… and the reason I love it is that speed chess is ridiculously entertaining.

… and the reason I hate it is that speed chess magnifies all of my worst tendencies.

Both of these reason were on full display in a mind-boggling speed game that I played with Linnea yesterday after the Aptos Library chess club was over. Here is the position where the mind-bogglingness started. I’m playing Black, Linnea is White, and it’s my move.

Position after 1. g3. Black to move.

FEN: r2q4/2p3k1/pb4r1/1p1pP1pp/3P1pnp/2PQ1NP1/PP3P1N/5RRK b – - 0 1

Up to this point I’ve been having a merry old time pushing all of my kingside pawns, but after Linnea’s move 1. g3 I started to get a whiff of trouble in paradise. On any pawn capture, the lines start opening up in an uncomfortable way around my king. And the knight on g4 is just in the way, making it hard for me to avoid the pawn captures. Is there anything I can do about this?

Here I found what Rybka says is Black’s one and only correct move: 1. … Nxf2+! According to the computer, Black is now +1.9 pawns, and on any other move I would have been 0.0 or worse. So, huge props to me, right?

Well, not so much. The problem is that after finding the only way out of trouble (temporarily), I didn’t think very hard about what got me into trouble in the first place. I played the next couple of moves on auto-pilot. Linnea played 2. Rxf2 g3 3. R2g2! and now we got to the most crucial position.

Position after 3. R2g2. Black to p lay and lose.

FEN:r2q4/2p3k1/pb4r1/1p1pP1pp/3P1p2/2PQ1Np1/PP4RN/6RK b – - 0 3

John Emms’ The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book has a great chapter called “Find the Wrong Move!” This chapter is full of positions where somebody plays a move that seems completely natural and plausible, and yet is practically the worst move on the board. The above position would be a perfect one for that chapter. Find the wrong move!

We were playing speed chess, remember. So I gave this position about 5 seconds thought, if that much, and played 3. … gh?? The “automatic recapture.” The only reason I even thought that long is that I had to check and make sure I wasn’t getting mated after 4. Rxg5. (I’m not getting mated because I play 4. … hgQ+, queening with check and removing the guard all at the same time.)

What I missed is that Linnea can simply recapture on h2: 4. Rxh2! At this point my reaction went through the five stages of grief.

Denial: Okay, she’s threatening to take on h5 and she’s threatening to take on g5 and she’s threatening Nh4 (the real killer), but surely I can do something about those things, right?

Anger: This is ridiculous, how could I be losing this game? I’ve been winning for like 20 moves, and now all of a sudden there’s nothing I can do?

Bargaining: Okay, how about if I give back a little bit of material. Say, … Qd7 or … Qh8?

Depression: I have got to be the worst speed chess player in history. How can I pretend to be a “teacher” when I do things like this?

Acceptance: Oh well, it’s only speed chess. I played 4. … Kh6 5. Nh4 Rg8 6. Nf5+ and resigned.

The computer, of course, doesn’t go through the five stages of grief. Rybka simply says that after 4. Rxh2 White stands at +1.8 pawns. That’s right, one “automatic recapture” transformed the position from 1.9 pawns in Black’s favor to 1.8 pawns in White’s favor. Rarely have I ever seen a position where the seemingly obvious move was so radically, outrageously wrong.

As I drove home in my car, it hit me that of course, there was no need for me to take the knight. It’s not going anywhere. I could have played 4. … g4, which puts another knight under attack and, more importantly, clears a path to h4 for the queen. It’s critically important for Black to keep the four pawns on the board until he can bring up reinforcements. In particular, the g3 pawn is a monster that paralyzes White’s whole army. This pawn is worth more than a knight.

The tactical details after 4. … g4 are quite complicated and I could give my analysis here, but I think that would kind of miss the point.

In order to learn from this game, we need to ask not, “What can Black do better after this point?” but “What did Black do badly before this point?” Look at those queenside pieces. The queen has never moved. The queen rook has never moved. The dark-squared bishop might as well be a pawn, for all the effect it’s having on the game. Black is trying to attack with three of his pieces as bystanders. This is not a good idea.

Lesson 1: Invite all of your pieces to the party. Don’t launch an all-out attack until you have completed your development. The price of this failure became apparent after 4. Rxh2. I’d like to move my rook to h8 or my bishop to d8, but those all take two or three moves and I don’t have that much time. The time to improve those pieces was earlier.

