My recent OTB tournament game ...

thought I'd share this ... very spectacular game :)  I blundered on move 19/20 and lost my queen, it wasn't as bad as it looked as I had rook + bishop as compensation, in fact I never was more than two pawn units behind in terms of material, but of course I got into serious disadvantage - in fact I was very short of resigning when on move 36 my opponent sacrificed his queen for my rook!? When after the game I asked him why, he replied that my bishop-rook attack seemed dangerous to him ... however this was a pure act of desperation on my side, hoping for some miraculous perpetual check, discovered check or whatever ...

I have to add that my opponent was blind and we played on two boards - myself on a normal board and my opponent on a special board for the blind ... he also recorded the moves by punching Braille letters into his form ... it was very interesting! Of course I was very happy about the win after I thought myself beaten and ready to resign :)

The queeen for the rook was tough to understand, but it was a hard fought game. He was blind! Of course the more you play chess the more it is a mental picture in your head, but still to remember the whole board all the time. 

It must be very difficult to play like this (usually this is something for grandmasters), but it's probably actually easier for the blind, since they are used to perceive everything just by touch ... The blind team are not the strongest team in this tournament, but they are all players with normal Elo ratings (the strongest even over 2000) which they got by playing seeing opponents all the time.

Sometimes I ask myself if I should have offered him a draw since I was clearly losing ... however I made a bad blunder, he made an even worse blunder, and he probably wouldn't have accepted a draw offer from me a few moves earlier, so I think it was OK to take the win and the result was still fair :)

I question gxf3... hangs the h pawn =P

not really ... 19. gxf3 20. Qxh3? Bxf8! and I lose the exchange for 1 rook pawn ... don't know if I'd liked this even if it would certainly have destroyed the king's castle.

I still think the correct way to go would have been first to save my rook (c5, Re8, whatever) and then think about a more solid attack :)

mmm Qxh3 Bxf8 Bxf3 maybe? Even if Rxf8, swing the rook over, white cant do ANYTHING since the pawns lock the white pieces out.

You're right, just checked with Fritz - gives more than -5 after gxf3 Qxf3 ... man, this could have been an easy win (and makes my Qg7+ even worse ...)

I just wonder that I missed this even in my analysis of the game (I go through all the moves with Fritz for every recorded game of mine) - obviously I didn't even look what the best move was :)

edit: 18. Bb4 was already very bad (but then taking on f3 with the B instead of the N) - he should have exchanged the d4 knight instead.