A dirty checkmate

There are clever checkmates, elegant checkmates, and sometimes, dirty checkmates. This one falls into that category.


Press,Shaun - Dunn,Paul [B11]
ANU Winter Blitz, 06.07.2016

It is not just tactics you need to know

This position is from a game I was watching last night. Black looks like he is doing well in this position, and in fact had even given up material to reach it. However he missed an fairly common idea which saves the day for White. Fortunately for him, White missed the idea as well, as I suspect his opponent was not familiar with it either.
Instead of 1.Kc5?? Kxe3 2.Kd6 Kf4 which was played in the game, White could save half a point with 1.g4! Taking on e3 now lets the g pawn run, so Black eventually has to retreat the king to e5, saving the e pawn, and giving White enough time to get the king back into the game.

He might not see it

The bane of any chess coach is the student who chooses bad moves on the basis that there is a threat or trick that their opponent might overlook. Of then this is due to that one game early in their chess career where they won because their opponent failed to spot an obvious threat, and from then on, this was going to be the path to victory.
Having coached a number of students with this trait, it is often difficult to get them out of this habit. The obvious cure is putting them up against stronger players who do see the threats and then punishes the bad moves. However this 'cure' has a tendency to go to far, with a number of players losing interest in the game once the source of cheap wins dry up.
Nonetheless it may be possible to catch a stronger opponent off guard. While researching this article I found possibly the most audacious example of 'he might not see it' in a game between Gary Kasparov and actor Woody Harrelson. Harrelson decided to see if Kasparov had previously seen the "Four Move Checkmate" by starting with 1.e4, 2.Qh5 and 3.Bc4. It turns out Kasparov had (assuming he did not discover a defence independently) but Harrelson at least proved he had a few more arrows in his quiver. He played the rest of the game fairly sensibly, and with the position even, Kasparov decided a draw was the correct result!


Harrelson,Woody - Kasparov,Garry (2812) [C20]
Prague consultation Prague, 12.07.1999

le Tour

No, not the Grand Chess Tour, but the 2016 Tour de France.
I almost missed the start this year (due to coverage of the Australian election), and only a lull in punditory resulted in me channel surfing to SBS to see that it was one. So once again it will be later nights for me than normal, and probably grumpier days as well.
If you want to follow the race, my two main sources are the SBS site and the Guardians coverage of the race.  One nice thing about the Guardians coverage is their live blog of the stage, which you can reread at your leisure the following morning.

Offer a draw and come back next week?

Australia had a general election yesterday, and as they say in chess, the position is unclear. When I went to bed late last night the conservative side had a slight edge, but when I awoke this morning, the Labor party seemed to have equalised. It seems that neither side will gain a necessary majority, and another election may be on the cards, albeit with a few pieces suffering from that rare fate (in chess anyway) of de-motion.
Speaking of elections, I keep seeing a rumour that a palace coup is underway in FIDE against the current President. While the source of the rumour causes me to file it under "I'll believe it when I see it", given how the normal electoral process operates in FIDE, this may be the only mechanism that could change who heads FIDE, even if it did not change who runs it.

Thinking with your hands

"Think with your head, not with your hands" is a piece of advice I often give at junior chess events. Apart from the goal of getting young players to think better, it also designed to make my life easier as an arbiter. Most "touch move" disputes occur because a player has instinctively grabbed a piece, before deciding what to do with it. Then when the realisation that it was the wrong piece to move hits ("oops my queen is attacked"), all sorts of excuses and stories get told. So to avoid that, I do suggest thinking before moving would have helped the situation.
Nonetheless even experienced players can fall into this trap. Often openings are played on 'auto pilot', when the moves just flow from the fingers. However if you aren't paying attention, you may miss the knock out blow.
The game below finishes in disaster for Black. After 12.Bxf7+ Black has to surrender the rook as 12 ... Kxf7 loses to 13.Ng5+ and 14.Ne6 The culprit is 11. ... Re8?? but it seems this move has been played more than a few times in this position. Even more surprisingly White only found Bxf7+ in around 33% of the games (5 out of 15). In the other games White either played Bc2 or Nf1, both moves that have more to do with the hand than the head.

Braathen,T (2078) - Carlsson,N (2233) [C95]
Hasselbacken Open 2016 Stockholm SWE (9.52), 08.05.2016

Why wasn't this invented in Australia?

I'm just linking straight to this story, as I have nothing further to add.