1. Nc7-e8+ Kg7-g8
2. c2-c4 Qa2-a5 (anything better?)

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The thing is that the R on e5 is also pinned because of the g7 mate square...

3. Bg2-d5+ Kg8-h8
4. Re1xe5 d6xe5
5. Rf1-f8+ Nd7xf8
6. Qd4xe5+ OUCH

It's quite difficult to find this over the board - for me, anyhow. It looks like a 'waste' of a rook check that might be needed later, plus it leaves the black queen hovering dangerously near 'our' king.

Which doesn't actually matter, of course, since it's checks all the way in. Though the final 37.g5# might also be a bit hard to foresee.

I just checked with Fritz for move 32. It's ranking and evals are:

(1) 32.Qd8+ Kf7 33.Rf1+ mating

(2) 32.Nf4+ with a +9 eval but no mate

(3) 32.Bxg2, as played, eval +7.4

So, yes, of course it's an easily won game as long as I didn't do something *truly* cretinous.

Always a possibility, of course.

<What did I do?

To be continued ...>

Knight on c7 in your DIAGRAM -- the Knight still jumps from c7 to e8, right? ;-) (with check)

-- the follow up with 2.c4 is excellent as all pieces are in the attack and every move for Black loses in a heartbeat...

That was a real TAL combo opportunity with Ne8+ and 2.c4

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Where Black has just played 20...Qxa2.

21.Bd5 Qa5
22.Rf7+ Kh8
23.Rxe5 dxe5
24.Rf8+ Kg7 [24...Nxf8 25.Qxe5#]
25.Ne6+ Ke6
26.Qh4#

is the main mating line.

The possibility of 24.Rf8+! is a hard one to visualise from a few moves back, I think.

21 Bd5 looks very forcing...

<The possibility of 24.Rf8+! is a hard one to visualise from a few moves back, I think.>

Naah. Certainly in the later positions where I was running low on time, I knew there was a forced win there somewhere. I reckon GOFA (good old-fashioned analysis) would've turned up moves like that Rf1+ (queen decoy) and the Rf8+ (mating) in the earlier line.

But GOFA is hard to do these days, with an engine chomping at its bit.

Still ... I thought it was a better game, until Fritz demonstrated the missed wins. But I insist that I know better than Fritz in one case: my initial plan to sac the d-pawn and play Bh6 was psychologically sound -- in terms of setting maximum problems for your opponent to solve. Therefore it was a good plan, even if the engine disagrees.

I watched the end of another club game last night, with both players down to about 30 seconds (!). White, the slightly lower-rated but more experienced player, had a good extra pawn in a rook ending. It's probably a theoretical win, but the time situation made that irrelevant. I confess I'd have offered a draw at that point, extra pawn or not: 30" - to the finish - is just too chaotic for me.

But White pressed for a win, reached a Rook + pp vs Rook position (f- and h- pawns, a tricky combination which is often a draw) - went for the win - and dropped his rook to a skewer. Black had just enough time to mop up the pawns and mate him before the clock ran out.

I haven't had this kind of situation - going right to the wire - in a single game since my 2006 comeback. It's a different kind of chess, and I don't much like it -- although I think I'm perfectly capable of winning one if I have to. I mated a 2100 guy in a drawn knight ending once - he was trying too hard to win. And he was most put out when he lost.

Trivia movie-buff appeal: does anyone know the full line in <Miller's Crossing> that refers to 'Egg Central'?

Or, from the same movie, the piece of dialogue that goes something like

- How do I know you won't kill me anyway, if I tell you? - Because if I did kill you, and you was lying to me, I wouldn't be able to kill you *again* ...

[only it's sharper than that ...]

How the hek are you, dom?

You sure let us befriended souls a lot to look at lately... I (today) read a few threads from my absent period and sure it had me on the edge of my seat again... especially the bump with a feller named gothEd had me captured...

Ahh - the irony - posting yer losses?

I put a link to a great site with lotsa downloads you can import to your engine interface- in La Reine's forum... Might be a good idea to check out.

And I can feel
one of my turns coming on
I feel
Cold as a razor blade
Tight as a tourniquet
Dry as a funeral drum

What?! Did I win after all? Could've sworn that I made loads of blunders in an easily won endgame and had to settle for a draw. Nothing to congratulate there, I'm afraid...

<As a Canadian who is shamefully ignorant about <Suttles>, I thought of both of you guys when I recently played through the <suttles-fischer> game in the 1970 Interzonal.>

Yes, shame on you. That Suttles-Fischer game is far from being the best illustration of Dunc's wackiness, however; for one thing, you've managed to stumble upon one of a handful of games where he doesn't fianchetto a bishop. I do like the way he finds odd strategies (eg the d5/Bd4 plan) in the more mainline stuff. You've real done it now though, jess, getting me onto Suttles... perhaps I'll just dump a few of his greatest hits rather than gushing blindly over four or five posts:

Kavalek vs Suttles, 1974 (imagine how terrifying it would be to have white after move 36!)