In fact, the same thing is true for the position after the supposedly good move 3. … g4. It’s actually quite debatable whether this is Black’s “best move,” as Rybka says, because it doesn’t actually solve the problem of the bystanders on the queenside. The position remains quite perilous, where one misstep for Black can easily turn his won position into a lost cause. For this reason, I think that the best move is actually Rybka’s second choice, 3. … Qe7 (which it rates at +1.7 for Black). Black’s plan is simply to prevent any breakthroughs with e5-e6, develop his queenside pieces, and only then start to march the kingside pawns again. If White wants to move her knight away from h2, let her do it. Once Black’s pawns have pieces behind them, White will not be able to stop them without sacrificing some material.

This is the practical, sound way to play the position. It carries very little risk of disaster. It’s Mike Splane chess. Even though he’s very good at tactics (see my last post!) he is always in favor of having the tactics flow from a sound strategy. I can almost hear him saying, “To win a won position, first eliminate all of your opponent’s chances of counterplay.”

As I said at the outset, speed chess magnifies all of my bad tendencies. Here’s what I did wrong in the game: I launched a pawn storm prematurely. I didn’t develop all of my pieces. I had “tunnel vision,” focusing only on the kingside and forgetting the rest of the board. I played an “automatic recapture,” without even thinking about my opponent’s response or other options for me. (In fact this is important enough for me to make it another lesson:

Lesson 2: There are no automatic recaptures.)

Immediately after the game I was stunned by the fact that my position had gone from won to lost in the blink of an eye. But once you look at the position from the perspective of the whole game, you realize that I had sown the seeds of my defeat much earlier. They were all there, waiting to bloom like a huge carrion flower.

So speed chess is frustrating. But it’s also ridiculously entertaining, I’ve got to admit.

By the way, I’ve scarcely written one word about Linnea, and that’s unfair. She made mistakes, obviously, but on the whole she played more practically than I did and deserved to win. Notice how in the initial position she has invited all of her pieces to the party, even if the knights are looking somewhat forlorn. (That was her biggest problem in this game, figuring out what to do with the knights.)

Linnea will be playing in the “Best of the West” open this weekend in Santa Clara, a big tournament with a whopping $1500 prize for first in the 1300-1499 section. I am super-optimistic about her chances. I mean, she’s beating masters in speed chess. (Not just me, a poor speed chess player. She also beat Gjon, an excellent speed chess player, in one game this weekend.) The challenge for her is the opposite of mine; she hasn’t yet learned how to use the extra time in a tournament game effectively. But she will!

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Last weekend Mike Splane showed me a sensational game that he recently played at the Kolty Chess Club. It features a position where his opponent could have played a queen sacrifice, to which the best defense would have been a counter-queen sacrifice! The only slight blemish on the game is that Mike did not see his opponent’s threat. He was just lucky (sort of) that his own threat was faster. “Sometimes being a doofus is good!” he joked.

Let me back up to a move before the critical position. Black has just played 1. … Rc4, and it is now Mike’s move. (Unfortunately I don’t remember what his opponent’s name was.)

Position after 1. ... Rc4. White to move.

FEN: 5rk1/R3Rp2/4p1p1/1q1pP2p/2rB1Pn1/1pP3P1/1P5P/3Q2K1 w – - 0 2

It looks to me as if White can win a pawn in complete safety with 2. Reb7 Qc6 3. Rxb3. However, Mike thought he saw something better. And in fact he was right–it was better, only there was a little extra wrinkle that he hadn’t counted on.

The move he played was 2. Qd3!, which makes a drastic threat: 3. Qxg6+! forcing checkmate or winning a ton of material. What he hadn’t realized was that Black very nearly has a spectacular answer of his own.

Position after 2. Qd3. Black to move.

FEN: 5rk1/R3Rp2/4p1p1/1q1pP2p/2rB1Pn1/1pPQ2P1/1P5P/6K1 b – - 0 2

I’m not quite sure how to caption this position. Black to play and almost draw? Black to play and scare the bejeezus out of his opponent? Anyway, can you see what Black’s idea was?

The answer is that Black can almost play 2. … Rxd4!?, simultaneously offering a queen sacrifice and an exchange sac. White is ill-advised to accept either. If 3. Qxd4 then 3. … Qe2 is winning for Black — not only because of the danger of … Qxh2+ but also because the b2 pawn is hanging. And if 3. Qxb6 Black has a remarkable drawing variation: 3. … Rd1+ 4. Kg2 Rd2+ 5. Kf1 (if the king goes to either f3 or h3 he gets mated!) 5. … Nxh2+ with a perpetual check. This is a great position to know, and in fact I mentioned it in my recent post Questioning Assumptions: rook and knight against a king on the edge of the board can often draw all by themselves.

