xg4 10. ♕xg4 ♘xc2 11. ♘a3 ♘xa1 12. b3 ♘xb3 13. axb3 ♕f6 14. d3 ♗e7 15. ♘c4 ♖h4 16. ♕g3 O-O-O 17. ♘e3 ♕g6 18. ♘f5 ♗f6 19. ♘xh4 ♕xg3 20. fxg3 g6 21. ♘f3 c6 22. ♗g5 ♗xg5 23. ♘xg5 d5 24. ♖xf7 dxe4 25. dxe4 ♖d3 26. ♖f8 ♔c7 27. ♘e6 ♔b6 28. b4 ♖xg3 29. ♔f2 ♖b3 30. ♖g8 ♖xb4 31. ♖xg6 ♖xe4 32. ♔f3 ♖c4 33. g3 a5 34. h4 a4 35. ♖g8 ♖c3 36. ♔g2 a3 37. ♖a8 ♖c2 38. ♔h3 a2 39. ♘d8 e4 40. ♘f7 e3 41. ♘g5 e2 42. ♘f3 ♔b5 43. ♘d4 ♔c4 44. ♘xc2 ♔d3 45. ♖xa2 ♔d2 46. h5 b5 47. h6 b4 48. ♘xb4 ♔d1 49. ♘c2 c5 50. h7 e1=Q 51. ♘xe1 ♔xe1 52. h8=Q 1-0 {Black resigns}

Not 6. hxg4?, because then 6. ... hxg4! opens up the h-file to both the Black Rook and the Black Queen, putting White into a world of hurt. And again, 10. ♕xg4, even though it allowed Black to trade a Knight for the Rook at a1, instead of 10. hxg4?.

My win was partly skillful use of my remaining Knight starting on my 15th move, partly a couple of blunders by Black, and partly luck. I'd like to claim that the impressive use of my Knight starting with 39. ♘d8 was pure skill, but I was just flailing on the 39th move, and it wasn't until 41. ♘g5 that I began to see how strong the Knight was going to be in the endgame -- just began to see it. And 48. ♘xb4+! is a nice move, but I didn't have it planned before my 48th move. This game was closer than it might look.

Chess Log: Playing With Reckless Abandon Has Been Paying Off For Me Lately

I played White. Going into the game I was rated 1293 and my opponent was rated 1859. 5-0 blitz:

1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 ♘c6 3. ♗b5 f5 4. ♗xc6 dxc6 5. ♘xe5 ♕f6 6. ♘f3 fxe4 7. ♕e2 ♕e7 8. ♘d4 ♘f6 9. O-O ♕e5 10. ♘f3 ♕h5 11. ♘d4 ♗g4 12. f3 ♗c5 13. fxg4 ♗xd4 14. ♔h1 ♕xg4 15. ♕xg4 ♘xg4 16. h3 h5 17. d3 exd3 18. cxd3 O-O-O 19. ♗g5 ♖df8 20. ♘d2 ♘f2 21. ♔h2 ♘xd3 22. ♖ab1 ♗xb2 23. ♖xf8 ♖xf8 24. ♘c4 ♗e5 25. g3 ♖f2 26. ♔g1 ♗f6 27. ♗xf6 ♖xf6 28. ♖d1 ♘b4 29. a4 ♘d5 30. ♖e1 b6 31. ♖e8 ♔b7 32. ♘e5 c5 33. ♘d7 ♖d6 34. ♖b8 ♔c6 35. ♘e5 1-0 {Black checkmated}

At the end of the game Black had 1 minute and 28 seconds left on his clock and I had less than 1.3 seconds. Perhaps Black got a little careless because he assumed he was coasting toward a win on time. We each ended the game with one Rook and one Knight. Black had 6 Pawns left to my three. However, I was able to mate with my Knight because because Black's King was surrounded by his Rook, Knight and 3 of his Pawns, leaving him 3 squares where he could move his King, and when I attacked with the Knight those 3 squares were covered, 1 each, by my Knight, my Rook and 1 of my Pawns. 34. ... ♔a6 instead of the game move 34. ... ♔c6 would've won easily on time for Black.

