A nice resignation game

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MysticStealth
h777 wrote:

You could have done better on some moves.


Yeah I know, I'm just thinking of what happened during that game for me to just, go...brain dead.

Eebster
tryst wrote:

Eebster said,

"Well, there are plenty of bishop and knight mates, but the elementary mate is a bishop, knight, and king against a lone king. In that case, yes, the king will be as involved in the mate as the bishop and knight, and it is a very difficult mate to master. It probably isn't worth learning at your level, at least in my opinion, as it is extremely rare and fairly difficult."

I disagree. You should learn how to mate with Knight and Bishop as soon as possible. It doesn't turn up as often in games of higher rated players, because the other player resigns before being forced to mate with Knight and Bishop. But in the lower rated games it is more likely to appear as the opponents play on until the end quite often, regardless of material advantage.


When you are consistently making major tactical blunders, studying rare endgames is not the most efficient use of your time.

I, for one, have never encountered this endgame, and it is clearly quite rare. It may be the case that masters usually resign such endgames, but even if they didn't, they do not come up often. According to Müller & Lamprecht, the checkmate occurs in only one in 5,000 games (that's 0.2%). So rather than spending quite a while mastering the bishop and knight checkmate to improve his win rate by 0.2%, Mystic could probably better use his time learning basic tactics and maybe endgames and at least one or two good openings than complicated mates.

It's not that he should never learn the mate, he just shouldn't bother at this rating. At a higher rating, it will become more important (and easier).

MysticStealth

So all in all, I made lots of major blunders, and I need to study up some more openings. I only know the king's pawn opening and the Spanish Variation(the one that ends up pinning a knight to the king). What openings are good for white. Like just out of curiosity, which ones do you play? I need to study some more so any help will do.

 

Thanks you guys!

Your awesomenessocity* is appreciated!

 

 

*not a real word, but you know what it means, because I cannot explain it to you!

Eebster
tonydal wrote:

Still, tryst's is the best reason I've ever heard for learning that fairly arduous and esoteric process.  I like it because it's practical, not a lot of quasiphilosophic stuff about the Powers of Piece Coordination.

And after all, though it may be exceedingly rare, Mystic was doubtless gonna have to know it this one time. :)


Well, he wouldn't doubtless have to know it this time, since, as Nalimov pointed out, it is possible (and preferable) to force a pawn promotion here. However, doing so is probably harder than just learning the mate.

Although to be honest, learning the tactics involved in promoting pawns in difficult situations like this is probably far more useful than learning the knight and bishop mate.