Ⅴ-Halloween effect, My first Halloween on chess.com.

My greetings to my chess readers!

Introduce

Today is October 29th and Halloween is just 2 days away, I am so excited that this will probably be my first Halloween on chess.com. Hooray, today's article will mainly talk about Halloween and chess, do you think they are related? No, who said so, but chess and Halloween are connected. So what is it?

Halloween Opening

Sacrificing pieces in the opening is something that few chess players think about. You rarely see professional players sacrificing pieces in the opening. This is not impossible, but only in a few special cases. When the openings have been studied and chess players have mastered the game. However, in chess, there is a type of opening called Sacrificing pieces right from the 4th move, and you will be surprised to hear the name of that opening: ''Halloween Opening''

The Halloween Gambit, is an aggressive chess opening gambit in which White sacrifices a knight at the outset to gain a pawn.

How the Halloween Gambit was born.

This opening was first published in 1888, and was reported by Theorist Oskar Cordel. He reported that chess players at the Leipzig Chess Club used this opening dangerously in their chess games. The original name they gave to this opening was the Müller und Schulze Gambit. They named it that way to express it, not to honor any player with that name. which is a funny German word equivalent to "Smith and Jones" or "Tom, Dick and Harry". The name Gambit Müller und Schulze, you can also understand it as a funny German equivalent of " Smith and Jones " or " Tom, Dick, and Harry ". The phrase "Tom, Dick, and Harry" is a placeholder for unspecified people. The phrase most commonly occurs as "every Tom, Dick, and Harry", meaning everyone, and "any Tom, Dick, or Harry", meaning anyone.

Theoretically, this type of opening is a branch of the Four Knights game, usually maintained and determined by the moves:

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Nc3 Nf6

Maybe the Four Horses variation is too boring, so club chess players have come up with a more exciting solution, which is the reason to answer the question of why they sacrifice the Knight.

Over time the name for this type of opening has changed and the current era stands out as the "Halloween Gambit". The name was coined by German player Steffen Jakob, who explained that "Many players get a shock, the same way they get scared when they see a Halloween mask, when they have mentally prepared themselves for a boring Four Knight's, and then they are faced with Nxe5."

Variations of the Halloween Gambit.

• Reverse Halloween Book Moves.

• Halloween Gambit declined

Halloween uprising in the famous king hunt.

Grigor Minchev used the Halloween Gambit, sacrificing his Knight right in the opening, but Grigor Minchev created a masterpiece, driving the opponent's king from his castle to the edge of the opponent's castle and was checkmated in a foreign land.

Although Grigor Minchev is not a very famous chess player, the games in which he used the Halloween Gambit with special masterpieces, especially the famous king hunting masterpiece, have partly made Grigor Minchev's name in the world of chess. According to the homepage chessgames.com, Minchev's games are archived with 41 games. Of the 41 games, Grigor Minchev played a total of 27 games with the Halloween Gambit opening accounting for more than 2/3 of his total games. What surprised me was that out of the 27 games, Grigor Minchev only drew 1 game and won 26 games, he did not lose any game even though he always sacrificed his Knight from the 4th move.

Play chess with ghosts-Scary Halloween Story.

In 1985, the Swiss economist Dr. Wolfgang Eisenbeis, who had long been interested in the study of paranormal phenomena, decided to organize an unusual chess game - a contemporary chess player played against a dead opponent with the help of a "middleman". A prerequisite - both players had to be players of the highest level.

As a request for participation in the experiment, Dr. Eisenbeis invited Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi - a famous Soviet grandmaster who had emigrated to Switzerland (who was very famous for his matches with his young compatriot Anatoly Karpov in 1974 and 1980 for the world chess championship, he played under the Swiss flag and did not succeed, but at that time was worthy of being the second player in the world...). Korchnoi was not opposed to the confrontation with his deceased colleague, although he reacted to the idea with humor, joking that all grandmasters were unusual. just different degrees of madness. Having received the consent of the luminaries of the chess world, Wolfgang Eisenbeis chose a "guide to the other world". It was his long-time acquaintance, Robert Rollans - a man with the ability to write automatically while in a trance (a type of "séance" quite common in Europe). Rollans was an especially good candidate, because he did not know how to play chess at all and was willing to participate in the experiment for free. And the experiment began.

I came to say that there is no death

Eisenbeis gave Rollans a list of deceased grandmasters and asked the spirit with whom he regularly communicated (Rollans called him Gabriel) to help find a chess player from the list who would agree to a match in the afterlife. Viktor Korchnoi said that he would like to play with Jose Raul Capablanka (Cuba) or with Paul Keres (Estonia). On June 15, 1985, the spirit Gabriel informed the “contactee” that the Hungarian grandmaster, Geza Maroci, had accepted the challenge. He then added that Maroci would try to interact directly with the contactee without his help.

Hungarian grandmaster Geza Maroci (1870 - 1951) was one of the strongest chess players in the world in the first decade of the 20th century. He won tournaments in Monte Carlo (1902), Ostend (1905), Bartender (1908, together with Yanovsky), Vienna (1908, together with Duras and Schlechter). After 1908, he retired from chess and returned to tournaments only after World War I. His only major success during this period was the first prize in Carlsbad (1923, together with Alekhin and Bogolyubov). The candidate Maroci was accepted by all the participants in the experiment.

“I am Maroci Geza, - the spirit of the famous grandmaster wrote in the hand of the “medium” at the first contact. - I greet you.” The Hungarian grandmaster expressed concern about his playing ability - because he had not practiced for a long time, and explained why he agreed to the match. “I will help people for two reasons. I want to help people living on earth to know that death is not the end of everything - the mind is separated from the physical body and lives in a new world, in other dimensions”. The second reason, he said, was the glorification of his earthly homeland - Hungary.

His spirit made the first move - d2-d4.

Victor Korchnoi, at the beginning of the game, became more serious about the game with each subsequent move. After the 27th move, he commented on the game:

- The person I played was not very confident at the beginning, and his style of play was outdated. But I must confess that I could not guarantee my victory. The opponent made up for his initial mistake with strong decisions at the end of the game. The player's abilities appeared near the end, and my opponent in the afterlife played very well.

The way the analyst pointed out that Geza Maroczy made a mistake in the Opening was because Viktor Korchnoi used the new opening knowledge of his time, which was thoroughly studied after the time of Geza Maroczy's death. But gradually towards the end of the game, his Grandmaster status was revealed.

Conclude

Thanks for reading, and I wish you a Happy Halloween both where you live and on Chess.com.
Happy Halloween from me. Bye and see you again.