Have you ever gotten a brilliant move? It's disappointing when a very powerful subtle move is considered a great, due to it not being a sacrifice, but when you do get a brilliant move, it's absolutely thrilling. I am particularly low-rated and not good at chess, at just 1200 on both bullet and blitz and 800 on rapid on chess.com, while being 700 something on daily on chess.com too and having not had much experience in actual actual tournaments, if you know what I mean.
Though my rating is exceptionally low, I have gotten quite a few brilliant moves, which most of you would probably find, so no point in that. But I have created a few positions where you may have to pause and think for the answer to a puzzle. Here is one of them that I created. Try and solve it before scrolling down to find the answer.
Rf8+, a stunning sacrifice, clears way for the queen to hop in on h8 and deliver a beautiful smothered checkmate with the knight. Notice that at the start, the rook was blocking the path of the queen, causing two brilliant moves.
The next puzzle isn't really a puzzle, it's actually a game that I played at a local chess club that I go to. It actually rated me 2400 or 2450 rating, I can't remember which as I don't have a membership, and so can't use Game Review twice a day. Anyway, this is still a game I will remember, as I barely ever achieve 90% or higher. Though my opponent was very strong, she actually made two blunders at the start, though, as I remember, the machine actually rated the second (Nxd5) an excellent instead of a mistake or something like that. Here is that game:
Notice how I developed my bishop to d2 when my opponent jumped in with Nd4. My intention was to long castle to stop my opponent from putting her bishop on f5 and jumping in to c2 with her knight to deliver some sort of fork, but as it turns out, the machine suggests Bg5 first. It also suggests I can move my rook to c8 instead of long castling, but I felt I didn't quite like having my king forced to move. Maybe there was some way, but remember how bad at chess I am. Also, this was a slow game, at 1 hour with an increment of 30 seconds per move.
As you can see, my opponent was quite strong and held for many moves before finally cracking at the end (or maybe I'm just bad at chess) and I actually calculated for quite a while, ending up on a number in the 20s as my time left.
The next game is a game I invented myself for an imaginary world (I'm an author wannabe) where it's modern. I know that black could have played h6, but I made him play h5 instead to spice things up. Here is the made-up game I am talking about:
After Kf7 at the end, Bh5# and Rg7# both win, ending the game.
Enough on that game, this is a game I played at a weaker club than the one I was talking about earlier, so I was able to checkmate quite quickly, though my opponent was one of the best players there. Here is the game. Neither of us were keeping notes of the moves, so this is based on pure memory. Lucky I won quickly so I can remember. This is the game:
That was an easy win, but although it was rapid I actually spent some time calculating before playing Nd6+ because that was an important competition (which I ended up tying for 1st place due to my opponent responding to check with checkmate and I not realising).
The next puzzle is one of lots of positions I play around with, but this one is pure Stockfish. It starts with a knight sacrifice and both players play the best moves, which I do NOT AT ALL understand. Here is the position, which is almost impossible to actually reach:
The next few games are actually a few of my own (played on chess.com) which do have brilliant moves, but as I said earlier, are easy to find.
By "a few of my own" I meant "one of my own". This is because I cannot find my other games with brilliant moves in them, but I have sacrificed - let me see - a queen before, a bishop before, a knight before, a rook before ... I don't think pawn sacrifices are brilliants. Anyway, the next game is another I played at the stronger chess club I was talking about, where I played at a 2400 rating level. This one was the game before that one, and my opponent played the Ruy Lopez, which I enjoy, but played a line that I have no idea of, causing an early inaccuracy of mine. However, I clung on and my pawn soon reached the second rank, which caused some issues, and though my opponent was able to capture it due to him being able to checkmate me on the back rank if I took back, I was lucky I had attacked my opponent's queen and brought my rook that starts on a8 out, which meant I was able to block the attack. Later, my opponent resigned after a trade that would result in him losing his knight or his queen. Here is the game:
That's it for today. If any of you are now snooping into my account, you'll find that I wasn't lying about my rating (except rapid, which is getting higher). But if you find an interesting game of mine that you want to show me, please do! That's it for now!