Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Implosion moves

One of the fascinating features of chess is that in many situations, no matter how far ahead you are in material or position, you can be just a single bad move away from defeat. It's not just any old bad move, either; it's actually the worst move you can make at that moment in time. I call moves like this implosion moves. It's instructive how the time pressure of blitz can cause these moves to bubble up to the surface. Last night, in my fourth game, I made an implosion move in the middle game. I was up a rook and three pawns, and could have safely made nearly any move other than the one I chose. I advanced a pawn, allowing my opponent's bishop on the long diagonal to capture a knight for free. Worse, my opponent now had a double attack on the pawn directly in front of my king; in trying to defend it, I got my queen into a "capture net". She fell several moves later, and I was forced to resign. The night did hold some good news, however; I won one more game than I lost :-)

neostreet: 1211 (101-100-12 (213))
monvieux: 1265 (297-245-15 (557))

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