When drawing feels better than winning! I found a perpetual check and saved my losing position.
#ScandinavianDefense
Blunders are simply a feature at beginner-intermediate level chess. Sometimes, this can be due to miscalculation. Sometimes, it can be due to tunnel vision where you dogmatically proceed down a tactical line that is no longer good. Sometimes, it can be due to visual biases and positional blindness – for instance, with regards to diagonals and multistep knight moves.
However, the dumbest type of blunder, which I did in this game, is simply due to carelessness! On move 12, I spent about one-and-a-half minutes calculating my next move. Earlier in my thinking, I had worked out that moving the knight on c3 – Ne4 – was probably good. However, when it got to the point of actually moving the piece, I had somehow in my mind flipped the move to the other knight on f3 and played Nd4. Immediately after the move the alarm bells rang in my brain that something was wrong with the move, but of course, it’s too late! No take backs on chess.com!
This blunder changed the game from an advantage of +1, to a terrible -6, with me feeling very silly! However, where I once might have been tempted to resign immediately, I usually play on nowadays. Make the opponent earn their win! And this was the right choice in this match!
One of the strategies that can sometimes work in the middle game is to advance a pawn if you can into the opponent king’s defensive position. This has the possibility of weakening the king’s defences – which can occur through a pawn capture or trade, or by the opponent advancing one of their pawns. And on move 26, my opponent played f6, moving their pawn forward and out of the attack from my pawn on g6, and I saw my opportunity.
Stockfish evaluation suggested that Black was still completely winning, but it’s evaluation changed from -11 to the less winning -6. More than that, it required Black to identify the tactic that I was going to employ. I was no longer trying to just defend, and I wasn’t trying to win back material. Rather, I was aiming for the option that is as good as “winning” for the player is a completely losing position – a forced draw – and in this case, a draw by threefold repetition.
My rook captures their knight – Rxd4 – a seemingly desperate move in keeping with the defensive tone of my prior moves. With the rook seemingly ripe for the taking, my opponent quickly blitzed out the next move to recapture, allowing now for perpetual check of their king by my queen. Glorious!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/49427989617
