Today’s chess club at the Aptos Library was one of the best I can remember. We had 18 kids, and everybody seemed to find a good match to play against. In the lesson I talked about an age-old trap:
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nd4? 4. Nxe5?! Qg5 5. Nxf7?? Qxg2 6. Rf1 Qxe4+ 7. Be2 (diagram).
FEN: r1b1kbnr/pppp1Npp/8/8/3nq3/8/PPPPBP1P/RNBQKR2 b Qkq – 0 7
Black to play and win.
First question: Does anybody know if this trap has a name? I told my kids about the Fool’s Mate and the Scholar’s Mate, but I didn’t know a name for this one. It ought to be the Greedy Person’s Mate, because White’s main sin was excessive greed (4. Nxe5 and especially 5. Nxf7).
Not too long ago I watched a lecture by Roman Dzindzichashvili about “Good Traps and Bad Traps.” This was his principal example of a bad trap, which he defined as playing an inferior move just to see if you can induce your opponent to blunder. In this case, Black’s inferior move was 3. … Nd4?, which violates opening principles and gives Black a disadvantage after either 4. Nxd4 (Dzindzi’s recommendation) or even 4. c3. Black is just rolling the dice and hoping that White will play 4. Nxe5, which admittedly is a tempting move. Dzindzi’s disdain (or perhaps I should say “dzisdzain”) for anyone who would play this way as Black was palpable.
But even if it’s a bad trap, it’s a great lesson! Any game this extreme can teach beginning players a lot. First, there are many important tactical themes. There are forks (4. … Qg5 and 5. Nxf7), almost back-rank mates (6. Nxh8 Qxh1+), pins (the pinned bishop on e2 in the diagrammed position, and finally the exquisite smothered mate that ends the game (7. … Nf3 mate).
I can tell you that the kids were really excited to discover all these things and especially the smothered mate, which really comes as a bolt from the blue if you’ve never seen this trap before. But for me, the best moment came right at the very end, when I was trying to sum the lesson up and explain why White lost.
Here’s the thing. In any given lesson, about a third to a half of my students actually don’t participate. And it’s okay with me if, out of 18 kids, only 9 of them actually give me answers. The reason it’s okay is that we always have a range of people from absolute beginners to regulars who have been coming to the club for a year or two. It’s only natural that somebody who has only come two or three times will be a little bit hesitant to speak up. I let them decide for themselves when the time is right.
So I was very curious when one of our newest participants, a girl named Cora who had never spoken up before, raised her hand. I eagerly called on her.
“Because no matter how many points ahead you are, they don’t count,” she said. “You could have a million points and still lose!”
It’s fair to say that my jaw hit the floor. I couldn’t have summed the lecture up better myself. It was both a chess lesson and a life lesson, and she aced it! I couldn’t have been prouder of her.
