Supranormal Acitivity in Chess

Nice cook of 10.Ba6; I just looked at Qh5ch and stopped analyzing. Shucks; I'll have to accept that the Berliner Gambit merits just a footnote or find an improvement for White, which seems unlikely. Still, no one has been able to find equality after 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nd4 6.c3 b5 7.Bf1 Nxd5 8.cxd4 (This may be better than Ne4, freeing the c3 square for the Knight and driving the King to a bad square.)

It gets pretty interesting after 8...Qxg5 9.Bxb5ch Kd8 10.Qf3 Bb7 11.O-O Rb8 12.dxe5! Ne3 13.Qh3 (Threatening mate) Qxg2ch 14.Qxg2 Nxg2 15.d4 f6 16.f4 Nh4 17.Be2 & White has a solid extra pawn.

shucks...it's time to untrack again.

For some  reason when I posted the ISBN number it didn't appear where I thought it was---anyway the ISBN is: ISBN 0-87568-277-4

Well this is certainly a surprise to me and I'm guessing to whoever happens to come back into the thread.

You see we get trolls or otherwise crazy people from time to time and your talking about "supranormally" beating Fritz8 didn't do much for you in the credibility department.

This really isn't the place to throw out many lines of analysis you or others have done for people to churn over and give you feedback.  This site has a lot of beginners who ask things like "how many pieces can the horsey jump over when killing a pawn" and not many authors.

What I mean is, if you really have written the book, surely there are better places to discuss the lines you've researched.

Wha? Orangehonda, I find sloughterchess less than fully persuasive at times, (and perhaps a bit odd with the supranormal business) ... but his content isn't too chessy for a chess site! Where is one supposed to go looking for comments on one's research into the Xyz gambit, if not the forums of a correspondence chess site!?

*edit -- and isn't it a bit cheeky appointing yourself moderator?

Re-reading my post it didn't quite come off how I meant it, I wasn't trying to moderate anything and the content was not at all cheesy, I fully expect to find these lines in Moody's or other Evans Gambit Books.  I was trying to suggest a different venue for his ideas. 

This isn't any correspondence site, it's a geared for beginners who want to learn and improve and it's membership shows they've succeeded.  I think this is a great site and I only wish it was around when I became interested in chess but the overwhelming number of it's members aren't going to give satisfactory feedback to a chess author.  I hope that's been more than proven by the posts in this thread at least.

Of course the members (including myself) and staff would be more than happy to have any number of authors and titled players play on the site and post in the forums, but from an author's point of view I wouldn't imagine the posts on his Evans Gambit Revolution have given him much food for thought.  In fact most posts ignore the lines and some, including myself, have mocked him for some of the claims.

Also I'm hinting that other than some claims that I consider fairly outrageous as well as the idea of "supranormal" chess in the first place I find it dubious that an author would stick around to have his research ignored and mocked and so even with an ISBN # (which I never expected to get) it's still likely in my mind that it's a troll.

  You want more surprises?  I also wrote a book on the Latvian Gambit, under my alias...do you just need the ISBN #? 

No Ms. Kasparova, your word is good enough for me.

Ms Kasparova,

In your next book on the Latvian, you might want to add the game I played against ICM John Elburg. We were discussing tactics and strategy while we were playing the game. Since he is one of the world's leading experts on the Latvian, here is the score of the game:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5 3.Nxe5 Qf6 4.d4 d6 5.Nc4 fxe4 6.Nc3 Qg6 7.Ne3 Nf6 8.Be2 N? In the game Fischer-Pupols, Bobby tried 8.Bc4 and lost. My idea is to skewer the Queen. 8...c6 9.O-O Be7 10.f3 d5 11.fxe4 dxe4

At this point, John said, "What to do? Give up the Latvian, I love it too much!" His superior playing strength carried the day. White has only a tiny plus (i.e. playable for Black) because of his grid lock on the Queenside. I tried to unravel with an attempt to transpose to an Evans Gambit after:

12.Bc4?! (Maybe it is better to try 12.Nc4 Bh3 13.Rf2 Nd7 13.Qd2/Qg5 = to +/=) Rf8 13.Ne2 Nh5 14.Rxf8ch Bxf8 15.b4? If White is going to play this he probably should have played 15.Kh1 first. The idea was to deny Black the ability to castle Queenside. 

15...Bxb4 (John said, "I eat your pawns!")

16.c3 Bd6 17.a4 (I told John that if he played Be6, I intended to play 18.Ba2 with the idea of meeting Bxa2 with Rxa2 and the Rook winds up on a good square. If Nd7 I intended 19.c4, but Black is better anyway after 19...Nf4 -/+) instead, he played 17...Nd7. The Knights wound up on d3 and d5.

John went on to win with his extra pawn.

sloughter.  That's an A for effort.  And I mean the post, not the game.

My endgame skills are so bad that I can only beat Fritz 8 in the middlegame. I can even lose dead drawn Bishops-of-opposite color endgames!

The following innovation was played against a Postal Expert, Klein, in the 1994 Golden Knights tournament. The reason I mention this game is that it is a gambit on the fourth move of the Petroff Defense, one of the oldest openings in chess. It is named after me in a number of data bases and the game was published in its entirety in both Inside Chess and Chess Life

I am terrible at endgames. So how do you account for the fact that I played an endgame in the game Moody-Klein that had been seen only once before, in the game Capablanca-Yates, New York, 1924, a Knight Wheel? According to Chernev, in his book, "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings"

"This beautiful, original way of winning a pawn had never occurred before in actual play."

My Knight Wheel involved winning zugzwang (or, if you're a purist, a squeeze) apparently the first time this has happened.

