Nineteen Moves - that’s all it takes
A Memo to all younger Chess players, those under the age of twenty-five.
To My dear younger friends, especially to my grandchildren - Dan, Livvy, Ahryn, Beca, Reuben, James and Blake,
Yes, you need to start playing chess if you have not started already. If you have started already, I would like to encourage you to play at least three games a day through the website www.chess.com This website can be downloaded free of charge and you can play with other chess members throughout the world. I recommend that we play on the 10-minute game format first as this would train us to think fast as each player is only given ten minutes of play time to capture the opponent’s King. As you know, Chess develops our minds and our logical senses. Treat each game as a challenge in managing an organization of sixteen members - eight pawns (foot soldiers, or front-line staff), two bishops (field officers or backroom workers), two knights (your lieutenants or departmental managers), two rooks (your colonels or two-i-c’s), one queen (your commander-in-chief or CEO) and your king (the Boss man who pays for the upkeep of your army or your company).
Chess enables us to confront life-like experiences in management. It makes us realise that we cannot possibly be winning all the time. When we lost a game, we had to reflect and to rethink as to where our strategy had gone astray.
The game that I lost (playing black) in nineteen moves was painful to me. My analysis of the game reads as follows:
First the official analysis from Chess.com
Strength White (Jacques Pan, France) Black (FLai, New Zealand)
Excellent 15 10
Good 2 2
Inaccuracy (?!) 0 4
Mistake (?) 1 2
Blunder (??) 1 0
Forced 0 0
Best Move 73.3% 21.4%
Avg. Diff 0.87 2.23
Moves: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 g6
Names associated with Opening moves: C41: Philidor Defense: Exchange, Larsen Variation
Moves: 5. Nc3 Bg7 6. Be3 f6 INACCURACY (+1.83) A better move was 6… Ne7
(6… Ne7 7. h4 h5 8. Bc4 O-O 9. Qd2 Nbc6 10. O-O-O Nxd4 11. Bxd4)
Moves: 7. Bd3 f5 INACCURACY (+3.35) A better move was 7… Nc6
(7… Nc6 8. Bc4 Nxd4 9. Qxd4 Ne7 10. O-O-O Nc6 11. Qd5 Qe7 12. Qd2)
Moves: 8. exf5 gxf5 9. Nxf5 Bxf5 10. Bxf5 Ne7 INACCURACY (+5.95) A better move was 10… Nf6
(10… Nf6 11. O-O O-O 12. Bg5 Nc6 13. Nd5 Kh8 14. Re1 Ne5 15. Nf4)
Moves: 11. Bh3 BLUNDER (+2.61) The best move was 11. Qh5+
(11. Qh5+ Kf8 12. Be6 Ng6 13. Bg5 Bf6 14. Bh6+ Ke8 15. O-O-O Bxc3)
Moves: 11… Nbc6 12. Qh5+ Ng6 13. O-O Bxc3 14. bxc3 Qf6 INACCURACY (+5.83) A better move was 14… O-O
(14… O-O 15. Be6+ Kh8 16. f4 Nge7 17. f5 Qe8 18. Qh3 Ng8 19. Bg5)
Moves: 15. Bg5 Qxc3 16. Rae1+ Kf8 MISTAKE (♔ MATE IN 5) The best move was 16… Ne5
(16… Ne5 17. Qh6 Kf7 18. f4 Nf3+ 19. gxf3 Rae8 20. Rxe8 Rxe8 21. f5)
Moves: 17. Bh6+ Kg8 18. Qf5 MISTAKE (+14.64) The best move was 18. Qd5#
(18. Qd5#)
18… Nce7 MISTAKE (♔ MATE IN 1) The best move was 18… Qg7
(18… Qg7 19. Qd5+ Qf7 20. Be6 Nd8 21. Bxf7+ Nxf7 22. Qxb7 Rd8 23. Qxc7)
Final Move: 19. Qe6#
We can see that Jacque made 15 excellent moves compared to only 10 excellent moves on my part.
We both made 2 good moves each.
I made 4 Inaccurate moves compared to none from Jacques.
I made 2 mistakes compared to just 1 from Jacques.
I did not make a single ‘blunder’ move and yet I was unable to cash-in on Jacques ‘blunder’ move at his Move # 11.
Jacques, playing white, had 73.3% of best moves compared to a much-lower 21.4% of mine.
The average difference between the best and the worst move was 0.87 in Jacques case compared with my difference of 2.23.
The “better move was …” sections of the analysis are particularly interesting as they highlighted all of my failings in this match.
Study on!