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.
