Beating the Halloween Bots

As Halloween comes out of its grave, chess.com releases two things: a new app, where you get brutally eaten by brain-thirsty zombies if you do not solve a simple checkmate puzzle, and new Halloween bots, based on chess celebrities, such as Danny Rensch, Alexandrea Botez, Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniatchi, and Hikaru Nakamura, which are a much better upgrade than last year's horrific pumpkin duo, which were low-rated and easy to beat.

And just because it is Halloween, I would be playing the spookiest opening I know vs. these brainless celebrities, rightfully named the Halloween gambit because- 

      
Many players are shocked, the way they would be frightened by a 
Halloween mask, when they are mentally prepared for a boring Four 
Knight's, and then they are faced with Nxe5

Now, to clarify, the Halloween gambit is not some unadventurous and solid "gambit" *cough queens gambit cough*. This is a real gambit, one where you never feel safe, even if you have an underlying advantage.

In the Halloween gambit, you would be sacrificing a knight on move four. And in return, you would gain huge development, the biggest center you could ask for, and some very frightful attacks.

And just because this was my first time playing this opening, I would start on the weakest bot working my way up until I have to face Hikaru (the numbers beside the zombies name is their rating). And that started with undead Danny. 

Zombanny (400)

Honestly, that was disappointing. Undead Danny somehow turned one of the most exciting gambits I know into a lame and boring position, which is the complete opposite of what you want while playing the Halloween gambit.

But then again, they are still a 400-rated computer, so it was not like I expected them to put up a good fight, and a win is still a win. My advice to beat this bot? gambit all your pieces, they will not see you giving away everything. 

Zotez (800)

Alexandra Botez is one of the very few players who don't value their queen. She likes to purposely "blunder" her most powerful piece, just because regular chess just isn't exciting enough. And although her ratings may have gone down a hefty 1500 points after becoming one with the dead, she still carries on the tradition of giving up her queen. 

Alexandra Zotez is one of the most popular zombie chess streamers
in the world! Be careful, many people have lost their brainz to a Zotez Gambit!

And even though she is an 800-rated bot who I should have destroyed, this game was nothing like my 95+ accuracy vs the Danny bot. I had made multiple mistakes, a blunder, and hung a few pieces, all in a 20-move game. Not my greatest win, but I will still take it. 

A win is still a win, but really? First, she declines my Halloween gambit, then Botez gambits her queen, and on move 14 finishes it off with a bongcloud.

I won but It was kind of like the bot was trolling me throughout the whole game. 

  Credit to some guy on anarchy chess

Zombiano (1000)

Fabiano Caruana is currently #6 in the world, and in 2017, he became the first American to play in the world championship match since Bobby Fischer. He lost, but Fabiano is still an incredible American prodigy.

But then, in the 2022 U.S Championships, he had a heart attack when he lost to Hans Niemann in the championship match, in 17 moves. He was reincarnated as a zombie and vowed to eat Hans Niemann's deliciously-gray brain at all costs. 

Zombie Fabiano Caruana still remembers starting 7-0 at the 2014 Sinquefield Cup.

But now, all he wants are your brains! How long can you resist Zombiano?
 

Okay, a little bit better, I had not studied that variation of the opening, but a lot of the moves I played just were following common opening principles, and it stayed that way for a little while. And after doing a game review, it turns out that I had missed mate in one multiple times. I also found I had really good accuracy- 

and for some reason, at the start of the middlegame, Zombiano decided that his h and a pawns were not being used so he pushed them two squares each, making it look like he played the creepy crawly against me, another appropriate opening to play vs Halloween bots
They then blundered the queen, making the rest of the game an easy win for me. GG Zombiano.

---

Zombiachtchi (1400)

---

After being painfully destroyed at the 2021 world championship match, Ian vowed revenge on Carlsen. But before he could play Magnus again for the title, he withdrew! this caused Ian to become a rip-off version of the hulk that has a man bun. Can I survive this Russian grandmaster?                                                                                                           

Nepomniachtchi was the last world championship

challenger before the zombie outbreak. Beware the Zombiachtchi!

Wow... I had not expected that opening... they had a pretty solid defense, and it was enough to drag the Halloween gambit into an endgame. I was winning the whole time, but I accidentally blundered my way into a losing position... they did a pretty bad job of utilizing my blunder, so I out-endgamed nepo and won the match.

 

That was actually not bad as far as 1400 match's go, I usually don't have 32 best moves in a single game but vs Nepo I did. it was now time to face my final foe- Zombie Hikaru. 

---

Zombaru (1800)

---

This would be my concluding task in my Halloween gambit blog, and having practiced all the moves against the beginner zombies, I would finally be ready to take on Zombaru. 

And just because I didn't feel confident enough to play the Halloween gambit vs an 1800-rated bot, I joined a Halloween gambit tournament.

I was prepared for any line they would throw at me. And the results showed that this was my best game of the series yet. I had scored a 90+accuracy, I only had one mistake throughout the entire 42-move game, and more than 40 percent of my moves were best. I would have never expected a solid game from a risky gambit!

 
  Are you a 5head? That only makes your brain look bigger and juicier

for zombie Hikaru. Can you survive Zombaru’s fierce attack?
 

Nice... they had thrown away every 3-point piece like they were hot trash, so that made it really easy for me to gain an advantage. And even though I was ahead since move 6, I did a really bad job on capitalizing my opponents mistakes because it look me around 35 more moves to actually win the game

Fire rocking that Halloween pfp

But regardless, It was still a pretty fine win to finish off my Halloween gambit blog

---

Conclusion

---

I had a few good games in this blog, and considering that I blitzed out basically every move in all the games I would say that I did pretty well. I might actually start playing the Halloween gambit in games vs real people, but I am a little scared of the possibility of being stuck in a dreadful, braining-numbing three knights game, which is like the mother of all London's. Not a thing I want to do, so for the time being I will just stick to playing unhuman-like computers for unsound gambits, because real people never want to play risky.                                                                                                                                

And if you guys have a blog, I would recommend joining blogchamps, which is a real cool competition for bloggers. Basically you post a blog every week until you get knocked out because some other dude made a better post than you, This continues all the way until there is one blogchampion left

And well.... Thanks for reading I guess. Go check out my series on Richard Réti, and have a Spooktacular Halloween.