Robatsch vs Suttles, 1974 (the first Suttles game I ever played through, I think. After 16 moves the Batsford Chess Yearbook sez: 'A more-or-less standard position for Suttles or his fellow countryman Day.' You Canadians sure know how to play!)

Benko vs Suttles, 1964 (A masterpiece; shame about the result. When Lawrence Day contributed to Mondo's Learn From the Grandmasters he used this game to illustrate the Suttles style. I think it's appropriate, because it emphasised the balls-out stuff Suttles played and how he wasn't scared of losing. 10...f5 is the type of odd-looking centre smasher that I always strive to play. Anything to @#$% the position up a bit.)

Yep, the EddyGoth thing was unpleasant, and both Jessica and I got warnings from The Powers That Be. But then I just forgot all about it, and him. My 'crime' was excessive use of nicknames such as, what was it? - <Triceratops>, that's it (I know I said I wouldn't use this word anymore, but this here is meta-use; the use/mention distinction, etc) - deemed by another user to be insulting.

It's not really necessary to insult people when they have such great abilities to make fools of themselves.

But, hey ... there's no accounting for taste. I don't think, somehow, that you or Jess or mack or Deffi or Bill [etc] would have a <hissy fit> if I started calling you <Velociraptor> or <Brontosaurus>. Dino-nicks are *cool*, man. Ask any nine-year-old boy.

Completely tangential factoid: it seems the phrase "hissy fit" got into English from the Danish "hyssig fytte". The proof is that 'hissy' is almost never used with any other noun, though I suppose you could have a hissy snake.

I, um, actually don't know where "cold as a razor blade/ tight as a tourniquet" comes from, although it reminds me of all kinds of stuff.

"I am cold and rainy
I feel like an empty cast-iron exhibition"
(L. Cohen, Queen Victoria)

Particularly lean and hungry before he changed his name to Mohammed Ali.

You @#$%ing talking to me, @#$%? Up yours. If you give me a @#$%ing dino-nick again I'll smashing your @#$%ing face in.

The little verse is from a Pink Floyd lyrics - and kept repeating itself in my head... Then I looked at it closely and realised it's as relative as the evening rain -- but still there - washing, rinsing...

It is in a book by a recovered, enlightened one (that I started to read), and I was my usual self putting it in perspective....

Innaresting. After my game last night I said to somebody in the club that I thought I'd pulled a fast one by transposing into a Pirc. Oh no, I was told, he plays the Pirc regularly, especially this "anti-Flank-Opening" system with ...e5 and ...f5.

Which, in the game we've been discussing, didn't work particularly well. I suspect the key differences were (a) the Nd7 preventing the normal ...Bxf5, and (b) his failure to stick to his guns by playing ...gxf5. Once he recaptured on f5 with a Rook I had the initiative, more or less for keeps.

Hey, I *never* interfered with any of your neurotic hand movements.

Or claw movements either, you batty old Archaeopteryx. And don't pretend to be operating on a wing and a prayer, since you don't believe in either of 'em.

As the creationists say: what use is half a prayer?

21.Ne8+ Kg8 [...Kh8 may be better]
22.Rxe5 Nxe5
23.Bd5+ wins the Queen at least.

If 22 ... dxe5
23.Bd5+ Kh8
24.Rf8+ Nxf8
25.Qxe5#

Or 21...Kh8, avoiding bishop checks:
22.Nxd6 Qa5
23.Rxe5 Nxe5
24.Nc4 or 24.c4 or 24.Nf7+ etc all win easily ...

Way, way back in ancient times, there was a weirdo English band called The Pink Fairies. Aged about 16, I discovered a particularly good way of annoying Pink Floyd fans. It involved walking up close, nodding amiably, and writing a graffito on some nearby surface that read simply 'Pink F'.

Then I would pause.

Anticipating the obvious, the Floyd fan(s) would smile at me in an atmosphere of 'rebellious' collusion - "hey, man, we're Floyd fans and we're writing graffiti, like real vandals".

Then I'd finish writing: P-I-N-K F-A-I-R-I-E-S.

At this point they generally offered to beat me up.

Years later, I 'stole' a girlfriend from one of these Floyd fans and learned that he still regarded me as some kind of poison degenerate. Which was apparently what attracted her.

White to play:

click for larger view

1. [#17] 21.Bd5 Qa5 22.Ne6+ mating

2. [+27.15] 21.Rxe5 Nxe5 22.Ne8+ Kg8 23.Bd5+

3. [+27.15] 21.Ne8+ Kg8 22.Rxe5 Nxe5 23.Bd5+

4. [+18.21] 21.Bh3 Qg8 22.Be6

5. [+14.82] 21.Re3 Qg8 22.Bd5 Qxd5 23.Nxd5

6. [+12.89] 21.Ra1 Qxa1 22.Ne8+ Kh8 23.Rxa1

So my move comes in 6th, though still massively winning. And in several lines Fritz just gives up its Queen at once rather than try defences which lead to mate ...