Queen shock

 

Hmmm, yes nice...

Bg6 silly careless move.

True. But the winner of a game of chess is always the player who makes the next to last mistake.

Nope... a player can make lots of mistakes in a row.....

Sure. But it's the last one that loses. That's what's called a "truism", meaning it cannot be false in any possible world.

I agree that the player making the last mistake loses but that doesn t mean that the same player could not also have made the next to last mistake , in which case he should be the winner according to your earlier statement.

Well, as long as the evaluation of the position stays within reasonable bounds, @KantWasWrong's idea is true. But what happens if one side is up a Rook and then hangs their, say, b-pawn?

As a philosopher, I enjoy these sorts of exchanges. The adage is true. It's a tautology, and so cannot be false.

@greekgift: Bh4 was intentional. It weakened the Black pawns, and then parked itself on g3 where it kept a watchful eye on e5, where Black had a pawn that he had to keep defending. I learned the technique from my lessons.

Personally, I think if the bishop turns out to be poorly placed on g3, 7. Bg5, not 8. Bh4, was the mistake.

You're a 1400, dude. The player who makes the last mistake does not, in fact, always lose, and you're not nearly high rated enough to evaluate that anyway. Especially if you're preaching it as gospel. Maybe at the beginner level, most games come down to the last mistake just because the players are so weak, but certainly that isn't true when you get to people who play real chess. You can't just mess with the wording of "mistake" at will to make it correct. There has to be some concrete definition of it, beyond just "move that gives you a losing position." That's not the definition of mistake. That's a definition you made up to make your idea true.

Yes.

It is certainly true that I'm no good. I probably should have quoted instead of paraphrased:

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." - Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower

Is he good enough?

It would be, if you weren't saying it's a tautology. It isn't.

 Okay, let's change the subject, then. A tautology is a statement that cannot be false — for example: "The bachelor is not married." In logic, we call it a biconditional implication, and represent it thus: A <-> B. The fact that he is a bachelor and unmarried imply each other. That's elementary Kripke first order predicate logic.

Tartakower's tautology is of the same FOPL form: The fact that the player is the victor and the fact that he makes the penultimate error imply each other.

QED

He is good enough but that doesn t make it true, a player can make two mistakes in a row.

Conider for instance

e4 g5 (this is mistake number one, the next to last)

Nc3 f5 (mistake number 2 the last one)

Qh5 checkmate.

And what if a player makes a mistake but is still better, and both sides play perfectly from then on?

You can't change the definition of "mistake" at will, though. If mistake meant "losing move" I'd agree. It doesn't, though.

I'll give a trophy to the first person who can find a game someone showcased in which they lost. Happy Hunting.

Tartakower did not exclude the last mistake. With respect, your argument is a non sequitur.

Also, no one said it was true just because a GM said it. Quoting him was in response to being told that I'm such a hopelessly weak player that I have no place commenting on such matters. The GM merely observed a tautology and voiced it. His saying it does not make it true; the fact that it cannot be false makes it true.