The game is covered in its entirety in the thread called, "Perfect Game in the Petroff?"

Here are the starting moves:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Qe2 (In my data base from Colin Leach, there were 8 games with this move, none containing my fourth move)

3...Nc6 (GM Lev Alburt may have come up with a novelty here; he suggests 3...d6 with the idea of a Pirc. I intended to meet that with c3/Qc2)

4.d4! This makes it a gambit (4...Nxd4 5.Nxd4 exd4  6.e5 Nd5 7.Qe4 ((Now it gets weird; Fritz plays c6 here and after 8.Bc4 Bc5 9.Bxd5 cxd5 10.Qg4 with comp.))

4...exd4 5.e5 Nd5 6.Qe4 Bb4ch 7.Bd2 Bxd2ch 8.Nxd2 Nde7 9.O-O-O & White won back his gambit pawn, and kept his lead in in development all the way into the endgame where he was able to exploit Black's subsequent pawn weaknesses with the Knight Wheel. (see the thread)

I simply observe---I play endgames at about 1300 level, but managed to play an endgame seen only once before and only then by a World Champion.

yeah, the endgame issue is a bit over the top. lol  Everything else was...you know...likely. 

sloughter.  confess...how much fun have you had with this thread?  You got a bunch of sincere responses...that must have been worth at least a bucket of chuckles.

8. Ne4 Ne6 9. Bxb5+ Bd7 10. Ba6 f5 11.Ng3 Ndf4!(instead of ...Nef4 or ...Nc5) is an improvement over your other suggested lines

8. cxd4 Qxg5 9. Bxb5+ Kd8 10. Qf3 exd4 is adequate, according to Fritz 8.

White has to walk through a mine field, but I think he can get a plus +/= to +/-

About twenty years ago I sponsored a thematic tournament using the following move order 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Qe2. Because I had been working with GM Lev Alburt for several years, he showed our analysis to World Champion Garry Kasparov and GM Max Dlugy, an opening's specialist. They concluded that the positions after 3...Be7 4.Nf3 Bh4ch 5.Kd1 Be7 were unclear to equal.

The key variations, though, are 3...d5! 4.exd5ch Be7 5.Nf3 Nf6 6.Qb5ch with a complex positions where Black may be a little better.

The second one I faced is very difficult to play for White. 3...Nc6 4.Kd1! (I tried 4.c3 and lost---if 4.Nf3 g5! and the Queen is not on a good square. The whole idea of 3.Qe2 is to discourage h6 or g5 which are just met with h4.) 4...Nd4 5.Qc4. Fritz 11 recommended the last two moves for both sides.

Here is the winner of the thematic tournament (by the way the chief practitioner of 3.Qe2 is Kari Heinola; he has played this system for decades). I had a local master provide a few likely continuations. The most difficult move order to meet is probably 3...d5. Here are a few favorable continuations for Black:

3.Qe2 d5 4.Nc3 d4 6.Nd5 g5 7.c3 c6 8.Nb4 Nf6 =/+

3.Qe2 d5 5.exd5ch Be7 5.d4 Nf6 6.Nc3 O-O 7.Bxf4 Re8 -/+

3.Qe2 d5 4.exd5ch Be7 5.Qe5 Nf6 6.Bc4 O-O 7.Nf3 Re8 -/+

3.Qe2 d5 4.exd5ch Be7 5.Qb5ch c6 6.dxc6 Nxc6 =/+ (very complicated and playable for both sides.)

3.Qe2 d5 4.exd5ch Be7 5.c4 (unclear)

Here is the winner of the thematic tournament, Rigby (2271)-Green (2015)

Black doesn't have to play 13...Bg4. 13...Nxa1 is a better idea

One of ther measures of supranormal as opposed to just "better" is that when my game is "on" no calculation is done i.e. my responses are purely intuitive and take seconds. I just place my pieces and pawns on the squares where they belong. In this situation I occasionally beat Fritz 8, and draw GM Alburt. When my game is "off" and I have to calculate, my play drops to about 1500 level. In the next odds game which is given in its entirely on the thread, "Greatest odds game ever?", my game was on, I used only intuition, and didn't miss any tactical shots. How many of you could find the starting position and know it was playable?

When GM Lev Alburt looked at the starting position, he evaluated it as +-; then 6 moves later, despite no obvious mistakes by White, his evaluation dropped to +/-.

In this odds game, I gave a stronger computer, Sphinx Legend, a nine tempo lead in development and a minimum of an hour/move so that it would crunch overnight sometimes. If we assume that a Master-strength computer could crunch 120 X faster than the Sphinx Legend, the Sphinx woul have the same computing strength as a Master-strength computer using about 30 seconds/move.

Ignore the first ten moves when the computer played mindlessly and the resulting game is unique, not just from the standpoint of there being no pattern recognition or opening principles, it was unique because I came up with a winning plan before I made my first move. I "knew" to win that I had to walk my King to the a8 square (it took me 26 moves to do this) and then attack the computer's King with all my pieces and pawns.

The maneuvering on the 7th and 8th is unlike anything you've seen before, and even GM Alburt, missed a key resource for Black. This is perhaps the finest play against a Bad Bishop spanning 40 moves. Here is the starting position and the first few moves. For the balance of the game, see the thread, "Greatest Odds Game Ever?"

Nice post Dustin! I'm kind of partial to Sammy Reshevsky who once told me that he thought the Lasker Defense refuted the Evans Gambit. His natural talent was so good he could battle Fischer, an openings specialist, to a draw in the Piatagorsky Cup.

This is one way to trap the Knight khpa21:

Is this thread untracked?