In the last few years, I have seen the Prospect players make some really bad moves. Nevertheless, I like to remind myself that they really are not any worse than some of the moves I have made in my own games; they are just more frequent. Against Elk Grove, though, our 2nd Board came up with one that was particularly impressive. After misplaying the opening against Elk Grove's Calvin Cheng, Tejas Shah did a good job of defending an unpleasant position and eventually found a couple of nice tactics to turn the game around. However, he played the ending nonchalantly and eventually found a blunder that turned his easy win into a draw and a drawn match into a loss.
Prospect lost to Elk Grove by a score of 39.5-28.5, giving Elk Grove its best record in four years. Because Elk Grove has been a weak team historically, Prospect's faculty coach Don Barrett decided that this would be a good match to give some of the reserves a chance to play. However, given that Elk Grove had defeated Rolling Meadows soundly in its first match of the season, substituting in four new boards might have been overly optimistic. While the subs triumphed on 7th and 8th Boards, Elk Grove punished Prospect on 3rd through 6th. Still, if Prospect could have gotten a full point on 2nd Board, the match would have been drawn.
A few years back, IM Larry D. Evans wrote an article in Chess Life arguing somewhat facetiously that checks are bad moves. This is plainly an exaggeration since checkmate wins the game. Nevertheless, it is often true that the best way to get to checkmate is by confining the opponent's king rather than by attacking it. I have seen countless games in which players aimlessly chase their opponent's king around the board with checks rather than driving it to the side of the board by cutting off its escape routes. A big part of chess progress is learning to think in terms of denying your opponent the squares he wishes to occupy.
In Tejas game, there were several points in which he could have made his life much easier by taking away squares from his opponent's king. The first point came in the following position.
With 42...Kb3, Black could block out the White king and march his pawn down to a1 without annoyance. However, after 42...a4 43.Kb4 Bc2 44.Kc3, Black still has to figure out how to get out of his own way.
It took Black five extra moves to get his queen. In another five moves, he had another chance to restrict the White king.
The only chance White has to create any problems is by getting his king into the corner among Black's pawns. 53...Qg7+ would have driven the White towards the Black king where it can cooperate with the queen to deliver checkmate. Black played 53...Qe3+ 54.Kf7 Qe6+ 55.Kg7, when he still had to worry about possible stalemates.
Two moves later, Black had the White king where he wanted him.
However, rather than confining the White king and delivering checkmate with 57...Qh7 58.Ke8 Be6 59.Kf8 Qf7#, Black let the White king off the side of the board with 57...Bd7 and was no closer to ending the game after 58.Ke7 Qe6+ 59.Kf8.
I will spare the reader the final blunder that let White off with a draw until I post all the games next week. Moreover, I would caution future opponents not to take Tejas lightly based on his missteps here. He has always learned from his mistakes in the past and I am confident that he will do so again.
No comments:
Post a Comment