27 ... ?

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Should Black defend his h5-pawn or his b6-pawn?

27 ... g7-g6?

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Another bad move by Topalov (Black). The Black h5-pawn, which he defended with 27 ... g7-g6?, is meaningless: the Black g8-king will stop any passed White h-pawn that might arise after its loss.

On the other hand, the Black b6-pawn is *incredibly* important. The loss of the Black b6-pawn makes the a5-pawn a terribly weak target. Black eventually loses this weak a5-pawn (32 ♖c5xa5) and with it the game.

<So Topalov, rated over 2810, got this important chess decision *completely* wrong, holding onto the meaningless Black h5-pawn when he should have defended the critical Black b6-pawn. <<<The Black b6-pawn was *clearly* more important than the Black h5-pawn.>>>>

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PEIN <27...g6. Topalov gives up the wrong pawn as when b6 goes a5 becomes weak so 27...Nd7 28.Bxh5 e5 was best]> http://www.chessbase.com/news/2010/...

GIRI <27...g6? 27...Nd7 was I think better, but White had a pleasant advantage there as well. Still it was way better than what Topalov go in the game. 28.Bxh5 e5! being the idea.> http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail...

They have paired the GOOGLE and youtube accounts now, and they put your name all over the internet so anyone can find you and then come to your house when you're on vacation and take your furniture.

Bloody fascists. They also sell all your personal information to Walmart and spy on your house with a satellite camera to keep track of where you go shopping.

This is a fact! I read about it on

CAPS, as everyone knows, indicate shouting. But there's shouting and *shouting*, not to mention 'shouting'.

Ackshully, the Nielsian interpretation is best -- you can't do caps and asterixes together because you, well, *CAN'T*.

Lucinda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa0W...

Ok this is my first Correspondence game in over year now and a reminder of one of the reasons I gave it up.

What is the instructive value of me playing this guy?

I'm Black and it's his move:

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I looked at his Profile and he plays about 90,000 games at the same time and his rating never, ever, ever changes.

Hmmm I wonder why.

When I got the game invite I just saw that his rating was vaguely in my range- I'm 2000 something or other- so I said Ok why not.

This is why not.

The concept of "courtesy" seems to be utterly lacking in far too many of these games.

Why is he still playing this game?

Is he hoping I might time out by dying before the game is finished?

And you see the normal pleasure I might derive from having an opponent in zugzwang in the Middle Game is lacking, because he's obviously not suffering.

He simply doesn't care if he wins or loses, obviously, and I regard this to be a deep, deep lack of respect for the game of chess.

I am going to check my next opponent's Profile in depth before I ever play another Correspondence game.

If there is any poetic justice, I will hang my Queen now.

Not the most respectful method, true, but I can do you one better. Back in the fall, I was in a tournament section with the woman playing Black in this game:

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Here Black was awarded a win on time. Ok, the system at this site is not sophisticated enough to recognize that Black has insufficient material to win, but that's beside the point.

What she would do in any game when she got a losing position was to start playing what GM Nickel calls "the dead man defense;" take the maximum allowed time and try to drag the game out in the hopes your opponent will die, lose interest or focus.

Of course because she had a couple of losing positions, so players who qualified to move on to the next round had to wait on her games to finish before any new games could start. The position above is one of the rare cases where her opponent finally went MIA, and she claimed the win immediately. That, to me, is far more disrespectful than just playing dead lost positions at normal speed. She is now the sole occupant of my "ignore" file at that site.