The Jeremy Silman (Harry Potter position)

i love that scene

Was too bad the last two moves wound up on the cutting room floor.

(In the movie, game ended after Bc5+)

yes

Could you possibly play on after saving the knight and bishop, black still have material advantage

Technically shouldn't it be gryffindor vs McGonnegall? Not Voledmort? Wasn't this McGonnegalls's puzzle?

In the movie, Ron pushes d5 starting with the Scandinavian Defense. Did Sillman create the entire game leading to this final position, or just this position?

I think it was just the positions.

But funny you should mention 1….d5. The movies producers wanted the kids to play white. And the AI as black, to capture a piece on move 1. 
Well Mr Silman explained that simply wasn’t possible. The earliest he could give them a capture is move 2.
But the producers were flabbergasted. What good is hiring an IM as a technical advisor, if he doesn’t even know how to capture a piece on move one??? What were they even paying him for?

😄

(Eventually, they came around of course.)

About the assigned names: McGonagall set this up as a challenge, so I would say she's playing White. (How Voldemort made it past without having to play his way across, I don't know) And Ron's technically playing Black, as up to Rc1 he's the one calling out notation.

But related question to this scene: is there a way, with e4 d5 exd5 at the beginning, to play into this picture happening? We jumpcut straight from exd5 to this, which drops 6 interim moves minimum just by looking at the material in play. If so... how?

They started from move 1 though. So McGonagul could not have predicted that many moves Ron would chose. (Including a queen sac.)

But yes they montaged through the majority of the game. Most people do not want to sit in a theater and watch a chess game play out for 20 minutes.

Maybe Silman could tell us, if he was still alive.

We know this about the game: (just watched the movie again- noticed 2 more moves)

There are effectively 4 "stages" to the game as follows: (they never specify "takes" in spoken notation)

Stage 1. e4 [Hermione: (out loud) "Do you think this will be like wizards' chess?" Ron: (thinks) "You know what? I'll go Scandinavian to see."] d5 exd5 [Ron, out loud: "Yep, this is exactly like wizards' chess."]

Stage 2: ... Re4 or ... Rxe4 (as I said, he wouldn't have said "rook takes [on] e4" even if he meant it- compare his game against Harry earlier)

Stage 3: ... c4, bxc4, or dxc4 (again, these are all here because they're all just "pawn to c4")

FEN for stage 4 of 4: 5r1k/1pN1R1PP/1Pb5/n1r1P1n1/7N/b2p4/7P/1R1Q2K1 w - - 0 1

Qxd3 Rc3! Qxc3 ["Not me, not Hermione, you."] Nh3 Qxh3 Bc5+ [jumped in-movie but implied: Qe3 Bxe3#]

I have an idea of someone who could figure this out: GothamChess!