As it turns out, White actually does have a way to thwart this combination. After taking the queen with 3. Qxb5 Rd1+ he can give it right back with 4. Qf1! Then Black’s best move is 4. … Ne3!, leading more or less by force to the following line: 5. Qxd1 Nxd1 6. Rab7 Nxb2 7. Rxb3 Nc4. (Diagram)

Position after 7. ... Nc4. White to move.

FEN:5rk1/4Rp2/4p1p1/3pP2p/2n2P2/1RP3P1/7P/6K1 w – - 0 8

This is actually a pretty interesting endgame position in its own right. Mike thought that Black might actually have a “fortress,” but I don’t think so. To create a fortress, Black really needs his knight to be on e4, but if he goes there the knight will be subject to undermining with c3-c4. Still, it will be a long and agonizing struggle for White to win this game.

But anyway, this is all moot, because in diagram 2, after 2. … Rxd4!? White would play 3. Qxg6+!! and win. That’s what I started this post with–defending against a queen sacrifice by a counter-queen sacrifice. Note also that if Black declines with 3. … Kh8 White continues 4. Qxh5+ Kg7 5. Qxg4+, getting rid of the knight, after which he can take on d4 without any fear of getting checkmated.

Black saw this, and instead of the failed brilliancy of 2. … Rxd4, he played 2. … Kg7 to defend his g-pawn. But now his kingside collapses around him. 3. Rxe6! takes advantage of the pin on f7 and threatens Qxg6+, so Black still doesn’t have a chance to play his queen sac. Black defended with 3. … Kh6 and now Mike offered a rook sacrifice with 4. Rxf7! Once again this forestalls Black’s dreams of sacrificing his queen, because mate is threatened on g6. Black continued playing forced defensive moves: 4. … Rg8 5. Ree7 Rh8 6. e6! (diagram)

Position after 6. e6. Black to move.

FEN:7r/4RR2/4P1pk/1q1p3p/2rB1Pn1/1pPQ2P1/1P5P/6K1 b – - 0 6

With threats like Bg7+ and Bxh8 in the air, it’s all over. I’m not sure whether Mike’s opponent played on a couple more moves or resigned here, but in any event the result was 1-0.

A pretty cool finish! I have one remaining challenge for the reader: Can any of you find an actual tournament game where one side plays a queen sacrifice, and the only way for the other player to avoid defeat is to play an immediate counter-queen sacrifice that wins? I’m sure that it must have been done, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. This position is not quite an example because Mike’s queen sac idea 3. Qxg6+ avoids a draw, not a defeat; and maybe he could have won anyway with the 5. Qf1 idea that led to diagram 3.

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Although I wrote my last post about something fictional, in fact there is real chess news to report! Today Gata Kamsky won his fourth U.S. Chess Championship in an exciting playoff against Alejandro Ramirez that went to an Armageddon game. Without wishing to minimize Kamsky’s hard-fought victory, I think the biggest story of the tournament was the performance of the young people. Even Kamsky, in his interview with Maurice Ashley afterwards, conceded as much. “They kicked our ass,” he said.

In this case, “they” refers specifically to four young people who outperformed expectations by a huge margin: Alejandro Ramirez, Conrad Holt, Kayden Troff, and Samuel Sevian. The first three scored more than 2 points above their expected scores (based on ratings).

I am most familiar with the 12-year-old Sevian, whom I have seen in many Bay Area tournaments and played against twice. His rating has shot up within the past year, but even so, he was by far the lowest-rated player in the tournament and no one would have been surprised if he had been totally  outclassed. But he in fact acquitted himself very well. He lost only two games, won one and drew six for a very solid score of 4-5. That earned him an International Master norm (although I don’t think he actually needed it).

Troff (who turned 15 during the tournament) did even better, scoring 5-4 in his first U.S. Championship appearance and earning a Grandmaster norm. Ashley said that this was “Bobby Fischer territory,” although to be fair, Fischer at age 15 had already earned the GM title and was among the world’s top ten players.

Conrad Holt, age 19, was even more spectacular, going into the last round at 5½-3½ with actual chances to win the championship. Unfortunately, he suffered a devastating defeat to Timur Gareev in the last game. Holt got to a Q+N versus Q+B endgame where he had some winning chances, but he went astray and Gareev kept pressing him, even when it looked like a dead draw, until Holt finally blundered in time pressure and lost. Even with the disappointing finish, Holt took one of the five qualifying spots for the World Cup in Norway, a nice consolation prize. I have to think that this defeat to Gareev will not slow Holt down. It’s like the Golden State Warriors’ defeat against the San Antonio Spurs in the first game of their National Basketball Association playoff series: a defeat that announces better things yet to come.

