How to Suck Less at Chess: Never Ever Give Up! (Part II)

No, the picture does not have anything to do with anything.  My wife took this picture on our farm and I thought it was adorable.  I call it "Black Rook Trapped by White Pawns."

Anyway, in my last article, Captain Kirk and his sidekick Drunk Magnus teamed up to save your game from the jaws of defeat in situations heading into the endgame.  But what if you blundered earlier in the game and am now facing a long torturous losing battle where you seemingly have no hope for a better tomorrow?

Again, Captain Kirk would say that it's early in the game and anything can happen.  Drunk Magnus would tell you that you're playing a patzer who is bound to blunder.  Both may be correct, but you have to make conditions right for your opponent to blunder, and you have to be alert when it happens.

Complicate the Game:

In the game of chess, there are a finite number of "reasonable moves."  If you give your opponent, say two reasonable moves, there's a better than a 50/50 chance that he will play the best move.  What if you gave him 5 instead?

Now I realize that we all had moments where we believed that we brilliantly won our complex middle game like this:

Then after Stockfish analyzed our game, we sadly realized that we actually looked more like this:

And if we played against somebody sucked a bit less, it would have turned out like this:

In a very recent game, I entered a complicated middle game.  Play through and check out all the blunders and mistakes that ensue.

What made this so complex?  Let's take a look at the position at move 17:

In this position, I had 3 reasonable choices.  It turns out that Nxe4 was the correct one, but I chose Nxe5?? instead.

And after 17. ... Nxe5?? my opponent had 4 reasonable options, and he picks the wrong one, dxe5??.  Even after my other reasonable choices (17. ... Nxe4 or ... Bxe4), my opponent had 3 or 4 options to consider, which is my excuse for poor analysis.

Now other than to show a game where we both look like the Star Wars kid, it's to prove a point.  When there are more than one option, sucky players (yes, we all suck) will often make sucky choices.  Now, it's important to note that none of these sucky moves were obviously sucky, but the reader should take solace that outcomes, especially at the sucky levels at which most of us are playing, are never inevitable.

If at any point either of us evaluated the position correctly, the other would likely had been shot dead a-la Indiana Jones style.

Seize the Initiative:

After going down in material, one of the ways to confuse your opponent is to grab the initiative.  For the uninitiated, initiative refers to your ability to direct the action on the chessboard.

So if your game is a story, a sad story where your forces are exhausted and undermanned, you break off part of your army to attack a weak section in your opponents defenses, forcing them to make a choice:  break away to defend, or continue the onslaught.  If you do this right, then the choices your opponent is forced to make are difficult.  You have changed the nature of the story by grabbing the initiative.  When sitting passively waiting for your opponent to starve your forces won't work, grabbing the initiative will introduce complexity to the situation.

In this example, I lose the exchange and make a series of dubious moves (according to Stockfish), but it works because I change the narrative, seize the initiative, force my opponent to make a bunch of choices.  Here, I'm in bad shape.  Stockfish evaluates this as -5.28 favoring black.  I'm forced to make a difficult decision to lose the exchange and take the bishop on g5 with my rook.

Now, my plan involves pushing those center pawns and force black to ignore my exposed king and try to stop me:

After a few moves, some dubious, I'm winning.

Adding tactics to the situation:

So adding complexity is good.  How else do you do this?  You can do this by directly adding tactics to the situation.  Keep in mind, that you never want to make moves that are obviously bad.  In other words, if you can see that a move is bad, then your opponent, who is presumably at a similar level, will also see a move is bad.  However, if you honestly evaluate a move as "not bad," then the chances are good that your opponent will evaluate the move similarly.

Here I face a very tough opponent in a daily game and carelessly drop a pawn:

Now, add some tactics:  a pin on the knight.

Adding a trapped piece tactic.

Potential knight fork:

Further restricting the bishop on c8 and the knight on d6 and adding a potential rook battery:

Then the dam breaks:

And even strong players can sometimes succumb to the plethora of complications:  Rxd8?? loses.

Sun Tzu talked at length about deception in war.  In a game of perfect information, there is no deception.  Everybody sees what both players see.  Only the interpretation and analysis differ.  However, when you are losing, it pays to muddy the waters and confuse your opponent.  Yes, you are also entering the same uncertain waters; because if you are confusing your opponent, you are likely confusing yourself as well.  That's okay, because it's better to be uncertain that you're losing than being certain you are losing.

When you are losing, you play without fear, and all the pressure is on your opponent to win.  This what I mean by having Captain Kirk as your animal spirit.  Take your time, and know that outcomes are never inevitable until Drunk Magnus says it is.  Find a strategy that would make Captain Kirk proud.

And if you cannot find a strategy, stay tuned for Part 3.  When all else fails...

This is part of an ongoing series called, "How to Suck Less at Chess."  It helps to start with this introduction to explain what I mean by sucking at chess and why you should read my blog.  If you like what you read, drop a nice comment.  It will help motivate me to produce more material.  Part 1 of "Never Ever Give Up" can be found here.