{"id":1265,"date":"2012-01-15T18:51:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T02:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=1265"},"modified":"2012-01-15T18:51:08","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T02:51:08","slug":"tells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=1265","title":{"rendered":"Tells"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night Mike Splane was showing me and Gjon Feinstein a game he played in the New Year Open, and we got to this position.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

White to move. <\/em><\/p>\n

Black, a young player named Richard Yi, has just played 18. … e5!<\/strong>, a move that Michael says that he completely overlooked. At first Mike thought it was just a desperate move and he was planning to take the pawn. But then, he said, he realized that “My opponent was too quiet.” Mike took a closer look at the position, and realized that his opponent was just waiting for 19. Qxe5?? so that he could pounce with 19. … Nd3+!<\/p>\n

So in the game, Mike played, 19. Qe3?<\/strong>, which I believe is still a mistake. Black just needs to defend the h6 square with 19. … Kg7, and then White has real problems because of all the forking possibilites. 20. Nc5? would be an amusing blunder because after 20. … Rxc5! 21. Qxc5 Nd3+ White has fallen into another version of the same fork. Mike says that he was planning to respond to 19. … Kg7 with 20. N2c3, but it seems to me that White is practically busted after 20. … Be6! White can’t take the bishop because of … Nc2+, and after the abject 21. Bd1, Nc4 is just horrifying.<\/p>\n

Yi, however, did not play the necessary prophylactic move. Instead he played 19. … N7d5??<\/strong> and went down in flames after 20. Qh6! <\/strong><\/p>\n

But what interests me about this story is the way that Mike avoided the trap. His opponent was “too quiet” — in other words, what tipped him off was, to use poker terminology, a “tell.”<\/p>\n

Have any of you ever won a game or averted a loss because of a tell? I can think of one recent tournament game I played where a tell made a small difference, although I don’t think it actually changed the outcome.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Black to move.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is from my only game with Daniel Naroditsky, from the Western States Open in Reno (2009). Danya was Black. It had been an intense battle, where I played too “coffeehouse style” in the opening and barely survived, but then fought back to get a playable position, only to make another mistake and spoil it. In the position above, Black can win the c3 pawn. But which way should he take it?<\/p>\n

The answer is that he should play 29. … Rxc3. There’s just one little trick he has to watch out for: After 30. Nxc6 he should not take the rook, because 30. … Rxc4? would run into 31. Nxe5+. Instead he should play 30. … Rxc6, and then he is simply a pawn up with an almost certainly won endgame.<\/p>\n

I don’t know whether Danya got scared by that little trick or whether he miscalculated, but in any case he played 29. … Bxc3??<\/strong> instead. And the instant he let go of the bishop, he saw why it was a blunder. His face dropped and his shoulders slumped — just for an instant, but I had my “tell.”<\/p>\n

As I said, I don’t think that it affected the outcome of the game. I would certainly have played 30. Nxd3 anyway, but because of Danya’s reaction I knew that I was winning material, not falling into a trap. I checked anyway just to make sure, and then I played 30. Nxd3 Rxd3<\/strong> (not 30. … Bxe1 31. Nxe1 — the latter being the move that Danya had probably missed in his analysis, a tactical motif I call the “hit and run”) 31. Re2 e5<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here Danya offered a draw, and I accepted. There were several reasons for accepting. First, though White is up the exchange for a pawn, Black’s pieces are really active, so the position is dangerous. Second, I had less than 5 minutes left for 9 moves. In that situation, I didn’t want to get greedy and end up losing.<\/p>\n

Of course, you can’t always rely on tells. One local player\/chess hustler, Steven Sullivan, would very often gasp or slap his forehead when he made a “blunder” in a time scramble (which would really be a trap). It was always so obvious and he did it so often that I don’t think I ever actually fell into one of his traps. Over time I came to look forward to his charades as a kind of performance art.<\/p>\n

Leaving known hustlers aside, though, I can’t remember getting a game-changing tell from an adult player in a tournament game. It’s interesting that both of the examples above, with Yi and Naroditsky, involved teenage players. Are younger players more prone to this kind of emotional blunder?<\/p>\n

Have any of you heard any good stories about tells in master-level play?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night Mike Splane was showing me and Gjon Feinstein a game he played in the New Year Open, and we got to this position. White to move. Black, a young player named Richard Yi, has just played 18. … e5!, a move that Michael says that he completely overlooked. At first Mike thought it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,16,171,12],"tags":[2066,755,1600,1638,1051,2064,2065,621],"class_list":["post-1265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-positions","category-ruminations","category-tournaments","tag-charades","tag-daniel-naroditsky","tag-emotions","tag-mike-splane","tag-poker","tag-richard-yi","tag-steve-sullivan","tag-western-states-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}