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With the youth, to the endgame
Mar. 3rd, 2024 06:04 pmToday, I've played (for the third time already) as a replacement on one of the last boards in the club's second team. Depending on how it turns out, the last boards can be anywhere near 1800 (lost), 1600 (drew), or, as today, unrated but suspected to be about 1000.
In the words of Levy Rozman, that you're rated 1200 doesn't mean that you cannot play an extended sequence of moves at the 1800 level. It's just that at some point your brain short-circuits and you play a couple of moves at the 600 level. In fact, the game I lost - I lost it from +2 engine evaluation, while the game I drew (due to perpetual check) - I drew it from +1.5 and up the exchange.
Long story short, by move 26 I was up a pawn and +3, mostly due to the opponent very graciously playing right into my prep. But as my opponent wasn't a complete newbie, he knew the idea that allows people to save countless games: when behind, be aggressive and counterattack.
Well, I've overestimated his counterattack and opted, instead of maintaining the tension and the pressure on the position (which was the right thing to do according to the engine), to go for simplifications, because I thought that I'd gladly play a queen and bishop vs. queen and knight endgame being up a pawn. I also thought that I was escaping the perpetual check - eventually.
Wrong. Right after the exchanges, the engine immediately showed a dead even evaluation because, in fact, in the very same line I thought I've calculated, I did not escape the perpetual. Thus, between moves 29 and 32 my opponent had this or that opportunity of a perpetual. Whether he didn't see those, whether he (much as I) wrongly assumed that I was eventually escaping, or whether he thought his counterattack gave him good chances gobbling up my pawns - I'll never know. Within those moves, we also exchanged the light pieces, so it was a clean queen endgame.
I'm crap at endgames, especially queen endgames. They are also generally hard because queens have so much mobility, so situations where you may spend a dozen moves jockeying for a slightly better position are quite real - the engine analysis I've run at home suggested maneuvers I can't even begin to understand.
But as the saying goes, you don't need to run faster than the lion - you need to run faster than John. And as the subject saying goes, when you're playing someone at your level, but half your age, you tend to be a little less crap at the endgame.
So my opponent took the wrong pawn, and then made a suboptimal queen move... and the difference was that he didn't have any checks, while I did. Perhaps there was also the time factor - I had mere minutes on the clock, and he had almost a half-hour on me, so he may have been tempted to play quickly to get me into Zeitnot.
However, it was already move 35, and the move sequence, consisting mostly of checks with fork and pawn captures was easy to calculate. By move 41, I had only some 90 seconds... but it was the classical time control, which gives you the very generous 30 minutes if you survive the first 40 moves. And as it happened, move 41 was a pawn capture which not only left me up two pawns, but put my queen on the very same diagonal as one of my surviving pawns - which was a passer as well.
To be frank, although it was an absolutely won position, I couldn't have won it in 90 seconds, quite probably not in 900 as well. However, when you have 30 minutes, you can afford to spend a few of them to work out your endgame plan - and since it was an absolutely won position, it took me just seven minutes.
It may have been the question of endurance, as my opponent had to defend the entire game - an experience I can easily relate to, and a very unpleasant one. But much as the engine evaluation jumped from dead drawn at move 33 to +4 at move 41, it jumped to "mate in 23" by move 49, at which point my opponent resigned. Of course I wouldn't claim to see a mate from that far, but at that point the choices Black had were either to let the pawn promote, or to sacrifice a queen for that pawn (both outcomes leaving White up a queen with no stalemate shenanigans), or, which was the top engine line, to trade queens and a pair of pawns - which would leave White three pawns against one, i.e., a completely won pawn endgame even with imperfect play.
The result, however, had no impact whatsoever on the overall outcome, as the team won 5:2 on the remaining boards.
In the words of Levy Rozman, that you're rated 1200 doesn't mean that you cannot play an extended sequence of moves at the 1800 level. It's just that at some point your brain short-circuits and you play a couple of moves at the 600 level. In fact, the game I lost - I lost it from +2 engine evaluation, while the game I drew (due to perpetual check) - I drew it from +1.5 and up the exchange.
Long story short, by move 26 I was up a pawn and +3, mostly due to the opponent very graciously playing right into my prep. But as my opponent wasn't a complete newbie, he knew the idea that allows people to save countless games: when behind, be aggressive and counterattack.
Well, I've overestimated his counterattack and opted, instead of maintaining the tension and the pressure on the position (which was the right thing to do according to the engine), to go for simplifications, because I thought that I'd gladly play a queen and bishop vs. queen and knight endgame being up a pawn. I also thought that I was escaping the perpetual check - eventually.
Wrong. Right after the exchanges, the engine immediately showed a dead even evaluation because, in fact, in the very same line I thought I've calculated, I did not escape the perpetual. Thus, between moves 29 and 32 my opponent had this or that opportunity of a perpetual. Whether he didn't see those, whether he (much as I) wrongly assumed that I was eventually escaping, or whether he thought his counterattack gave him good chances gobbling up my pawns - I'll never know. Within those moves, we also exchanged the light pieces, so it was a clean queen endgame.
I'm crap at endgames, especially queen endgames. They are also generally hard because queens have so much mobility, so situations where you may spend a dozen moves jockeying for a slightly better position are quite real - the engine analysis I've run at home suggested maneuvers I can't even begin to understand.
But as the saying goes, you don't need to run faster than the lion - you need to run faster than John. And as the subject saying goes, when you're playing someone at your level, but half your age, you tend to be a little less crap at the endgame.
So my opponent took the wrong pawn, and then made a suboptimal queen move... and the difference was that he didn't have any checks, while I did. Perhaps there was also the time factor - I had mere minutes on the clock, and he had almost a half-hour on me, so he may have been tempted to play quickly to get me into Zeitnot.
However, it was already move 35, and the move sequence, consisting mostly of checks with fork and pawn captures was easy to calculate. By move 41, I had only some 90 seconds... but it was the classical time control, which gives you the very generous 30 minutes if you survive the first 40 moves. And as it happened, move 41 was a pawn capture which not only left me up two pawns, but put my queen on the very same diagonal as one of my surviving pawns - which was a passer as well.
To be frank, although it was an absolutely won position, I couldn't have won it in 90 seconds, quite probably not in 900 as well. However, when you have 30 minutes, you can afford to spend a few of them to work out your endgame plan - and since it was an absolutely won position, it took me just seven minutes.
It may have been the question of endurance, as my opponent had to defend the entire game - an experience I can easily relate to, and a very unpleasant one. But much as the engine evaluation jumped from dead drawn at move 33 to +4 at move 41, it jumped to "mate in 23" by move 49, at which point my opponent resigned. Of course I wouldn't claim to see a mate from that far, but at that point the choices Black had were either to let the pawn promote, or to sacrifice a queen for that pawn (both outcomes leaving White up a queen with no stalemate shenanigans), or, which was the top engine line, to trade queens and a pair of pawns - which would leave White three pawns against one, i.e., a completely won pawn endgame even with imperfect play.
The result, however, had no impact whatsoever on the overall outcome, as the team won 5:2 on the remaining boards.