The Ruy Lopez is my preferred opening with White. I haven't seen 3. ... f5 very often. The MCO-13 calls 3. ... f5 the Schliemann Defense or Jaenisch Gambit, devotes 5 columns to it and says it is "probably not quite sound" but "frequently employed by players looking for a real slugfest." I suppose a slugfest might naturally appeal to a player who's rated 566 points above his opponent. My 4. ♗xc6 might have been an unexpectedly aggressive counter. It's not in the book. Black was immediately able to make my position very cramped, and was on the offensive for most of the game, but I managed to hang on. Honestly, the checkmate was a lot more luck than skill.

My overall approach lately has been very aggressive, and it's been working well for me, it seems to fit my personalty better to charge in and bash holes than to than play positionally and lay patiently in wait for a crack to develop in my opponent's wall. As I mentioned before in this blog, the Queen's Gambit Declined has recently been discovered by my group, and is very popular with us currently. But just a little while ago I've switched to the Queen's Gambit Accepted, which is a very reckless defense, not approved of very much at all by the MCO-13, but it's been working well for me -- partly out of surprise, no doubt, and also because I've been able to use it create chaotic positions, and then cope with the chaos better than my opponents.

It's a game. And I do better when I have more fun, and I have more fun when I play more recklessly, perhaps because I'm overly-cautious in some other areas of my life, causing frustration to build up which I can safely release over the chessboard, because -- it's only a game.

Chess Log: If You Want to Improve, Play Stronger Opponents

I played White:

1. e4 c5 2. ♘f3 ♘c6 3. d4 cxd4 4. ♘xd4 ♘e5 5. ♗f4 ♘g6 6. ♗g3 e5 7. ♘f3 f6 8. ♗c4 ♘8e7 9. ♕d5 ♘xd5 10. ♗xd5 ♗b4 11. c3 ♗a5 12. O-O ♕b6 13. b4 ♗xb4 14. cxb4 ♕xb4 15. ♘bd2 ♘e7 16. a3 ♕a4 17. ♗b3 ♕c6 18. ♖fc1 ♕b6 19. ♘c4 ♕xb3 20. ♘d6 ♔f8 21. ♖cb1 ♕e6 22. ♘b5 ♘c6 23. ♘c7 ♕e7 24. ♘xa8 b6 25. ♘c7 ♗b7 26. ♘d5 ♕f7 27. h3 ♘d4 28. ♘xd4 exd4 29. ♗d6 ♔e8 30. ♘c7 ♔d8 31. ♘b5 ♗xe4 32. ♗c7 ♔e7 33. ♖e1 ♕d5 34. a4 ♖c8 35. f3 ♖xc7 36. ♖xe4 ♔f7 37. ♘xc7 ♕c4 38. ♘b5 a6 39. ♘d6 1-0 {Black resigns}

For several months now I've been taking the advice given by the chess master in Guy Ritchie's magnificent, greatly-underrated movie Revolver: if you want to improve, play opponents who are better than you. Presumably there's some different advice for whoever happens to be the best chess player in the world at any given time. But this does not directly affect me. It's been some years since I've had any hope that I would ever become such a good chess player that it would be difficult to find stronger opponents.

But there is no question at all anymore that I am becoming a better player by playing opponents stronger than I am. Not all of my games are against higher-rated opponents, but I no longer limit the rating of opponents against whom I will play.

And I'm somewhat conscious now, because of watching that movie, of the huge role of the ego in the game of chess. The huge, negative role. Just today I played someone rated 700 points higher than I. 700 is a huge difference. So big that when he beat me it didn't change our ratings. Now, the thing is, I experienced the entire game as an unpleasant humiliation, when in fact it could have been a great learning experience, for the simplest conceivable reason: a player rated 700 points higher than I am presumably has some skills and insights into chess which I lack. But even after months of consciously battling my own ego at the chessboard I had great difficulty learning from the game, because my ego was objecting to my being trounced.

