Here are a couple of fun reaction photos that I took last night during the San Francisco-Dallas PRO Chess League match, which the Mechanics won by a 10-6 score.
The commentators for most of our matches have been David Pruess (also the team manager) and Andy Lee, on the lower right of the screen. Here they are celebrating the coup de grace of Daniel Naroditsky’s amazing combination in round two against Cameron Wheeler. Naroditsky sacrificed a rook and a bishop, but Wheeler will have to give back all of that material and more to avoid checkmate.
By the way, Andy’s face is not normally that red. Either he’s been out in the sun too much or the color reproduction of the Twitch feed is not perfect. (Hint: It’s been raining for, like, the last two weeks.)
This one is even better, if possible. Can you tell what emotion is being expressed?
Answer: Extreme relief. David looks as if he’s auditioning for the gospel choir, while Andy looks as if he’s been holding his breath for the last ten minutes. This was the way they reacted when Andrew Hong (White) played Qe7 checkmate against Emily Nguyen to clinch the match for the Mechanics.
A little background: I was watching the match on David Pruess’s Twitch stream. They were onsite at the Mechanics Institute but I was watching at home where it was dry. In some ways I see more that way than I would if I were at the Mechanics Institute. Certainly it’s the only way that I would be able to show both their reactions and the position that led to the reactions. If I tried to take these photographs onsite, all you would see would be the back of a big computer screen.