And finally, there is Alejandro Ramirez. I first saw him play at the U.S. Open three years ago, which he won.  I’ve been a fan ever since then, and in 2010 I correctly predicted that he would eventually move to America and become our tenth grandmaster named “Alex.” I didn’t predict, though, that he would compete so soon for the title of U.S. Champion!

In the first few rounds of the tournament it looked as if Gata Kamsky was going to run away with the title, scoring 4 wins in the first 4 games. Meanwhile, Ramirez stumbled at the start, with a draw in round 1 and a loss to Holt in round 3. But Kamsky then had one game after another where he couldn’t capitalize on superior or won positions. He played five draws in a row, while Ramirez caught up with a sizzling 5-1 finish (four wins and two draws).

Today, as I mentioned above, Kamsky and Ramirez played off for the championship title. In each of the first two games (played at a game-25 control) Kamsky got a small edge, but Ramirez defended like a virtuoso in the rook-and-pawn endgames. That took them to an Armageddon game, where Black gets draw odds but White gets a time advantage.

Ramirez “won” the Black pieces by bidding 19 minutes and 45 seconds, while Kamsky bid 20 minutes. This meant that Ramirez as Black would get 19 minutes and 45 seconds for the whole game, while Kamsky as White would get 45 minutes. They got to a Maroczy bind type of position where Ramirez fought ferociously for counterplay. Here was maybe his last real chance to save the game:

Black to move.

FEN: 1r2r1k1/4ppbp/6p1/qpRPnP2/1N6/1P4PP/P2Q2B1/5R1K b – - 0 1

Here Black has sacrificed a pawn to try to get out of his bind. Yasser Seirawan, who was commenting live online, could barely contain his eagerness for Black to play the move 1. … Nd3!, which the computer also recommended. After 2. Qxd3 Qxb4 White is discombobulated somewhat and in particular he loses the knight at b4, which proved to be an immensely strong piece in the game. Instead Ramirez played the more routine 1. … Rbc8, and after 2. Rxc8 Rxc8 3. fg hg Kamsky played the powerful move 4. Qf4!

Position after 4. Qf4. Black to move.

FEN: 2r3k1/4ppb1/6p1/qp1Pn3/1N3Q2/1P4PP/P5B1/5R1K b – - 0 4

I just love how harmonious White’s position is. The queen at f4 both defends the knight on b4 and menaces the pawn on f7. The knight, from its unusual post on b4, defends a2 and c2 and also threatens Nc6!, deflecting Black’s knight from its defense of f7. Not only that, as Seirawan pointed out, if Black plays a plausible move like 4. … Bf6 to close the f-file, White can play 5. d6! after which White’s minor pieces become a rampaging horde — the bishop is activated and the knight can come to d5.

It’s really hard to see how Black can even fight on, but to his credit Ramirez did put up energetic resistance. He played 4. … Qc7 and now Kamsky played a super instructive move, 5. a4! You or I would have played Nc6 or maybe h4 to attack on the kingside, but Kamsky presses his advantage in every part of the board. Grandmasters accumulate every possible advantage they can before committing themselves to a move that irrevocably changes the position, like Nc6 — even if it’s a good move.

Getting increasingly desperate, Ramirez played 5. … ba 6. ba f5!? and now Kamsky finally played 7. Nc6 Nxc6 8. Qxc7 Rxc7 9. dc e5 10. Bd5+ Kf8.

Position after 10. ... Kf8. White to move.

FEN: 5k2/2r3b1/2P3p1/3Bpp2/P7/6PP/8/5R1K w – - 0 10

Now comes one more instructive moment. GMs Ashley and Seirawan did not like Black’s 9. … e5 at all, even though I think it’s what 99 percent of amateurs would have played, because it seems natural to activate your protected passed pawn. But Ashley and Seirawan (and Kamsky, who was actually playing the game) instantly saw that White can play 11. g4! here, which “forces” Black to play 11. … f4 and freeze his pawns on dark squares. It then becomes much more difficult for him to use the bishop for active defense.

In fact Kamsky did play 11. g4, and Ramirez refused to let his pawns become immobilized in this way. Instead he sacrificed another pawn with 11. … Ke7 12. gf gf 13. Rxf5. I think this is also instructive in its way because it shows that a grandmaster is concerned with getting the most play out of his pieces, even if it means going a couple pawns down. This probably forced Kamsky to work harder to win than he would have if Black had played the passive 11. … f4.