Along with the great advice about playing stronger opponents, I would add: don't resign. Don't give up. I don't always follow my own advice here. But I followed it in the game shown above, against an opponent rated about the same as I am. After 8 moves we each still had all of our pieces and 7 of our 8 Pawns. Then I made the simplest possible blunder on my 9th move: 9. ♕d5 gave my Queen away in exchange for a Knight.

But I didn't resign.

By the 14th move I had exchanged 2 Pawns for his black Bishop, on my 24th move I took one of his Rooks without exchanging anything for it, on my 33rd move I pinned his White Bishop, and on my 39th move, when he was down to his Queen and 7 Pawns against both Rooks, a Knight and 4 Pawns for me, after having chased his Queen all over the board for most of the game, I finally forked his King and Queen with my Knight, and, perhaps with ego-involved anger outweighing whatever else this game might have been able to teach him -- possibly, for instance: stay focused if your opponent blunders away his Queen on the 9th move of a game which had been pretty even until then, instead of letting it make you over-confident -- he resigned.

It Seems That Most People Who Saw Revolver Really, Really Hated It

I'm just saying that as a warning: I like the movie very much, but most people hated it. So don't take my positive review as a guarantee that you would like it. Don't go see it because of what I'm saying and then come back angrily to me because you hated it, because I warned you: most people hated it.

I've mentioned the film a few times already in this blog, in connection with chess: watching the movie has significantly improved my chess game.

Okay, as long as I'm warning you about the movie, I should mention that it contains lots of violence, nudity and vulgar language. Lots and lots and lots of all three, so if those are things which make you not like a movie, then there's no point in you watching this movie.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to stop reading this blog post, because violence, nudity and vulgar language are not the interesting things to me about Revolver, and those interesting things can be looked into without seeing the movie, if it's not your kind of movie. The interesting things are: Kabbalah, and overcoming the ego.

Let's take the 2nd one first. This may be something that many or even most people are already familiar with, but it had eluded me until I watched Revolver: the concept of the ego as an enemy of the true self, the ego as an obstacle.

One of the things which the movie relates to the ego is the game of chess. Jake Green, the film's protagonist, played by Jason Statham, is released from prison at the beginning of the movie. He had done part of his time in solitary confinement in a cell between a chess Grandmaster and a con-man. Jake never saw either of them, but he did intercept many of the notes they passed back and forth, and he learned a little about chess. After his release, he becomes mixed up with a couple of loan sharks, Zach (Vincent Pastore) and Avi (André Benjamin), and plays some games of chess with Avi.

Before I ever saw Revolver, I had already noticed some of the ways in which ego interferes with playing chess. In some of my blog posts about chess I noted that over-confidence in my ability as a chess player leads directly to disastrously poor chess play. In Revolver, this interference is addressed much more directly. In the film, chess is one of the things which teach Jake about the ego. For example, the ego resists playing stronger players. It wants to win all of the time. Even though it's very plain to see that a chess player (or, as the chess players in the movie point out, a player in any sort of game) can only improve by playing stronger players -- which of course will involve a lot of losing, which offends the ego. In his games with Avi, after having studied chess in prison for years with not much else to do, Jake wins game after game, and after one of the many times Jake announces checkmate, Avi says with annoyance that he's not going to play Jake anymore.

But since watching the movie I'm playing stronger players much more, and surprise surprise, my game has improved quite a lot.

As I have written on this blog before, I've seen chess games where the very best players in the world -- Fischer, Kasparov and other world champions -- lost, analyzed by the world champion who lost. Whereas for the most part it's very unusual to come across games analyzed by the losing players. I keep analyzing games I've won, even though I realize how much my game could benefit from analyzing games I've lost. My ego is still directly interfering with my chess game to that extent, and I can see it, and I still can't bring myself to battle my ego that much. I believe I've analyzed a total of 1 game I've lost on this blog.

Oh well. Rome wasn't built in a day, and it's not as if I make my living from chess.

Revolver represents only the 2nd time of which I'm clearly aware in which a work of art directly, tangibly and immediately improved my life by explaining something about my own mind to me. The first time was decades ago when I read Gravity's Rainbow, which explained to me that paranoia consists of irrationally over-estimating the amount of attention other people pay to you. I just needed to remind myself that others had plenty of better things to do than participate in a plot against me, and poof, there went my paranoid tendencies.

