after 9...Rd8

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"The Hungarian grandmaster was playing the opening at lightning speed and tried l...Rd8. After my next move he shook hands and left the building."

- IM Gary Lane

And then the awful realisation ...

How long do you sit there looking for an escape that doesn't exist? The longer you stare at the position the more embarrassing it gets. But you don't want to resign if there is a way out, so you look again.

Meanwhile a 19 year old Gary Lane is grinning like a Cheshire Cat from the other side of the table.

As the lad mentioned earler Janos was playing blitz moves. He possibly saw the Rd8 idea and Qf5 cuts out Qc2.

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Here the intention in this faulty plan was to play Rxd4

He clearly missed after NxQ the e7 Bishop goes with check and Black comes out of this mess a whole Rook down.

8 ... Qf5 is the kind of move an imaginative player makes hoping that his muse will kick in. You cannot summon your creative gift like it was an on/off tap.

They are beautiful when they work. Grotesque when they don't.

All in all a pretty sloppy day at the office. We all have them and no matter how many books/games we study, we will still have them.

Now that is something for all of us to look forward too!

Flesch was a good player when the creative juices kicked in. Seemed to swim against the flow when writing about the game, which is no bad thing.

Such writting can inspire a reader to look again at what he has read or maybe view a position from a different perspective.

Flesch wrote a book on planning in chess and had a refreshing controversial outlook on the game.

It has loads of wee thought provoking snippets.

He wrote that modern players [written in the 70's] have a lot to learn from the old masters [the Lasker era] on how to use Knights.

I think I also got from the him the argument that there is no such thing as a good Bishop. You either have a Bishop hemmed in by pawns or a Bishop. But you can have a good Knight on an outpost.

The basic thought being Bishops can skim up and down on a clear diagonal - big deal. Anyone can develop a Bishop. Creating and building Knight outposts requires a skill.

Not a forgotten skil, possibly then, as far as writing about the game goes, an ignored skill.

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10 ... Rxd4
11 Nxf5 Rxd1
12 Rxd1 exf5

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Even without White taking the BB, the whole deal doesn't seem brilliant for Black imho...

In any case, I get your point. I also felt genius during some game and tried an antipositional move thinking about great tactics just to find out it was only... a horrible move.

It's a wonderful piece of miscalculation. These finely tuned brains can go haywire sometimes.

Reading what Gary wrote about the game, Janos either underestimated him, (doubtful) or just wanted the game over ASAP and had other things to do.

We get a bare chess score and try and to explain the how's the why's and the if's.

Very often we 100% way off the mark.

Sometimes even the score of the game is wrong and this can set off a chain reaction that travels around the world.

By coincidence, through work, I often speak to Ian a couple of times of month, I keep meaning to mention a line he has in one of his books.

Rebus is stuck in a case and needs a lead.

'What is it that chess grandmasters do when they are stuck, they move a pawn.'

So Rebus gives a minor suspect a nudge, he in turn mudges the major suspect and the case takes off.

However moving a pawn when you are not too sure what to do is usually the worst thing you can do.

I had to resign a game after about 6 moves once. It was sad but I was gone.

I also got my Q trapped playing a young player as Black in the Posion Pawn line of the Najdorf. I moved too fast and there it was. My opponent laughed and I "pretended" it was a sac and sacrificed it for a piece and resigned in a few moves. Actually I wasn't that upset I also thought it was quite funny.

In another game I had seen that a move was a blunder so had eliminated it but had worked through other moves then saw the move that was fatal as if anew and played the blunder. I resigned even before my opponent replyed as I was going down 2 pieces for a rook against a strong player, but amusingly he refused my resignation. I eventually lost...