After my epic fail yesterday against Josiah Stearman… number two 10-year-old in the country Josiah Stearman, that is… I just had to go over the game and see what I did wrong.
It’s actually a very complicated question. But let’s get to the position where the game finally, irrevocably became an Epic Fail.
FEN: r3qr1k/ppp3Rp/3p3P/3Ppb2/2PnNp2/8/PP2BPP1/R2QK3 w Q – 0 21
Position after 20. … Bf5. White to move.
I’m playing White, and the opening was a King’s Indian Defense. Up to this point neither side has played very much defense. Black didn’t do anything to prevent White from getting his rook to g7, and White on the other hand didn’t do anything to prevent Black from getting his knight to d4.
White has a knight hanging on e4, and the question is what to do about it. Should I:
(A) Defend with 21. f3?
(B) Defend with 21. Bd3?
(C) Continue in Full Throttle Attack Mode with 21. Bh5 Qd8 22. Ng5?
This is where we come to the subject of today’s post: impulse control. I’ve played the whole game so far in Full Throttle Attack Mode and I sure has heck wasn’t going to stop now. So I sacrificed an exchange (or rook?) with variation (C).
What made this idea an Epic Fail wasn’t so much the moves themselves, as the way that I played them. I did not analyze variations (A) and (B) at all. Not even past one ply. I just said: “21. Bd3. Ugh. Passive.” And then I said “21. f3. Ugh. Passive.” That’s it. That was the full extent of my “analysis.”
And then I looked at (C) and I said, “Yeah! Now Nf7+ is a monster threat! How can he possibly stop it?” I did in fact look a little bit deeper than that. I figured that play would continue 21. Bh5 Qd8 22. Ng5 Nc2+ 23. Kd2 Nxa1 24. Nf7+ Rxf7 25. Rxf7, and I decided that White was fine here.
FEN: r2q3k/ppp2R1p/3p3P/3Ppb1B/2P2p2/8/PP1K1PP1/n2Q4 b – – 0 25
Position after 25. Rxf7 (analysis). Black to move.
Yes, White is a piece down, but Black has two pieces under attack, and I figured he would play something like 25. … Bg6 26. Bxg6 h6 27. Qxa1.
I’m sure that you have all seen what I missed: Black has the much superior move 25. … Qg5! which defends the bishop on f5, attacks the bishop on h5, and in most variations rescues the knight on a1. Black stays a piece up in all lines, and the game is over.
I belatedly saw this a couple moves later and so I didn’t play 24. Nf7+, but there is nothing better; White is just busted. The way the game actually ended was 21. Bh5? Qd8 22. Ng5?? Nc2+ 23. Kd2 Nxa1 24. Bg4 Bg6 25. Ne6 Qh4 26. Nxf8 Qxf2+! (going for the jugular) 27. Be2 Rxf8 28. Qxa1 Qe3+ 29. Ke1 Qg1+ 30. Bf1 Bd3 31. Kd2 Qe3+ 32. Kd1 Bxf1 White resigns.
So now let’s go back to (A) and (B), the lines that I didn’t analyze at all.
(A) I still think that 21. f3? is a lemon. It does nothing to improve my position and opens up new weaknesses around my king. After 21. … Qd8 threatening … Qh4+, Black is better.
(B) On the other hand, 21. Bd3! is an excellent move! It defends two key weak points — the knight on e4 and the forking square at c2. But even better, is is not a completely defensive move. There is definite discovered-attack potential along the b1-h7 diagonal. Even though there are several pieces in the way, the bishop is eyeing the ultimate weak square in Black’s position — the pawn on h7.
Black has several possibilities here and I won’t go over them all, but trust me that White is doing all right. The most obvious move for Black is also his best move according to Rybka: 21. … Rf722. Ng5! Rxg7 23. hg+ Kg8! Notice that the pawn is poisoned: If 23. … Kxg7? 24. Bxf5 25. Nxf5 Ne6+ followed by Nxc7 and White wins the exchange. After 23. … Kg8! 24. Bxf5 Nxf5 25. Ne6 Rybka rates the position as about equal. The g7 pawn will probably fall eventually, but White has plenty of compensation due to his active knight and the exposed Black king.
In this line we see how White has managed to use his light-squared bishop for attacking as well as defensive purposes. If I had analyzed at all, even far enough to see that the pawn at g7 is poisoned, I’m sure I would have played this variation. My mental mistake was thinking that Bd3 was “just” a defensive move.
To sum up, my Epic Fail occurred because I played the impulsive move 21. Bh5? without either analyzing it or the alternatives properly. Time trouble is no excuse: I still had 38 minutes to make 20 moves, which is plenty of time.
I think that fatigue did enter into it. Fatigue alters your thought process in certain ways: it causes mistakes in lengthy variations, and it makes you cut corners — ruling out variations like 21. Bd3 without even giving them a proper chance. I think fatigue makes you more impulsive — at least, it makes me more impulsive.
Whether you are fatigued or not, I think that any time you are considering a material sacrifice (as I did with my moves 21. Bh5 and 22. Ng5), you need to ask yourself two questions:
1) Does the sacrifice really work?
2) Are there good risk-free alternatives?
Of course, these are totally obvious questions, but they are especially relevant when you play sacrifices. In this case, the answer to (1) was no, and the answer to (2) was yes. I got both of them wrong, and that’s why I lost. Period. End of game, end of weekend, end of blog post.