Again, maybe that was everyday common knowledge to many or most people, but to me it needed pointing out.

Also, at the end of the movie several different people, not playing fictional characters, spoke about the ego. I think some of them were psychiatrists. One of them was Deepak Chopra, and he said something which I didn't find dopey. I like that. A few years ago, I was caught up in a feud between New Atheism and Chopra. In the meantime I have come to regard New Atheists as dopey. Who knows, maybe Chopra belongs on the long, long list of people and things about which the New Atheists are wrong.

The other interesting thing about Revolver is the Kabbalah symbolism: names, numbers, colors, mannerisms and other things refer to symbolism and archetypes of Kabbalah. I don't really know anything about Kabbalah yet, but the colors are purty, which I think is way cool, and the stories are interesting, whether they actually make sense or not. (And SOME of them probably DO!) I'm an atheist, but I've never let that spoil my appreciation of religious art.

For those of you considering watching Revolver -- remember, most people hate it, as I've warned you several times now -- there's a third thing I'd like to mention: Mark Strong, one of my very favorite actors. He gives the most brilliant performance in Ritchie's much-more-popular Rocknrolla, as the hard-as-nails Archie, and he gives the most brilliant performance in Revolver, as Sorter, a very quirky and extremely lethal hitman.

Chess Log: I'm Improving, Because I Watched Guy Ritchie's Film Revolver

The film has some very sound advice for the chess player hoping to go from poor to mediocre: play stronger players, and don't let your ego interfere with your progress. In the film, the stuff about the ego is said to apply to all areas in life. Tangible progress is much easier to measure in chess than in some other things.

5-0 blitz, I played White:

1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 ♘c6 3. ♗b5 ♘ge7 4. d4 exd4 5. ♘xd4 a6 6. ♘xc6 bxc6 7. ♗a4 ♗b7 8. O-O h6 9. ♘c3 ♖b8 10. ♗f4 ♘g6 11. ♗g3 ♗d6 12. e5 ♗b4 13. e6 dxe6 14. ♕xd8 ♖xd8 15. ♗xc7 ♖d7 16. ♗g3 ♗xc3 17. bxc3 O-O 18. ♖fd1 ♖fd8 19. ♖xd7 ♖xd7 20. h3 ♖d2 21. ♖b1 ♗c8 22. ♖b8 ♘e7 23. ♗xc6 ♖xc2 24. ♗d7 ♖xc3 25. ♗d6 ♔f8 26. ♗xc8 ♖c6 27. ♗d7 ♖c8 28. ♗xc8 ♔e8 29. ♗xe6 ♘c8 30. ♖xc8 1-0 {Black checkmated}

Black's fatal mistake in this game was 21. [...] ♗c8. up until then, as far as I can see, the game was pretty even.

Another 5-0 blitz with me playing White:

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. ♘f3 cxd4 5. ♘xd4 a6 6. h3 ♘c6 7. a3 ♕a5 8. ♗d2 ♕c5 9. ♘xc6 bxc6 10. ♗b4 ♕b6 11. ♗d3 c5 12. ♗d2 e6 13. ♘c3 ♗b7 14. ♘a4 ♕c6 15. b3 d4 16. ♘b2 ♕xg2 17. ♖f1 ♕xh3 18. ♕e2 ♘h6 19. O-O-O ♘f5 20. ♗e4 ♗xe4 21. ♕xe4 ♖c8 22. ♕b7 ♘e7 23. ♘c4 d3 24. ♘d6 ♔d8 25. ♘xc8 ♘xc8 26. ♕xa6 dxc2 27. ♗a5 ♔e8 28. ♕xc8 ♔e7 29. ♖d7 1-0 {Black checkmated}

As early as 12. [...] e6 Black was cramping me with a strong Pawn storm, and by 16. [...] ♕xg2 I felt I was in some serious trouble. however, by my 22nd move I had achieved a strong counteratack. 26. [...] dxc2?? was a serious error on black's part, allowing me to begin the winning combination with double check on 27. ♗a5!

