Duck's Finest Counterplay
Introduction
Welcome to my blog again. In this article I’m sharing my best comebacks. This is a continuation of my earlier article (here), with several more comeback victories added to the list.
Whenever I win games from a dead lost position, it feels like I’m the greatest chess player in the world. I’m on top of the world, like I’m the King of Counterplay. But only briefly, it’s a feeling that evaporates quickly. As soon as I analyze these games in full, I begin to realize they aren’t really great games at all. Obviously. Because for each one, I have the disastrous first half of the game as a reminder that I'm just as much of an idiot as I am a genius. That said, I’m sharing these with pride.
For my other similar articles check my best daily games, my favorite rapid games and my favorite fail games.
My counterplay wins come, roughly speaking, in three varieties:
Chapter 1 Creating Chaos (like, you know, you’re supposed to do)
Chapter 2 Never Give Up (like making simply not letting go a form of art)
Chapter 3 Sneaky Swindles (like actually smart counterplay, or counterplay that’s so stupid it’s smart again)
To go directly to my top 10 check: TOP 10 Duckfest’s Counterplay
“When You Are Behind, You Need To Create Chaos”. It’s one of my favorite principles, one that I had learned from Gotham Chess somewhere on my chess journey. There’s a simple logic behind this principle. The player with the structural (material) advantage is likely to win the game in the long run. To secure the win they need to kill their opponent’s counterplay by simplifying the position. If they can successfully trade off enough pieces they’ll end up with a winning endgame with a pawn majority.
For the player who’s behind the objective is to not let their opponent simplify. They shouldn’t trade pieces, but instead use them to create complications. Counterplay thrives on imbalance. When the position is really bad they need to work hard to give the opponent opportunities to blunder. Or as NM Rich Pariseau put it: “I just take all my pieces and throw them at my opponent's King. If it doesn't work, I was lost anyway and if it does I can win!".
An example of creating simple counterplay is my game vs jugacri (#5 Textbook Turnaround), where I ended up down a minor piece on move 13 and another pawn a few moves later. The engine evaluation was around +5 to +6 and to make my prospects worse I was already behind 2 minutes on the clock.
The only upside was that my pieces were more active, the few remaining pieces I had left. My plan was simple, yet effective: just keep attacking their Queen until they make a blunder. Wherever the Queen moved, one of my Rooks moved up once more to attack her again. Even though I had to pay attention to avoid any forks by my opponent’s centrally placed Knight, the pressure I applied to the Queen paid off in just a handful of moves.
Last Minute Attack
In my game vs @epd0 (#6 Last Minute Sacrifice) it was a miscalculation of a trading sequence that got me into a losing position, where I was behind a full Knight. In the moves that followed winning chances dropped even further because I was rapidly burning through what I had left on my clock. At this moment the only thing I could think of was a desperate Bishop sacrifice. As unsound as it may look it worked as a distraction. My opponent failed to notice that with the Bishop out of the way, my Queen was attacking the dark squared Bishop.
In my game vs @menonsetten (#9 Last Minute Push) I had completely messed up my King’s safety and my opponent had launched an attack that destroyed my position. Several bad decisions in a short time followed and I was down a full Rook, which is hard to overcome in a daily game. I only had one last chance for a serious counterattack and I took it. knowing that I would lose as soon as my attack ran out of steam and my opponent could consolidate. Even though my attack was unsound and not likely to work, it did force my opponent into some tough decisions.
My favorite last minute push (#4 Last Minute Massacre) was against mx_alex. In this game my position was really lost. My counterattack was more desperate than the previous examples and not forcing in any way. My King was vulnerable and my pieces were hanging all over the place. My only option was that my aggressive moves would distract my opponent enough to make him forget that I was the defending player.
I only have about 30 seconds left on my clock. As a result, this became one of my favorite adrenaline fueled attacks.
All these games forced me to aggressively PRESSURE my opponent into making mistakes. But that’s not the only way to win a lost position. The alternative is passively waiting for my opponent to blunder.
Ever since Ben Finegold explained this principle to me, I've been a firm believer in ‘never resign’, It's a principle that practically works, almost by definition. If you keep on playing in a lost position and end up losing the game anyway, your score will be the same as if you had resigned. But if you manage to squeeze out a win occasionally, you'll increase your winrate. It will surprise how often you can be successful in a lost position.
My resignation policy is based on imaginary bets I make with Hikaru Nakamura. The idea is simple: whenever I consider resigning I wonder what would happen if I handed over the game to Hikaru and let him play out the rest of the game. The question I ask myself is:
Would Hikaru be able to win or draw the game from this position against the same opponent? If the answer is yes, then it’s too early to resign.
In my game vs @partywithvardy (#7 Fight For Your Right To Vardy) I was in a losing position, but I kept playing in the hope that my Rooks could trap my opponent's King on the back rank.