Nevertheless, the two pawns were too much for Ramirez to overcome, particularly because Kamsky has passed pawns on both wings. Kamsky finally got a chance to end the 2013 U.S. championship in style:

Position after 22. ... Rxa4. White to play and win.

FEN: 8/8/2Pk3P/4b1R1/r7/5B2/8/7K w – - 0 22

(Space inserted in case you want to think about it.)

For a grandmaster like Kamsky this position has a degree of difficulty about 0 out of 10, but nevertheless he paused a minute to check and re-check before playing the clinching sacrifice: 23. Rxe5! Kxe5 24. c7 Black resigns. Black’s rook cannot stop both of the pawns.

Congratulations to Gata Kamsky! The victory in the Armageddon game earned him $10,000, because first prize was $30,000 and second prize was $20,000.

By the way, I’ve stated before that as a player, I hate the Armageddon playoff concept. I would be happier to have co-champions than to have the title determined in an artificially uneven match (even though the bidding procedure arguably makes it fairer). The drawback of the Armageddon format would be especially apparent if both players had bid 20 minutes. In that case, the arbiter would have flipped a coin to determine who played White and who played Black — so that in effect, the tournament could come down to a coin flip.

Nevertheless, for spectators the Armageddon playoff is great fun, because you know for sure that the title is going to be won or lost in this game. No pussy-footing around with draws. So I suspect that my one-man crusade against Armageddon chess is a losing one. For chess to succeed as a televised sport, Armageddon playoffs will probably be a necessary evil.

This brings up an interesting question: If you’re going to let the tournament be decided by an Armageddon game, why not just play the whole tournament that way? Make every game an Armageddon game. You could even have a U.S. Armageddon Chess Champion in addition to a U.S. Classical Chess Champion. Just a thought…

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The Time Lords invented it! That’s what Doctor Who said on TV last night, and if you can’t trust a fictional time-traveler, well then, whom can you trust?

For those readers who haven’t watched BBC or followed science fiction for the last 50 years, Doctor Who is the longest-running science fiction show on earth and probably in the universe. It debuted in 1963 and is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year (although there was an intermission from 1989 to 2005, which for a time traveler is nothing). It’s also one of the few television shows I watch religiously.

So in last night’s episode, the Doctor (the last survivor of a time-traveling race called the Time Lords) faces a mechanical nemesis that takes over 49.883 percent of his mind, leaving him in control of 49.883 percent, and they decide to play a chess game for control of the rest. (Note: I might not have the numbers quite right, but it was something like this.) It gave the actor, Matt Smith, a great chance to play a split personality, the Evil Doctor against the Good Doctor. At a certain point the Evil Doctor says he is winning, which the Good Doctor says is not possible because “the Time Lords invented chess.”

Just one problem. If the evil nemesis controls 49.883 percent of the Doctor’s mind, don’t you think that the Evil Doctor knew that already? In fact, why does the Doctor even bother talking to himself?

Well, I don’t want to spoil the episode for anyone, so let me just say that the Doctor resorts to stratagems that would get him kicked out of any chess tournament. To find out which Doctor and what stratagems, you’ll have to watch the show.

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In my last post I wrote about one of the most ubiquitous kinds of mistakes, in life as well as chess: the kind of mistake where you assume you know what is going on, and the assumption seems so obvious to you that you aren’t even aware of making it.

Here’s a nice chessboard example of this kind of mistake.

Last weekend I analyzed a game I played on New Year’s Day against Rayan Taghizadeh, who is currently the #5-rated 10-year-old in the country with a rating of 2078. At the time of this game his rating was around 1980, so he has gone up 100 points in just a little over four months! That shows you how rapidly he is improving.

The game ended in a very curious fashion. It was even for the first 35 moves, and in fact on move 35 I could have basically forced a draw. But I wanted to play for a win. As so often happens, in trying too hard to win I played a dreadful series of moves, and by move 44 I was in desperate circumstances.

Position after 44. ... Kh5. White to move.

FEN: 2r5/2p5/3p3p/pP1n1p1k/b2PpP1B/4P2P/P3NK2/1R6 w – - 0 45

Here Rayan has just played 44. … Kh5, attacking my bishop. Now I saw a surprising opportunity to stop the downward death spiral of my position. Do you see what my saving move was?

(Space inserted in case you want to think about it.)

The answer is 45. Ng3+! You want my bishop? Go ahead and take it!

