Stupidest move ever made

It started off as a simul, but my game was soon the only one still going, and Tal turned it into a clock game at rapid time controls, in front of a big audience.

Karpov and Djindashvili were standing right behind me through the whole game, trading comments in Russian... which did little to improve my focus on the game.

That's pretty cool, Tal had to change the rules to draw with you...

I consider it a moral victory, yes. I would have preferred a victory of the OTHER sort, of course.

Well, that is just nowhere shy of *awesome*. Even a draw with (I assume) Black against a (I'm assuming timeframe) former WC is pretty freakin cool. Especially Tal, as The Wizard is my favorite player.

What was the opening?

Yeah, I was pretty happy about it.

It was in 1988 at Saint John. Tal was then ranked #4 in the world, and had just won the World Blitz Championship two days before.

I was Black in one of Tal's favorite openings, the Sicilian Najdorf. He sac'd two pieces for what looked like a mating attack, but I found a really odd resource involving dropping my Rook on an unprotected square at the intersection of two attacking lines (file + diagonal)... if he took with his Rook, it blocked his Bishop and my King could dash across; and vice-versa, if he took with the Bishop it blocked his Rook long enough for me to wiggle out.

We then went through an odd series of exchanges (two Rooks for four pieces) which saw my two pieces vs his Rook turn into HIS two pieces vs my Rook plus Pawns.

Unfortunately, I lost the score-sheet over the twenty-five years since then... I wonder if Karpov would still remember that game? He seemed amused by it at the time.

Well GM's do have ridiculous memories, perhaps send Roman a message on here...

I used to play the Poisoned Pawn as a n00b. But I don't play e4 or c5 anymore.

Is Roman Djindjashvili a forum member? I just might do that, if you could link me to his profile!

http://www.chess.com/members/view/JRLOK

Thanks... I'll send him a PM.

I blunder too much for one to stand out.  Last year I was playing a 2150ish player and reached a position where I could either sac an exchange and defuse his pressure with a small positional advantage.. or grimly defend with equal material and all his pieces gathering around my king.  I thought back and forth about which avenue to take for 30-45 minutes, mainly doublechecking to make sure the exchange sac worked... then right before I was about to play that.. noticed I could just move my knight to a nice square right in the middle of his position where it would cause him a huge amount of problems.. I looked at that move for all of 4 seconds.. plopped it down, hit my clock.. and you guessed it.. he shook his head and captured my unprotected knight with his queen.  I then remembered at the very beginning of my long think I had rejected this optically nice move for that very reason.  Ugh.  

Isn't that what's called the Kotov syndrome?

[edit] In Kotov's 1971 book Think Like a Grandmaster, he described a situation when a player thinks very hard for a long time in a complicated position but does not find a clear path, then running low on time quickly makes a poor move, often a blunder.^[1] The term has been applied to similar non-chess situations, and is the title of a song on the album Appeal to Reason (7 October 2008) by the Punk Rock band Rise Against.^[2]