There is am Ottoman potentate and this guy does something great for him and the potentate walkss toward him and tells him he could ask for anything reasonable from him.
The guy very modestly tells the potentate that all he asks for is 1 grain of rice on the first square on a chessboard and double that on the next and then double that yet again.
The potentate thinks the guy has lost it and he gladly goes for it. thinking he got off cheap
The potentate calls his vezeer and orders him to execute the order.
The vezeer comes back after a while looking ashen pale and tells the potemtate that the order is impossible to carry out because all the harvest of all the potemtate’s fields are inadequate to provide the said rice.
My father told me this story as he taught me the rules of the game.
It is frustrating, my development. I have two accounts, one is at above 1700 and the other around 1300.
I have often enough quickly defeated 1700 players and often honorlessly fallen against lowly incompetents - amongst whom I must thus still count myself.
Its been only half a year that Ive been playing with some regularity though.
But it tells you something about the danger of dwelling among lesser minds.
It seems chess is a different kind of animal lower down he ranks. There is a lot of hacking and blind luck.
indeed. you’re right, we’ve got options. bait move white knight to f7 would be premature at this point. if she sees the bait, she’ll not take the knight and instead move rook to h8. now we’ve got a knight in danger, as well as the h file being controlled by that rook. we’d now not be able to put white queen to h5… which is what we want. f6 seems to be the square where the exchanges will occur, so we should move white queen to f3 and see what she does. she’ll likely bring black knight to c6 to block that diagonal to her rook. we’d then bring white knight to d5. fortunately her own pawns are preventing her queen from quickly mobilizing to the right side of the board, but she’s a’comin… so we’ve got to act fast if we’re going to do this.
ol’ alla took the bait, karp. Figured she would… she’s still a novice. That’s mate in two moves. I told her to give me three weeks and I’d turn her into an alla Fischer.
What do you do if black doesn’t take the bait and move rook to h8? You can’t bring your queen to h5 to protect it because of black’s knight. Know what you’ll do if she moves rook to h8? You’ll move that bait knight right the fuck back to where it was.
Now I did move knight to h7 because my opponent was a novice… but that shit wouldn’t work on an experienced player.
And you come in here talkin’ bout ‘pshhh’. Yeah you gonna pshhh alright… pshhh that knight right back to g5.
Nonsense. I would expect my opponent to move the rook h8. And they would already be playing my game.
Take the knight. What are you so insecure you can’t have the pawn facing an empty square? The position is improved manyfold, if the enemy is defending, swinging wildly the sword there, that’s a good place.
Rook takes the pawn. Now they have to deal with a passed pawn on 6, rook on the king’s ass, and the queen just waiting, hanging back with a crooked smile on her face.
i understand your logic and the order of moves. problem is, that passed pawn won’t stand as there is nothing there to defend it… and when it gets taken by the queen, the seventh rank will then be clear for her. also, when queen takes passed pawn, white will be in check… use it’s turn to get out of check (wasted move), and then black puts pressure on rook which is not protected. white then uses turn to retreat rook. you see here black is steadily developing while white is regressing.
in any case, your idea opens the seventh rank for the queen. this eliminates any chance for a mate on white’s king side.
… and let’s say we do it. Queen takes passed pawn, then white blocks check with knight. What happens next? Black advances pawn… white knight cannot move because it’s pinned against king, and pawn takes knight.
You must learn to think four to five moves head, young jedi.
Not sure why you insist the passed pawn is so vulnerable. that’s the beauty of it, all that black now has to invest to deal with it. Ok so I took the knight with knight, pawn takes, tell me, what can’t white do?
Why not queen on 4 or 2 or knight on 5? Suddenly, white is weighing a unierse of attack possibilities while black is just shitting bricks how to hunt that pawn without everything else getting out of hand.
Simplest thing to get that Queen to move and take pawn on f6. It breaks the entire position of black. Then you can even piggy back on that pawn to get the rook on 7.
I could always do Queen f3, but it’s always nice to pack the knights in there as much as possible. Like wolves smelling blood, sensing a kill.
Anyway, I guess my point is just that, even though that pawn is really sexy there with the opposing black one, king all entrapped, Absolutely nothing is lost and everything is gained by opening that square. Only perhaps the illusion of more space.