Well, there isn’t much of a choice for Black here. If he plays 45. … Kg6 White could just try for a three-fold repetition with 46. Ne2. However, even better, White could play 46. Rg1, setting up a murderous discovered check threat. If 46. … Kf7 to get out of the discovered check, White plays 47. Nxf5 and the tide is very definitely turning in White’s favor.

So Rayan played 45. … Kxh4 46. Nxf5+.

Position after 46. Nxf5+. Black to move.

FEN: 2r5/2p5/3p3p/pP1n1N2/b2PpP1k/4P2P/P4K2/1R6 b – - 0 46

Now Rayan wisely avoided taking the poisoned h-pawn. If 46. … Kxh3?? it’s mate in two: 47. Rh1+ Kg4 48. Nxh6 mate! A nice “out-of-the-blue” combination. Instead he played 46. … Kh5, and I slammed the door shut with 47. Rg1, and the game concluded 47. … Nf6 48. Ng7+, with a draw by repetition. Ironically, thirteen moves earlier I would have been disappointed with a draw, but now I was quite relieved!

So what does this have to do with questioning assumptions? Well, somewhere in the analysis I have given you, I have deliberately written a lie. But it’s a lie that I told myself during the game, and I suspect that it’s a lie that Rayan told himself too. We were both guilty of making an incorrect assumption. I didn’t realize it until I looked at the position with Rybka yesterday.

Have you found the lie yet? It’s after 45. Ng3+. I wrote that Black could not play 45. … Kg6 because of “46. Rg1, setting up a murderous discovered check threat.” Those are pretty much the words I used in my head when I was thinking about the position. But it’s not true! The only one getting murdered is White.

Position after 46. Rg1 (analysis). Black to move.

FEN: 2r5/2p5/3p2kp/pP1n1p2/b2PpP1B/4P1NP/P4K2/6R1 b – - 0 46

Here Rybka came up with the amazing, cold-blooded move 46. … Rf8! Now if White plays his “murderous” discovered check 47. Nxe4+ Kh5! White has two pieces en prise! You might say, “Wait a minute, can’t White just go 47. Ng3+ as before?” But it’s different now, because after 47. Ng3+ Kxh4, White doesn’t have 48. Nxf5+. Even though Black’s king seems to be in a mating net, White has no way of delivering check. Meanwhile, Black is simply a piece up and has lots of useful moves, such as … Bxb5 and … Nc3-e4, that will get him out of trouble.

Lesson 1. Not all discovered checks are murderous. Look very carefully at the followup, and don’t just assume that the side that plays the discovered check is winning. Positions with hanging pieces can be very tricky.

Lesson 2. Sometimes the best move is to take back your previous move. Psychologically this is extremely difficult to do. When I unexpectedly played 45. Ng3+ in response to his move 44. … Kh5, Black had to have the presence of mind to say, “Okay, I didn’t see that. Let me go back and look for another plan.” Indeed, if he plays 45. … Kg6 and I play some other move than Rg1, say 46. Ne2 trying for a threefold repetition, then he can play 46. … Rb8, which is what he should have done in the first place. Black just wins a pawn with a dominating position.

Lesson 3. A rook and knight can often force a draw (or even win) against a king that is trapped on the edge of the board. This is a lesson I learned a long time ago. It helped me save a draw when I was three pawns down against IM Tim Taylor (a game I showed once on ChessLecture), and remembering that fact enabled me to save a draw here, too.

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I don’t know if anybody noticed this, but on Friday a new lecture of mine, called “Learn From Your Fellow Amateurs, Episode XXXIII,” went live on ChessLecture. It was a lecture I was particularly excited about, because I thought that it was a game where a nine-year-old (CL subscriber Advait Patel) defeated a 2300-rated player (Chris Mabe) with a queen sacrifice! A gorgeous game, which would certainly rank as one of the all-time great games by a nine-year-old player.

Except… I got the players backward. It was actually Mabe who played the beautiful queen sacrifice. All of my analysis is still correct, but the whole story line is different. Instead of a once-in-a-lifetime upset by a prodigy, it’s a much more commonplace example of a 2300 player systematically exploiting the mistakes (mostly, too passive play) of an 1800 player.

Poor Advait was in the awkward position of receiving my extravagant praise for a brilliancy he didn’t play. And if Chris Mabe ever found out that I had him losing to a nine-year-old class A player, he would have a right to be very upset.

So for that reason, the lecture that went up on Friday has now been taken down and replaced by another of my lectures (the King’s Gambit I won against Praveen Narayanan). I will re-record the game between Patel and Mabe, giving credit where credit is due this time.

