None of your moves were speculative. Both the computers 4..Bb4 and 5..Bxd2 were blunder, and white is completely won in the final position.
I would suggest you not worry too much about this position, after 4..Bb4 your 5.Nxf7 is enough for a win. Furthermore, no human opponent will play Bxd2+?? against you.
Thanks for the advice. The only move I thought was speculative was 4. Ng5, but White still seems to come out ahead in the variations there. Maybe I should turn up the difficulty of this program.
4.Ng5 isn't theoretically the 'best' move, but practically it is quite strong. For example, in the variation to blacks 4th move in your diagram, black is already lost after the natural blunder 5..Nxd5?
Here is a morphy game I sometimes show my students in which his opponent plays Nxd5, instead of the correct Na5.
I would recommend googling 'fried liver attack' or 'lolli' attack for more information on how to win when black responds with the poor ..Nxd5 move in this line.
That's a very illustrative game, thank you for showing me that! I would never have seen 5...Na5!, a very counterintuitive and unnatural move but clearly superior. Responding to 5...Nxd5 with 6. Nxf7 isn't something I'd have intuitively done either, although I think I was seeing ghosts when I tried to calculate and missed the queen fork on f3. 11...Kd6 does seem like a better square, but only marginally so, and white is still clearly winning in that position.
For the record, Paul Morphy never played John Cochrane. That would have been impossible and had it been possible, Cochrane was an excellent player.
Actually this game was played by 13 year old Morphy giving Rook odds to an unspecified member of the New Orleans club and looked more like this:
For the record, Paul Morphy never played John Cochrane. That would have been impossible and had it been possible, Cochrane was an excellent player.
Actually this game was played by 13 year old Morphy giving Rook odds to an unspecified member of the New Orleans club and looked more like this:
strange, the source I got it off said cochrane. Also I dont understand the ''more like this'' part, you posted the exact same sequence, no? With the only difference being a missing rook, that didnt participate. Had it existed I believe whites moves wouldve still been the same. The only change it really had was making Ncb4 less appealing, but Nce7 has still been played quite a few times in master games, so that's of limited interest.
Hello everyone! I haven't posted here before, but it just now occurred to me that this forum is exactly what I've been searching for: A place where I can ask a bunch of actual chess players what they think of the positions I get myself into, and whether I could be playing better lines. I find actual people infinitely more useful than theory books.
Anyway, I've been practicing against the computer a lot lately (I have no idea what my actual rating is, but I would guess it wouldn't be much higher than 1000...) and working on my 1. e4 game as White. I've taken a liking to the Italian Game recently, but for some reason the AI I play against keeps opting for the Two Knights Defence and never the Giuoco Piano that I'm aiming to play.
The upshot is that I've gotten a lot of practice playing 4. Ng5 against the Two Knights. The downside is that this computer makes very computer-y moves, and keeps responding with 4...Bb4. The following is the line I've been playing here, and I'm wondering if there's any way to improve it.
I realise that this line is incredibly unlikely to come up in an actual game, and I'm better off to prepare for 4...d5, but the fact remains that I've played this game against my computer about three times now, and I'm wondering if there's any way I can make my position even better than it is, as I feel as though a couple of my moves are a little speculative and could be refuted with accurate play from Black.