And yes, I'm aware that I'm continuing to let my ego interfere with my progress by continuing to focus on games I've won, which are flattering to my ego, rather than games I've lost, which might show me weaknesses in my play and allow me to improve tremendously. Grappling with the ego can be very difficult, even after you've become aware that that's what you're doing.

Chess Log: What?!

5-0 blitz, I played White:

1. e4 c5 2. ♘f3 ♘c6 3. d4 ♕b6 4. d5 ♘b8 5. b3 d6 6. ♗e3 g6 7. ♘bd2 ♘d7 8. ♘c4 ♕c7 9. ♗f4 ♗g7 10. e5 ♘xe5 11. ♘cxe5 dxe5 12. ♗g3 ♕a5 13. ♘d2 e4 14. ♗e2 ♗xa1 15. ♕xa1 ♘f6 16. c3 O-O 17. ♘c4 ♕d8 18. O-O b5 19. ♘e5 a6 20. ♖d1 ♗b7 21. c4 b4 22. ♘c6 ♗xc6 23. dxc6 ♕c8 24. c7 ♖a7 25. ♕e5 ♖e8 26. ♕xc5 ♘h5 27. ♕xa7 ♘xg3 28. fxg3 e5 29. c5 ♖e7 30. ♖d8 1-0 {Black resigns}

Black's strongest move would have been to move the King and allow White to capture the Black Queen, and continue on with 1 Rook and 7 Pawns against White's Queen, 1 Rook, 1 Bishop and 7 Pawns. If Black captures the Rook, White re-takes with the Pawn, gets a 2nd Queen and takes Black's Rook as well, leaving Black with no pieces and 7 Pawns against White's 2 Queens, 1 Bishop and 6 Pawns.

I'm used to playing opponents rated hundreds of points higher than I and being stunned by the finish. But up until now it was always the higher-rated opponent who provided the stunning finish. Honestly, I cannot account for how I did this. I'm stunned.

Chess Log: Several Short Games Showing The Risks Of Moving The F-Pawn Too Early

First, two very short games demonstrating that NOT capturing the Knight at e5 after 1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 f6? 3. ♘xe5! will not necessarily improve things for Black:

1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 f6 3. ♘xe5 ♗d6 4. ♕h5 ♔e7 5. ♕f7 1-0 {Black checkmated}

1. e4 e5 2. ♘f3 f6 3. ♘xe5 d6 4. ♕h5 ♔e7 5. ♕f7 1-0 {Black checkmated}

Next, a game showing that Black can also benefit when White moves the f-Pawn too early -- or actually, in this case, not Castling Queenside soon enough after the standard, by-the-book 7. f4:

1. e4 c5 2. ♘f3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. ♘xd4 ♘f6 5. ♘c3 a6 6. ♗g5 e6 7. f4 ♗e7 8. ♕f3 ♘bd7 9. ♗d3 e5 10. fxe5 ♘xe5 11. ♕g3 ♘h5 12. ♗xe7 ♕xe7 13. ♕e3 ♘g4 14. ♕e2 ♕h4 15. g3 ♘xg3 16. O-O-O ♘xe2 17. ♗xe2 0-1 {White resigns}

Chess Log: How Did I do This?

When you're in a slump in chess it's awful, it feels as if you've never seen the game before and players you usually beat are constantly baffling you with their brilliance. Your mind feels sluggish and full of sand and debris. Absolutely awful.

When things are going well, on the other hand, wins seem to fall right into your lap. Like this one. 5-0 blitz as usual for me. I played Black:

1. c4 e5 2. d3 d5 3. cxd5 ♕xd5 4. ♘c3 ♕d8 5. g3 ♘c6 6. ♗g2 ♘f6 7. ♘f3 ♗b4 8. ♕c2 O-O 9. O-O ♖e8 10. ♗d2 ♘d4 11. ♘xd4 exd4 12. ♘d1 ♖xe2! 0-1 {White resigns}

Don't ask me how I did that. I don't know.