You might wonder how I could make such a bad mistake. Well, there’s sort of a lesson here. When Patel first sent me the game, several months ago, I thought it was sort of odd that he was submitting a game where his opponent played all the great moves. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be anything surprising about that, but in the real world most people want to show off their own brilliant victories, not their opponents’ brilliant victories.

By the time I came back to the game a few weeks later, I had forgotten who was who, and I just assumed that Patel was the winner. I got too caught up, psychologically, in this wonderful story line of the kid winning a Game of the Century. And so I forgot to check my assumptions.

This is a lesson I have learned over and over in my writing career. It’s the assumptions that you make unconsciously, the questions that you didn’t even realize you should ask, that always trip you up. But I never expected to be tripped up in quite this way!

By the way, this same thing is true in chess, too. It’s the assumptions that you didn’t even know you were making that often lead to mistakes. I’ll show you an example of this in my next post.

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Going off topic today, for obvious reasons…

Yesterday the UPS deliveryman left a heavy box on my doorstep. Sender: American Mathematical Society. I knew immediately what it was: the complimentary copies of my new book, What’s Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 9.

Coming out on May 16.

As you can tell from my Web page, What’s Happening (or WHIMS for short) is an ongoing series of books that I write roughly every two or three years for the AMS. I spent about 75 percent of my work time last year putting Volume 9 together, so it’s a great feeling of accomplishment to see the finished product. It looks really sharp!

The articles in WHIMS are written at varying levels of mathematical sophistication, but most of them should be easily understandable to a high-school student who is interested in math, and they all should be understandable to a college math student. Many of them have to deal with current events outside of mathematics, and so you might find it interesting to read about “the math behind the news.”

Here is a brief table of contents:

1. Massive Breakthrough. The discovery of the Higgs boson.
2. Tubing Through Hyperspace. The solution of the Willmore Conjecture and two other problems, all having to do with inner tubes!
3. Tsunamis: Learning from Math, Learning from the Past. The title says it all.
4. Today’s Forecast: Ten Percent Chance of Burglary. Predictive policing — a concept first tried out right here in Santa Cruz!
5. Topologists Cross Four Off “Bucket List.” Last year Bill Thurston, one of the greatest 20th-century American mathematicians, passed away. Just before he died, four problems that he posed in the early 1980s were finally solved.
6. Mathematicians Do the Twist. The math of Rubik’s cube. With some cool photos that I took! (See below.)
7. The Right Epidemic at the Right Time. The flu pandemic of 2009 didn’t kill millions of people, thank goodness, but it did provide a great test of mathematical models to predict the spread and severity of the outbreak.
8. Thinking Topically. “Topic modeling” is a hot new way to browse large text databases, and perhaps stop cyber-bullying.
9. Thinking Tropically. Tropical geometry is a new “stick figure” approach to algebraic geometry that also has applications to string theory (in physics) and evolutionary trees (in biology).

As usual, WHIMS has lots of pictures and photographs. Two of my favorites are photos that I took of a speedcuber, Lucas Garron, during a Rubik’s Cube competition. I’m not a great photographer and ordinarily I leave the pictures to others. (99 percent of the pictures in the book are not produced by me.) But I just love this pair of photos because they show the split-second speed of Rubik’s cube solvers. The first one shows how speedcubers can spin a layer of cubies with just one finger. The second one shows Garron throwing down the cube at the moment of completion. Even though one face is slightly askew, this will count as a valid solution.

The hand is quicker than the eye!

Not a second to waste.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of WHIMS, you can either pre-order it at Amazon.com or order it from the publisher, the American Mathematical Society. List price is $25, price for AMS member is $20, and the price if you order it through Amazon is $17.64. According to Amazon, the official publication date is May 16.

When, you might wonder, am I going to write a chess book? Probably not for a long, long time… although I did wake up from a dream last week with an idea for a chess novel. But don’t hold your breath. I prefer writing things that I know I’ll get paid for!

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A while ago I sent in a submission to Chess Life for their column “My Best Move,” which appears on the last page of every issue. In this column, famous and semi-famous players share their favorite moves from their entire chess careers. I felt a little bit presumptuous putting myself in the company of players like Walter Browne, Alex Onischuk, Ben Finegold, and Irina Krush… but hey, why not? Non-presumptuous people never get anything published.

Besides, as ChessLecture fans know, I had a really good candidate for “My Best Move,” and I’m not talking about my queen sacrifice against David Pruess. (That story has already been told.) If you’ve seen my 100th ChessLecture, you’ve seen my favorite game-winning move.