The ultimate example of never resigning was my game vs @shmerpoo (#3 Never Surrender), where I was completely lost and without any winning chances for a really long time. As the game went on, I remained lost.
Sometimes there’s no way to create a serious counterattack and the prospect of fighting on tenaciously doesn’t look appealing either. Then there's always the third option and it’s actually my favorite one!
Sometimes your only option is to checkmate your opponent. Like an actual swindle.
A cheeky example is my game vs Bobby Ferrell (#8 Backrank Ferrel?1) where I played the terrible 17. d4, risking Qxc5+, just so I could play 18. Qb5. All the while hoping that my opponent would miss the threat and play none of the twenty (20) moves that could prevent checkmate.
My game vs @mcoll19 has been my favorite swindle for years (#2 Bringing a Knight to a Chess Fight). I had blundered my Queen for no real reason, with only a pawn as compensation.
That was until my new favorite game (#1 Sympathy for the Swindle). My position looked all sorts of hopeless, but I kept faith in my single path to victory.
Duckfest's TOP 10 Counterplays
#1 Sympathy for the Swindle (link)
#2 Bringing A Knight To A Chess Fight (link)
#3 Never Resign (link)
#4 Last Minute Massacre vs mx_alex (link)
#5 Textbook Turnaround vs jugacri (link)
#6 Creating Chaos vs epd0 (link)
#7 Fight for your Right to vardy (link)
#8 Backrank Ferrell?! (link)
#9 Last Minute Push (link)
This was a game against one of my closest online chess buddies. We had faced each other before in this (Tarrasch) Tournament. He won our first game and we drew the second game. I played some of my best games in that tournament. I ended up in first place, despite not being able to win against Kevin the Unbreakable. In the Jerome Gambit Tournament I was the winner, but I still was having a tough time in daily games.
In this game we faced each other again in another themed daily tournament, this time playing the Halloween gambit. The game wasn’t going well for me from the get go and in the early middle game I had already made multiple bad decisions. All because of the move 12. Qh5, which threw me off. My focus was on creating chances for counterplay rather than looking for the right defensive resources.
My strategy was very deliberate and I had a plan in mind. Then 21. Qxg6 was played and it took me completely by surprise. Two points of material advantage, but a + 3.5 Stockfish evaluation.
Stuck around St. Petersburg, when I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain
#2 Bringing A Knight to a Chess Fight
This game was played in December 2020, less than a month since I started playing online again. It was a blitz game between two players rated somewhere in the 800-900 range. It was a pretty bad game, quite chaotic from the start.
But my real trouble began in the middle game after my opponent threatened my Queen with 13. b4. What happened next was a complete disaster. Maybe it was a mouse slip, it could very well be. Maybe I was just an 800 rated idiot playing too fast for my own good.
The result was terrible. I had lost a Queen with only one pawn as compensation. Now I'm 8 points behind in material and I have 30 seconds less on the clock. How can I turn this game around? White to move. Checkmate in two moves.
This was a game from April '22. In this game I didn’t play an awful game, especially in the beginning. We were about equal, though I was often slightly behind. Until I blundered Knight on move 22 to a pin tactic, which my opponent keenly spotted. With a Knight and a pawn in material advantage I was likely going to lose this game. From that point on the position didn’t offer much options to play or create counterplay. I was basically just shuffling pieces around hoping for a miracle.
Initially I was the one with the winning position, around move 16the evaluation was about +3. Soon after we we’re back to equal more or less.
The move Ne5 was on my radar to play on move 25, which looked like a good move at the time. But my opponent played cxd4 just before I could play it and suddenly it became a terrible move, because I no longer had a pawn on d4 to defend my Knight.
By move 27 my position was completely lost and I had only 1 minute 20 seconds left, exactly half of what my opponent had left.
After my blunder on move 13 (Nxe5) I was behind a minor piece. In the following moves I lost another pawn and as a result I was behind 4 points of material. According to Stockfish the position was somewhere between +5 and +6. To make my situation worse, I was behind 2 minutes on the clock.
The one strength my position offered was that I had more active Rooks. My best option was to keep attacking their Queen relentlessly, while keeping an eye out for the threat of an enemy fork.
My plan worked and in fewer than 10 moves I had induced the blunder to turn the game around.
This was a game I played in June of '22. It was the first game ever where I noticed counterplay as a relevant element of playing chess. That's why I featured this game in my progress update Q2 in '22.
Annotation for this game was done by my friend @KevinOSh.
#7 Fight for Your Right to Vardy
This was a blitz game from October '21.
This was rapid game I played in April '21. My position was horrible and playing good moves wouldn't help me to win the game. My only option was to checkmate the enemy King.
This was a daily game I played in March '21. In this game I was completely lost, however I had the opportunity for one last push for a victory.
Wrap-up
Thank you all for reading!
