Hey everyone,

Here is a game I finished a couple of weeks ago. My opponent made an early mistake/blunder, and my play was far from perfect as well. But it ends with a famous Morphy-esqe checkmate. So I wanted to share it anyway. Enjoy and feel free to comment and analyse.

Cheers,

Tim

Ugh.

Why do people think that games where the opponent firmly sticks his foot in a bucket and falls down the stairs are worth showing?

What makes a smothered mate "Morphyesque"?

Sigh.

Just wanted to show a nice checkmate. As said in my post this is far from a grandmaster game. And about morphyesque:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1224566

Very Pretty!  Way to see the opportunity!  Smothered mates are always a pleasure...thanks for sharing

Why do some people always feel the need to post a smart-arse comment, drd?  To be perfectly honest I found it interesting to see this situation develop in an amateur game and an amateur seeing the solution.  Just because his opponent "stuck his foot in the bucket" doesn't mean that he is able to see that, recognising an opponent's errors is as important as not making errors yourself!

Very well done Slote, you got the win in a fine way.  You did make some strategic errors but an all-round strong game!

Personally, I'm a firm believer in that if you don't like the post, don't respond and let those who do enjoy it.  Maybe in your years of experience and far superior chess expertise, this is slightly elementary, but to an inexperienced, and not-so-good chess player like myself, it was nice to see.

drd - really, what value is there in your post?!? 

Nice mate and thanks for sharing!

I find in chess one of the pleasures is sharing your games with others.  If you believe chess is an art (like myself)...then you derive pleasure from seeing a beautifully crafted game, much in the same way you would a painting.  So even though most of us are amateur "painters", we still would like the world to experience our art.  Not only is this okay, it is important to the future of the game.

Nice, I've never had a smothered mate.. 

So many games, so little time. It's ridiculous to expect that people will want to see badly played games, when there isn't even time to look at a fraction of the well played ones.

You wouldn't expect to see amateur paintings hanging in a gallery would you? This is a gallery.

At least invest the time and effort to do proper analysis and annotation if you must share weak chess, and at least then it would have functional value where it lacks artistry; this is just lazy and self-indulgent.

Completely disagree with your statement.  Yes this is a gallery, but it is more like a coffee house than the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It is made up of primarily Amateurs who enjoy sharing their games.  You can go to chessgames.com to enjoy Morphy, Capablanca, and Anderson (The Picasso's and the Van Gogh's of chess).  Here you will find flawed art, art by children, and every now and then you will see a masterpiece which should be in the MET.

It's "like me."  "Like myself" doesn't make any sense. 

This game is having many errors from both sides. 

good game

 If you want to see games played by masters or perfectly crafted tactics by computers then you're in the wrong forum.  Very few people on this entire site are close to the level of even IM, nevermind world beating GM.  For that reason you are simply wasting even more of your time by commenting in this thread than you are viewing it, as it is clearly of no interest to you and your comments of no interest to us as a consequence.

I actually believe that there is a lot more for the average player to learn from the average game than there is to learn from every GM game.  Some of the advanced concepts, strategies and tactics employed in GM games are incomprehensible for the average joe and as a result will have little impact on the average joe's game.  Although we can accept that a move is good simply because it was made by Kasparov etc, we don't know just how good every move is and why every move is good all the time.  In the scenario given in this thread we can clearly see mistakes, and we can clearly see good moves and winning tactics.  There is a lot for many people to learn, and consequently enjoy from the scenario provided here.

The mating pattern used is called Philidor's Legacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smothered_mate