Today I got the news from the Chess Life editor that they are putting my contribution in the next (June 2013) issue. I was in the right place at the right time; an anticipated submission from some other (presumably more illustrious) player didn’t show up on time, and my submission was there to fill the gap.

This brings the number of articles I’ve written for Chess Life up to five. For anyone who might be interested, here are the previous four.

“Chess in Russia: An amateur’s impressions of chess life, Soviet style”

Chess Life, August 1981, p. 15. (Note: This was written under my previous name. It’s also the first paid article I ever wrote for any publication. I was so naive back then that I didn’t even realize that Chess Life paid for articles, and I was shocked when a check arrived in my mailbox!)

“Sac Your Queen on Move Six! (A New Anti-Computer Variation)”

Chess Life, March 2007, p. 30

“The Hook & Ladder Trick”

Chess Life, July 2007, p. 44

“Don’t Just Reassess Your Chess — IMPLODe It!”

Chess Life, May 2008, p. 37

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I didn’t even notice it until this morning, but ChessLecture hit a pretty big milestone three weeks ago — we now have more than two thousand recorded lectures! As of today (April 24) there are 2015, in fact. The two thousandth lecture was a very appropriate one: a lecture on “Anand’s Immortal Game” by David Vigorito. This was a game from earlier this year where Anand beat Aronian with multiple piece sacrifices. There were some questions as to how much of Anand’s brilliancy was preparation (possibly computer-aided) and how much was discovered over the board, but it is nevertheless a fabulous and inspiring game.

Another reason this was an appropriate 2000th lecture is that David Vigorito has recorded more lectures for CL than anybody else. But it’s extremely close. Little did I realize that he and Bill Paschall are having a nip-and-tuck battle for the top spot, which they took over not too long ago from the currently-on-hiatus Jesse Kraai. There’s also a pretty close race going on for the #4 through #6 spots.

Here’s a scorecard of all the ChessLecturers and how many lectures they’ve recorded:

1. David Vigorito — 308
2. Bill Paschall — 307
3. Jesse Kraai (inactive) — 287
4. Eugene Perelshteyn — 190
5. Valeri Lilov — 185
6. Dennis Monokroussos — 182
7. Bryan Smith — 149
8. John-Paul Wallace (inactive) — 137
9. Dana Mackenzie — 129
10. Leonid Kritz — 62
11. Josh Friedel (inactive) — 20
12. Mark Diesen (deceased) — 17
13. John Watson (inactive) — 11
14. Roman Dzindzichashvili (inactive) — 9

Kind of amusing to see Dzindzichashvili on the bottom of this list. He’s actually a very good lecturer and you can catch his lectures on Chess.com. I don’t really know why it didn’t work out for him at ChessLecture, and I will keep any speculations to myself.

Segueing into a slightly different topic, does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how ChessLecture can improve its marketing or attract more subscribers? I have a few ideas: Bring back Jesse Kraai. Make the website more dynamic and/or interactive. Bring back Jesse Kraai. Offer special package plans for chess coaches. Bring back Jesse Kraai. Any other ideas?

I’m not on the management, so I can only make suggestions. It seems to me that the real problem is that we’re a boutique store competing with supermarkets (Chess.com, Internet Chess Club) that offer the same product we do (lectures) but also a whole lot more (forums, blogs, online chess). The only way that ChessLecture can prosper, I think, is to make the case that our product is better or unique. But I’m not sure how to do that, and not sure if it’s even true.

Finally, for anybody who might wonder what I’m up to on ChessLecture, I have a nice surprise in store for you! I have started recording a new series called “Awesome State Champions.” I’ve recorded the first two lectures in the series, which will probably air a month or two from now. The first lecture features John Curdo (17 Massachusetts championships over a 37-year span, 1948-1985) and the second features Orest Popovych (4 New Jersey championships, spanning 42 years, 1959-2001! This may be a record for the longest time between a person’s first and last state championship.) One pleasure I did not expect is that their opponents have been almost as interesting as the state champions themselves. This is truly a forgotten slice of American chess history. I hope you’ll enjoy this series as much as I have so far.

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I know most of my readers don’t come here for cute kitten videos … but you get them anyway! At least this one has some chess involved (as you’ll see beginning about 1:25 in the video). You can also watch it on YouTube if you prefer.

The gray kitten is named Misty, and she is the first foster kitten in the Mackenzie Finishing School for Felines for 2013. We thought she seemed a little bit lonely, so we brought home a second kitten a couple days later, whom we named Stormy.

I’d appreciate it if someone could write down a PGN for this game.  

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