Rematch!

I admit that I had a lot of fun in that 3 minute (or less) Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) game against the chess engine in Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess (see "A Bagatelle") – enough that I found time today to have a rematch game. After all, I was lucky to make "the second to last mistake" the first time, and was otherwise able to match MATC blunder-for-blunder...

Kennedy - MATC
blitz 2008

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6

Again my opponent runs its King to the center to hang onto material.

7.Qf5+ Kd6 8.f4 Qh4+


An improvement over the previous 8...b5?

This move has cause me lots of trouble in the past. See "Jerome Gambit Tournament: Chapter XVI" for a list of posts on the topic.

9.g3 Nf3+

Oh, boy! MATC plays one of the nastier (but more complicated) refutations of the Jerome Gambit.

10.Kd1 Qxg3+

Huh??

What is this?

Let us pause for a moment to answer an existential question: how do you make a chess computer play "weak" chess? Well, I guess you can limit the time it spends in its calculation – or you can program it to make a really bad move every once in a while. It looks like that's what we've got here.

Our game continued another 32 moves, and ended in mate with two Queens (both mine). There's no need to report any further on the battle, except to say that after a reasonable defense, Black threw away a whole Rook on move 31 – more evidence of some kind of blunder factor.

I don't feel the need for a re-rematch.

A Bagatelle

I unearthed my Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess CD the other day with thoughts that I might be able to use it with my "Chessboard Math" groups at a nearby school. I loaded it on my machine at work to be sure that the 1995 program would run under Windows XP. It did, no problem.

Wandering through MATC, I rediscovered the fact that it has a chessplaying engine, designed to give novices a decent game without embarassing them. When I had a free 5 minutes, I dashed off a game.

Of course, it had to be a Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+).

Here's the light-hearted romp.

Kennedy - MATC
blitz 2008

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6 7.Qf5+ Kd6 8.f4 b5



Where did that come from?? There's a whole lot of trouble for White with 8...Qh4+, instead.
9.Qxe5+ Kc6 10.Qd5+ Kb6 11.d4



Moving too fast... Moving too fast... Making my moves too fast...

I was taking seconds on each move, so when I got to my 11th move I thought "Can't take the Rook on a8, he'll play 11...Bb7 and my Queen is trapped!"

I should never move so fast that I can't think straight...

11...Bb4+ 12.c3 Bb7


All of a sudden Black's goofy 8th move "works."

13.Qe5 Be7



A lucky break for me: 13...Bd6 is stronger (as MATC decides next move).

14.Be3

Here's a goofy line Fritz8 came up with later, showing some of what was hidden in the position: 14.a4 d5 15.Qxg7 Qd7 16.a5+ Ka6 17.Qxh8 Bf7 18.Nd2 Bxh8 19.Nb3 Qc6 20.Nc5+ Qxc5 21.dxc5 dxe4 with an unclear position.

14...Bd6 15.d5+ Ka6 16.Qd4 Nf6



Now I'm winning, but a safer route for Black (when White still has an edge) was pointed out by Rybka 3: 16...c5 17.dxc6 dxc6 18.a4 c5 19.Qd3 Kb6 20.Na3 a6 21.axb5 Be7 22.Qc4 axb5 23.Bxc5+ Bxc5 24.Qxb5+ Kc7 25.Qxc5+ Kb8 26.0–0 Qe7 27.Qd4 Nf6 28.e5 Ne4 29.Nc4 Rd8 30.Rxa8+ Bxa8 31.Qb6+ Bb7. Of course, Rybka had 5 minutes per half move to think on it...

17.a4 Qe7 18.axb5+ Kxb5 19.c4+ Kb4 20.c5+ Kb5 21.Nc3 checkmate

Ok, ok, I missed a couple of mates-in-one at the end there...