P.S. I want to say again how impressed I was not only by Josiah’s chess but also his sportsmanship. Of course I have criticized myself very harshly here and emphasized the things that White did wrong, but to be fair I should also say that Black’s play was direct and to the point.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
“…. Bd3 was “just” a defensive move.” Dana, have you noticed how often WC Magnus Carlsen makes these types of moves?
Four comments:
Fatigue – I also suffer from this recurring problem. I can usually count on my mind being clear/sharp for the first two hours of a game but after that it varies. In my most recent games I have been drinking a caffeinated diet soda at move 24. That has helped immensely.
Impulsive moves – I recently decided I need to ask myself another question, (besides the “Is it safe?’ one) before making a move. That question is, “Have I looked at all of my candidate moves? ”
Sacrificing material – I look at sacrificial lines only if I can’t see anything better. As George C Scott said in Patton, “Don’t die for your country. Let the other poor bastard die for his country.” I have sacrificed material in four of my last six games, so maybe you should ignore this comment.
I was very impressed by your games on Friday. Sorry to hear you “ran out of gas” on Sunday. I’ve learned through many painful loses that when my pregame mindset is negative I am almost guaranteed to lose. sometimes it’s better to stay home.
Hope this helps. Don’t get discouraged.
I wouldn’t beat myself about it. As you said, you look “deeper” into your chosen variation and was convinced your fine. I see the “fault” lies on the simple fact that you miscalculated. It was not an impulse move since you did put an effort to validate your calculations. What else can you do? You said you should have looked at the other variations. We are ALWAYS presented with this option. But, we also know that we are “limited” into how far/many we should cover. We see something good, we go for it. We sometimes (in my case, often) miscalculate. It happens. In my opinion, there is no deeper underlying weakness on what you did. It’s a simple case miscalculation. Ask yourself, if the result was positive, would you be still be beating yourself for not going deeper into the other variations? Cheers!
I think you were right to look at (C) first but, as you point out, White really doesn’t have much. IMHO, you are too harsh on the game moves 21. Bh5 and 22. Ng5. I don’t think those moves deserve three queries between them, but the move 24. Bg4 certainly deserves at least one. It looks optically good but you are dead lost only after 24. Bg4 Bg6. Instead of 24. Bg4, the simple 24. Qxa1 is where I stopped when I looked at (C); Black’s certainly better, but I can’t see why you think “White is just busted.” White will recover the exchange in the next couple of moves, and Black will have to find something quick (like 24. … c6 or 24. … f3) to get his queen and queen rook into play. I may be missing something obvious but I don’t see a clear winning plan for Black.
Being of a comparable vintage, I can certainly identify with your difficulties over the board. When I looked at the position after 20. … Bf5, I considered precisely the options (A), (B), and (C), and I too looked at (C) first. Seeing nothing particularly exciting after 24. Qxa1 in (C), I looked at (A) and then finally (B), i.e., 21. Bd3. I wasn’t worried about your Rybka move 21. … Rf7 (BTW, what do you mean “trust me that White is doing all right?” Trust?) but 21. … f3!? made me quite nervous. After looking at some spectacular ways for White to lose, I found 22. g4! Now the Black bishop can’t leave the b1-h7 diagonal because of 23. Rxh7+ etc., and so 22. .. Bg6 23. g5 or 22. … Bxe4 23. Bxe4 is forced, and White has a solid position in either case. It’s still far from winning–for example, in the last line Black plays 23. … Rf7 and he seems to be more or less okay.
I have discovered another way that impulsive moves manifest themselves in OTB play. It happens when I go deep into the lines after my first choice move without going sufficiently wide right off; then if I really don’t like what I saw during the deep think, I quickly play the second choice without giving it much thought. The bad assumption that drives this variant of impulsiveness is: “Nothing can be as terrible as the move whose depths I have just plumbed.” Ironically, I would have spent a huge amount of time on a move I did not make and close to zero time on the move I did make.
A different aspect of sacrifices to go with what you said is when you are on the receiving end of an unexpected sacrifice. Typically, an unexpected sacrifice happens after one’s opponent has been in the think-tank for a long time. I have found it useful, in such cases, to not look right away at the consequences of *accepting* the sacrifice; instead, it’s easier to first look at moves that decline the sacrifice. Quite often, there is no decent way to decline the sacrifice (because, for example, there is no other legal move or because declining the sacrifice means getting mated); once you are satisfied that declining will not work, you can accept the sacrifice with impunity and without any thought! This actually saves a lot of time–you can still work out the consequences of accepting the sacrifice–on your opponent’s clock–while he invariably checks and rechecks his calculations.
As an example, in your game, after you played 22. Ng5, playing Black I would start by looking at other moves besides 22. … Nc2+ first, since I would expect White to have looked at 22. … Nc2+ rather closely. The only real move that surfaces is 22. … Qf6! Now I cannot reject this out of hand since, in addition to 23. … Nc2+ on the *next* move, I am also threatening the sly 23. … Qxh6 when White’s position could collapse. If White goes for 23. Nf7+ Rxf7 24. Rxf7 Qxh6 then he may have won the exchange but will have to work hard to save the game. So, in this example, I would look at both 22. … Qf6 as well as 22. … Nc2+, in that order. I probably would have gone for 22. … Qf6 in any case in a practical game since, aside from its objective merit, there is a good chance that such a variation as the one ending 24. … Qxh6 may not have been seen by White–as the sacrificer, he would have been consumed mostly by 22. … Nc2+.
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