Sunday Chessbrunch #8: Axis Mundi
My life is about to get eaten by soccer.
I’m a sports journalist by trade, and I primarily cover soccer. There’s this big thing starting on Thursday, maybe you’ve heard of it.
As a fan and as a writer, the World Cup ends up taking up most of my time and bandwidth for a month. It’s an adjusted sleep schedule. It’s a lot of deadlines in a short period of time. It’s having to not make a lot of firm plans because something big might happen.
I look forward to this every few years, and I’ve been looking forward to this one since it would be my second as a soccer writer. (In some ways it feels like my first, since my gig writing about the last World Cup was something I sort of stumbled into.) I’ve been hyped about this, is what I’m saying.
Yet there’s still a part of me that’s sweating how I’m going to fit chess into all this.
I still have my weekly chess club commitments. The next Queer Chess Social is this upcoming Thursday — the first day of the World Cup, in fact. Benjamin and I are also having our Outdoor Chessbrunch next Sunday at the North Avenue Beach Chess Pavilion. I’m probably going to have to scrap my plans for hitting up one of the Chicago Chess Center tournaments at the end of the month, but I’m okay with that.
But I still fear that chess might have to take a bit of a backstep for the next month. I just have too much going on.
All this to say: forgive me if new content here slows down again. I promise I’ll come back up for air as I can.
Joey Comeau vs James Bridget Gordon, Lichess.org 2018
When I was in college one of my favorite webcomics was A Softer World. It was affecting for me in ways I couldn’t quite put into words except for maybe gratitude. The run of the comic has ended and both creators have gone on to other projects. One of the co-authors, Joey Comeau, streams his games on Lichess to Twitch. I stumbled on it a few weeks ago and was, naturally, surprised and delighted.
On one such stream I challenged him to a game, though I figured he would politely decline. He didn’t! I got to play a game of chess with one of my favorite working writers. I was pleased as punch — even with the poor result.
You can, of course, view the full game on Lichess.
1.c4 Nf6 2. g3 g6 3. d4 d6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. Nf3 O-O 6. O-O Nbd7 7. Nc3 c5 8. b3 b6 9. Bb2 Bb7 10. Rc1 Rc8 11. Re1
It looked like this game was going to be a slow and tense one, with both of us probing weaknesses in a closed position. That didn’t last long.
11. … e5 12. dxe5 Nxe5 13. Nd5 Nxd5 14. cxd5
Maybe 8 or 9 times out of 10, I wouldn’t see the tactic that I saw here. I’m just not great at calculation and my tactical sense needs a lot of work. So I was kind of proud at myself for seeing this combination.
14. …Nxf3+ 15. Bxf3 Bxb2
I’m up a piece, I have a bishop pair, and White will need at least a couple moves to get an attack going. Things were going pretty well for me.
16 Rc2 Ba3 17. e4 Re8 18. Bg2 Bb4 19. Re3 Rc7 20. Qg4 Bc8 21.Qf4 Rce7 22. Qh6 f5 23. exf5 Bxf5 24. Rce2 Ba3 25. Rxe7 Rxe7 26. Qg5
Stockfish has this at about a -5.1. A strong advantage, but not winning yet.
This is where I threw it all away.
What I should’ve played is 26. ..Re8, allowing the queen trade and nerfing White’s best chance for counterplay. Instead I played this bullshit.
26. …Qd7
I really have no defense for this. It was a stupid miscalculation and I should’ve done better.
27. Rxe7 h6 28. Qf6 Bb2 29. Qf7+
Forced mate on the next move and nothing I could do about it. I resigned here.
The result and the stupid mistake notwithstanding, it was still really cool to play this game. You should definitely check out Joey’s Twitch stream sometime.
Solution to puzzle: 1. Qd4! If Black captures with the knight on f3, White simply recaptures with their knight to reveal a discovered checkmate with the rook. And if Black makes any other move, White delivers mate with 2. Qa2#.
