I play a Grandmaster!

Not only did I play a Grandmaster—in this case WGM Adriana Nikolova—I have a “1” in the result’s column against her! Well, I do technically. I don’t like unearned victories and that’s exactly what this was. It was a mistake. This was the first time I had tried playing a simul like this on Chess.com, and when I saw her challenge I accepted it without questioning too much why it was initially only a 3-minute game (it should have been G60, +10). Was it a warm up? Turns out it must have been a mistake, she abandoned the game to let it run through to challenge me with the correct clock setting. If I could, I’d return the points I received for this “victory" back to her. But perhaps I could count this against my bucket list. Technically, it was a win, and considering my play, I’m probably never going to win against an opponent like this again, save for some other unusual circumstance 😉.

The real game is below—with the natural result. I decided to go down fighting and my gracious opponent even let me hang around long enough to play the position I aimed for. Onto the game!

 For the bucket, check!