Chess discussion/analysis - all welcome

The Game Room
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In the most recent chess thread (Help. I suck at chess), poster @Pasta kindly offered to analyse someone else’s games - I’m hoping they might be willing to do this here, along with anyone else who is interested (e.g., but not limited to, @glee, @Chessic_Sense). As well as any general chess chat that people want to have.

The game I am about to post is unusual for me in that it is the first time I have attempted a full game under blindfold conditions - it was played via a Facebook comments thread, and at no point did I set up the position on a physical or virtual board. As you will see, I’m not really good enough to do this - I was just pleased to have a vaguely sensible game in which I avoided any obvious blunders and illegal moves! Interestingly, my opponent is genuinely blind in real life, I first played him many years ago in person and he used a special board on which the pieces were fixed securely enough that he could feel their positions with his hands without dislodging them unintentionally. I believe he didn’t make use of this for this game, but as I expected, he did much better than me in any case.

Hopefully this will work as a link to the game so you can play through it, I was Black: the game.

My initial thoughts are as follows: I knew taking the pawn on move 4 could be risky, but it seems playable. I didn’t like 6…Bd6 at the time for obvious reasons, and like it even less now - I guess Be7 was called for, instead? Even then, I think I might have been OK had I taken the opportunity to play …h6 on move 10 or 11, to prevent Ng5. After that I was just defending as best I could, and still thought I was going to get away with it until I saw Ne6+, which also brought White’s black-squared bishop into the attack. My last mistake was probably capturing the knight with the wrong pawn, I think I was hoping that with …fxe6 my king might find an escape route to the queenside, but actually after dxe6 White seems to have fewer options for pressing the attack and I might have had more chance of taking the sting out of it, albeit I would still end up down material.

Anyway, feel free to comment away!

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Playing blindfold is pretty difficult (and tiring!)
Blind players are entitled to use a suitable board to keep track of the current position - but they are not allowed to analyse on it.

Here are my comments on the opening.

  1. c3? is a mistake. The ‘book’ moves are 4. d3 (solid, quiet) and 4. Ng5 (exciting with gambit play to come.)

  2. … Bd6 does develop a piece, but leaves the e5 pawn pinned.
    However 7. d4 can be met by 7. … OO!, when after 8. dxe5 Nxe5 9. Nxe5 Bxe5 10. Qxe5? Re8 wins the Queen.

  3. … Be7? just loses back the e-pawn.

After 9. Ne4 I think 9. … Be7 sorts out Black’s position (preparing … d5.)
Then White has no compensation for the lost pawn.
I sympathise with 9. … Nxe4, because it looks natural. However after 10. Qxe4 White has some play based on Ng5.
Here if 10. … h6 11. Qg6! threatens Bxh6 and I think White wins the pawn back.

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Thanks for the comments. I think if I were to play this position again, I would simply play 6…d6 instead, and look to develop my bishop to e7 or g7. Also, instead of 9…Nxe4 I guess I could simply play 9…Bb7 (for example), then if White exchanges knights followed by Qe4, my queen on f6 is a defence to the line you mention.

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Every game I look deeply at is a chance to improve my own game, so I’m always happy to look.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. c3
4. c3 is a strange move that looks to immediately lose the e4 pawn. This gambit by white of the e4 pawn does, apparently, exist (de Riviere gambit or Neumann gabit), but it it rare. White’s “compensation” could come via 4…Nxe4 5.Bd5 Nf6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. Nxe5 Bd6 8.d4, with material equality. But if white is going to go through all that trouble just to get equal material and yet be that far behind in development, then 4. c3 is just bad. This gambit was played at top-tier level most recently in 2009 in a rapid game between the Teimour Radjabov and former World Champion Vishy Anand. (Anand declined the gambit, playing 4…a6 instead. Any normal player would just take that pawn.)

4…Nxe4 5. d3 Nf6 6. Qe2 Bd6
6…Bd6 cost you the game. You’re not losing here by any sense, but it immediately gets you so tangled up that you never recover and things kinda go downhill. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on other candidate moves, in particular 6…d6. That looks like the most natural move by far: protects the e5 pawn and gets ready to develop the light-squared bishop (LSB). I wouldn’t have considered any other move seriously at all. In a long game I might look at Be7 for a split second in case there is interesting counterplay against the white queen that ends up a little loose on e5 (e.g., …d5, …O-O, and …Be6 ideas), but I don’t see anything worth pursuing there. (I dropped this into the engine just to see, and apparently there is a line, but it’s craaaazy and not something a human could ever try to find over the board. Besides, 6…d6 is strictly better anyway.)

Anyway, back to 6…Bd6. Issues with this move:

  • It blocks your d pawn. …d6 is useful immediately, but …d5 is perhaps a future hope to take more center and to blunt white’s LSB.

  • You also must now develop your own LSB to b7. Does that bishop have scope from that square? In the short term it will be blocked by the c6 knight. Often this is a non-issue, but you can’t answer the question “what’s the plan for the g7 bishop?” without a good answer for “what’s the plan for the c6 knight?” That knight can’t move immediately (guarding the e5 pawn) and if ever you get something else helping on e5, b4 from white really freezes the knight.

  • Your DSB is now just a “tall pawn”. Rather than helping keep white out of your kingside (g5 is an important square that the bishop can look at from e7), it’s stuck babysitting a pawn.

This one move is at the heart of all future problems.

7. O-O O-O 8. Nbd2
It’s hard to do when playing blindfolded as in this game, but when the opponent makes a knight maneuver, it’s important to consider where that knight is headed and what that implies. In this case, white is surely heading to e4 with the knight, at which point you can already ask what you would do. If you plan to take (which you did), then after Qxe4 in reply, white’s pieces are getting very active on the kingside with Ng5 on deck, as in the game. Anything now that doesn’t deal with that inevitability may prove too slow. 8…h6 could be worth the tempo here (although keep a careful eye on the pin of the f pawn. g6 will be an unguarded square until you get your queen to f6 or the pin is resolved.) The time you take to develop your LSB to g7 won’t pay off for a long time anyway. “Getting developed” is good, but in this case the development is neither meeting white’s initiative-filled development with your own counter-initiative or meeting his with defensive development.

8…b6 9. Ne4 Nxe4 10. Qxe4 Bb7 11. Bd5
Not sure what white’s intention is with 11. Bd5?. You’d love, love, love him to take your knight (your LSB would be the best piece in the game), and it doesn’t do anything active otherwise. Very strange move.

11…Qe7
Why not 11…Qf6 ? Both squares serve to overprotect e5, you leave the e7 square for your bishop or knight when suitable, your queen is much more active, and you may have opportunity to trade queens (squelching the growing attack and heading toward the endgame a pawn up.).

12. Ng5 g6 13. Qh4 h5
All very forcing.

14. g4 Kg7
14…Nd8 is an interesting try, neutralizing white’s LSB one way or another.

15. gxh5 Rh8 16. h6+ Rxh6 17. Ne6+!
Indeed, the move that makes 16. h6+ so strong, as you noted. A good sequence by white.

17…fxe6 18. Qxh6+ Kf7 19. Be4 Rg8 20. Bg5 Qf8 21. Qh7+ Qg7 22. Bxg6+ Kf8 23. Bh6 1-0

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should say “…Bd6 ideas”

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That’s really interesting - I wonder why Anand didn’t take the pawn? My guess is that the line was so unusual he didn’t know (or couldn’t immediately recall) it, and being a rapid game he didn’t feel like spending the time to work out whether it was good or not - he probably also assumed that his opponent was better-prepared on it than he was, presumably correctly. Perhaps a psychological gambit by Radjabov as much as a playable one.

Yeah, good analysis, totally agree. The silly thing is, I knew a lot of this before I played it, but went ahead anyway. I think my thought process was that I wanted to defend my pawn in such a way as to develop a piece and prepare to castle ASAP (since as a general principle, gambits are to attack the king, so getting the king out of the centre was a priority for me - actually, as it turned out, castling kingside also led to my downfall, possibly it would have been better to not hurry to play …O-O after all - with the centre pretty closed, I was in no immediate danger. Developing my queenside and then maybe castling there was probably better, given my kingside was soon to lose the important f6 knight.

I also think the ‘blindfold’ was a factor here - I literally didn’t see how bad …Bd6 looks. I don’t think I would ever play it in a normal game.

Having said all that, I don’t normally like to play …d6 either, since it blocks the dark-squared bishop. No doubt that was a factor in my thinking. But as you say, in this position, 6…d6 looks clearly best.

Yeah, I underestimated the threat of Qxe4. I think I simply didn’t consider it to be honest, I was expecting White to recapture with the pawn. This is a common error at my level - expecting/hoping the opponent to play a certain way, and thus discounting other options.

I can see a couple of points to it - one is, with Bxc6 Bxc6 Nxe5, White can win his pawn back. And the other is that my Bb7 is undefended, so my c6 knight is now pinned.

Good point. Qe7 is too passive, you’re right.

I think I did consider Nd8 in the game, but was too concerned about the kingside attack. I probably didn’t realise (again, blindfold) that white’s Bishop on d5 is hanging in that line, which is key.

Many thanks for the analysis, all good stuff!

If anyone else wants to add anything, or put one of their own games up, fire away.

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First of all, I’ve never played a blind game of chess. I’m not sure I’m that amazing a player, so I put in my thoughts first and then ran the Stockfish engine to evaluate.

Still, want to do what I can to help out.

I put the game in Lichess as a study. [Link]

That a solid attack with more pieces prevails is a general truism, but the specifics seem to be:

    1. c3 is an error, not a sacrifice. You grabbed it, and were right to do so; there was little benefit to white for drop that pawn.
  2. Stockfish says you were winning for much of the game.
  3. Needed more trading. If you’re up a pawn, taking all the pieces off the board tilts in your favor. You were also cramped for space, which is easier with fewer pieces as well. Big attacks are very hard to engineer without the queen; if you’d managed to get them off the board things would look strong for you.

I’m not a great player (I’m around 1450 on Lichess) so don’t take everything I say as a grandmaster level of value but would love to play sometime.

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Thanks. As it happens my rating on chess.com is around 1450, but it’s probably not very accurate since I have only played 2 other friends so far, both of whom have much lower ratings. I believe I’ve beaten the computer player rated up to 1900 but there’s no way my real life ELO would be that high.

I agree with you about trading, I’m not averse to going into endgames when up (or equal) on material as I feel they are a relative strength of mine. In this game I just couldn’t engineer it - the one piece I did manage to trade (the knights on e4), it opened me up to the winning attack!

If anyone wants a game on chess.com, drop me an invite - I’m MarcusEvans42 on there.