A Gear I Don't Have

When I first started playing, it eventually dawned on me that there were only two gears to play chess: Try your best or resign. For one critical part of how I reached that conclusion, please refer to The Train Story.

In today's blog I would like to relate another story of how dramatic that difference can be between a 2200+ player and a class player, in this case two 1700's.

About 15 years ago I was watching a game in the U1800 Section of the World Open, which was then held at the Adam's Mark Hotel, about 3 miles down the road.

I did not know either of the players who were playing. They were both about college age and rated about 1700. The round had been going on for more than four hours, so they were in the second time control (40/2; SD/1). Both had about 50 minutes left to complete the game. They had reached a king and pawn endgame where one side was up a pawn; I think it was Black. Let's say Black had five pawns and White had four.

It was a pretty difficult position; it looked at first glance that Black should win but it wasn't trivially easy. First I looked at the plan where Black would bring his king to the kingside and attack the b-pawn. Passive defense by White was clearly hopeless so he would have to make it a race by bringing his king to the kingside. I counted the race and apparently both sides would queen, but Black would remain a pawn ahead in a queen and pawn endgame.

Then I calculated what would happen if the black king stayed on the queenside. Again that was murky as it would not be easy to create a winning passed pawn, due to the pawn structure. It was not easy to calculate exactly what would happen. Even then Black's work would not be done, as he would have to calculate whether staying queenside first and then later trying to go kingside was better than just going kingside right away. There were several possible alternatives; too much for me to calculate in a few minutes. I still felt that with careful play Black was probably winning.

While I was calculating this move - let's call it Black's 44th move, an amazing thing happened. The players played many moves extremely quickly and White resigned! Black had brought his king to the kingside and Black had hopelessly followed, with inevitable defeat.

After the game I asked the players if they would like to review the game with me in the Skittles room. They accepted and once I got there, I introduced myself as a master and asked them to set up the position on the 44th move, which they gladly did.

I then proceeded to show them my analysis: why going immediately to the kingside was problematic and how White could also queen in that race. But I also showed them that the other lines were not immediately decisive, either, and that it was going to take some effort for White to force a win.

Obviously both players were relatively careful and slow: both had taken about 130 minutes for their first 43 moves. So then I asked them the question: "You guys are apparently careful because you both used over 2 hours, but how could you play out such a critical king and pawn endgame so fast? After all, the decision of what to do on move 44 was not at all easy and I was unable to come to a clear decision just about that move while you were playing out the entire remainder of the game!"

Black's answer: "I thought I was winning and I thought it was trivial so I just played it quickly, expecting to win."

White's answer: "At that point I thought I was dead lost, but rather than resign I thought I would play a few moves quickly just to see what would happen."

Very reasonable and understandable answers, but not ones you would get from many extremely strong players. They were using a gear I just don't have. Play your best on every move or resign. If they had, they would have realized the position was not so clear or easy as they thought it was. If you want to know one difference between many 1700 players and most 2200 players, this story is worth remembering...