Never Let Me Go: Can you find the move I missed?

In Never Let Me Go by Kazoo Ishiguro, the narrator reflects on the pains of a sudden mistake with a comparison to chess. 

She says, “As soon as I said this I realized I’d made a mistake; that until I’d mentioned these two, I’d had Ruth in a corner, but now she was out. It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to”(Ishiguro 124).

The Nobel Prize winning novel is not about chess at all, but the game, so universally understood to be exponentially complex and full of errors, is a fitting comparison. When I read this passage, I immediately thought of a missed win from a game I played this week, in which I saw the winning tactic almost the moment I let go of the piece.

Just like Ishiguro describes, I first felt panic, which settled into a deep frustration that I struggled to move past for most of the game(it ended in a draw). As I’ve written about previously, I’m trying to work on slowing down and really calculating all of my options. This game is cruel to those that are not patient and even to those who are. Here is yet another example of my ability to find the move within the game, but not before the idea can actually benefit me. However, there are no prizes for almost solving a puzzle. It makes me wonder: will this period of my development ever end or is learning just continually be missing moves just past my ability? 

Interestingly, the title of the book fits with the comparison of letting go of a piece. The letting go is the mistake. The not stopping to consider all of your options is the mistake. 

Lesson: If I can just practice taking even 30 more seconds to consider other options after I’ve found a move I like, then maybe I’ll start to find more gems. “Look at checks, threats, and captures. Look at checks, threats, and captures.”

Here is the position in which I missed a game winning, put a stamp on it tactic. See if you can solve: