Sunday Chessbrunch #7: Cultural Exchange
I recently read an article over at FiveThirtyEight, detailing chess correspondent Oliver Roeder’s recent meeting and game with Magnus Carlsen. It’s a fun and short read, and the game itself — lopsided as it was — is worth a few minutes of study.
Toward the end of the article Roeder wrote something that stuck out at me:
For me, chess is a cultural and aesthetic experience — and one that I’m lucky enough to get to write about sometimes. It is not, typically, a competitive one, in the sense that I’m just not very good. I’ve always held grandmasters in high regard, and I do even more so now. I’ve witnessed an Ali knockout firsthand.
This stuck out at me because I think I’m in a similar place. I am also not very good at chess. I always suspected as much, but now I have a USCF rating to prove it. My tournament record is abysmal. My casual club play is pretty hit-or-miss.
But I find I still have fun doing this.
Not after tournaments, of course. After my last one I was feeling really down on myself, and I still kind of am. When I find myself having a good day and decide I need to bring things down a few notches, a few blitz games on Lichess.org are a great way for me to knock my mood back down.
But I’ve had fun organizing my monthly Queer Chess Social. There’s a Thursday night chess club that recently moved to a brewery taproom close to my house — it’s a good crowd and it’s easy enough for me to get to, so I think I’m going to make it a regular thing. I still like playing correspondence games with Benjamin and, more recently, a friend from work. Benjamin and I are planning to hit up the North Avenue Beach Chess Pavilion this summer. And I’m in the early stages of planning a “vacation” next year at the Chicago Open — I will almost certainly get creamed, but I’ll get to spend a weekend in a nice hotel and play some chess.
But what I’m finding really fun — pickup games with strangers in coffeehouses. A few times now I’ve set up a board, either to signal folks coming to a chess club meeting or when I’m about to do some solo study, and another patron will come up and ask if I’m interested in a game. I usually prefer to keep to myself, for a variety of reasons, but I’m finding myself treasuring these moments and interactions.
I really love this game for its own sake. But I’m also coming to love it as a conduit for other things — for connections with other people that might not have happened otherwise. A cultural experience, as Roeder said.
(The aesthetics definitely help too.)
Brett Hightower vs James Bridget Gordon, Chess.com 2018
This was my most recent correspondence game with Brett, a friend from work. You can see the whole game on Lichess.
- e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Bd3 Nbd7 4. Nf3 e5
I’ve been trying out a new opening for Black. I haven’t been happy with the French and I wanted to explore other responses to 1.e4. Then I watched a video on YouTube with GM Simon Williams on the Black Lion Opening — apparently a more aggressive variant of the Philidor Defense. I decided to give it a shot. So far I’ve had good games with it online and at my new Thursday night chess club. It ended up working out well for me here too.
5. d5 Be7 6. O-O O-O 7. c4 c6 8. Qe2 Nc5 9. Nc3 h6 10. h3
Once we got our first few bits out of the way, the rest of the opening seemed to consist largely of prophylactic moves. Locking down the center, preventing awkward bishop pins, etc. This is the point when the game stopped being so polite.
10. …Nh5
My idea was to follow up with 11. …Nf4. Hits the queen and the light square bishop, plus it exerts pressure on both the center and White’s kingside bunker. Worse comes to worse, I give up the knight for the dark square bishop and I have an isolated pawn on the kingside to help destabilize the wall.
What ended up happening worked out much better for me.
11. Nxe5 dxe5 12. Qxh5
I think White thought he was picking up a free piece. Or maybe he figured he’d come out even on the exchange but he’d be able to plant his queen on e5. Either way, this feels like a miscalculation on his part.
12. …Nxd3 13. Rb1 Nxc1 14. Rbxc1 Bg5
I’m up a piece, I have a bishop pair, and White’s attack has ground to a halt. My next steps: pawn break in the center, then flinging as much firepower as I could at White’s king.
15. Rc2 f5 16 f3
I spent so much time trying to work out how best to break down the kingside structure. White just sort of went ahead and did it for me.
16. …fxe4 17. fxe4 Be3+
It’s all downhill from here.
18. Kh1 Rxf1+ 19. Kh2 Bg1+
I realized later that he could’ve made things tricky for me with 20. Kh1. Instead, the king bolted out in the open.
20. Kg3 Qf6
Threatening mate with Qf4. White could’ve delayed checkmate, but there was no way for him to stop what was coming, and even the Stall For Time plan meant giving up his queen.
White saw the writing on the wall and resigned.
Solution to puzzle: 1. b8 = N! A rare position that calls for underpromotion. Promoting to a Queen yields stalemate, while any other move allows the Black King an avenue of escape. It continues: 1. …Kxe8 (the only legal move) and ends with 2. Qg8#.
