How to lost the 2025 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship by misusing my knight
As a writer and a comedian, I make a living by making people laugh at myself. If you speak French, you can watch my comedy special on YouTube here for free. It already has more than 20,000 views. If you speak English, just continue reading this. If you speaking French, please keep reading too!
It wasn't yet midnight here in Montréal, Québec, Canada, when the 2025 Chess.com Daily Championship had started. A beer in hand, I was notified that 22 games started. When I saw the ranking of the some of my opponents, I laughed out loud, claiming: Oh well... this tournament isn't going to last very long for me!
There will be many David and Goliath duels in this round, where I will take on the role of little David. Maybe I can puff off a few upsets!
Even though winning is great - and I knew I couldn't win that type of tournament - I also knew that I could have fun losing this one. Hey, maybe I'll learn something! Maybe that something is that I shouldn't play daily games.
This time format favors deep thinking and all, but I also tend to play too fast in order to get rid of the notification. While in front my TV, I sometimes played without enough concentration. Playing while re-re-re-watching Arrested Development led to blunders that made me go like the characters on that show: "I've made a huge mistake."
Where blunders are inevitable for a 1275 rapid-rated player like me, I want to take a moment to reflect on the misuse of one of my knights. Those tricky pieces move in a L, exactly the shape people make with their fingers on their forehead when they catch me missing my subway station because I'm playing chess on my phone.
Wow. The writer in me thinks that this sentence was too long, unlike the game after the move we are about to analyze:
Game: From +3.46 to -0.33 in one move
Please go to move 14. If I knew how to do it for you, I would. I never had to insert a chess position in my articles at Urbania!
So here, I'm up against an 1800 rapid-rated player. At the start of move 14, you can see one my knights understanding its role: taking a pawn while jumping to the center and blocking a powerful bishop. All that while threatening the queen! With this move alone, you could think that I tend to understand how knights work, by the next move, you'll be wondering if I know how to play chess at all.
So, my opponent needs to do something since his queen is in danger to becoming food for my horsy.
If his light-squared bishop takes my knight, my queen might take it back and she'll be reigning supreme in the middle of the board.
I could even take with my pawn. It would place it a few squares from promoting and being an overall pain in the derrière of my opponent.
My opponent decided to move his queen:
So here, the eval bar is so happy for me! Like I did with my parents, I can sense its hope for me. Like I did with my parents, I will disappoint it.
In this position, I considered a few things. I considered taking his knight with mine, but concluded that it would only help his dark-squared bishop if he took with it. If he took back with the queen, he'd be threatening checkmate. So, no.
I went throught the checklist: Checks? none. Capture? not really. Threat? not really. So I moved my queen to c2. The eval bar says it's a blunder. It also tell its friend that I'm adopted.
The right move was so simple. It was neither a complicated sacrifice nor a deep tactical move that gave me better control of a square. It was simply to bring my knight to d4.
I could have found it while going though my checks, capture and threats. Looks like I'm good at counting my checks when they are zero, but I'm also too quick at wrapping up threat calculations.
But the most enraging thing is that I could have seen it! It is totally within my range of play. Just by itself, bringing a knight to the center is always a good idea!
Queen to c2 accomplishes nothing, except for an obvious checkmate threat that won't be ignored by any 1800 rapid-rated player. It's like telling a 30-year-old man that he won't be having any desserts. Yeah. Big deal.
After that, his knight took my knight with check. I took back with my pawn, ripping open my position and my heart.
A few moves later, I was crushed. Looks like Goliath destroyed David.
But David had his chance. A clean look into the eye of his giant opponent. Like Alexander Hamilton, I threw away my shot.
Don't worry, that wasn't the most humiliating thing that happened to me this year... yet.
You saw me completely sweaty on TV talking about chess boxing.
If you speak French, you can watch the coverage of Ici Radio-Canada Sports on chessboxing here. A few of my subscribers sent me pictures of their TV screens with my shirt covered in sweat. That, too, made my parents proud.
So, that's all for now. I'd love to write more about chess. In English or in French, that would be awesome. Hopefully, I'll get the chance to do it more!
