Pounding a Pirate

I Win More as Black Than as White

Actually I lose more than I win by about seven percent but those are left over from several crazy-risky Danish Gambits I had the nerve to try against the Nemesis, and I am still trying to make up the difference against the good players of the world. He put me below .500 as mentioned in February or March, and since he is hiding, I am having a hard time making up for it.


It's not easy, because I give myself a disadvantage almost every time by using one Gambit or another.
 
The reason for that is because most players use the e4 move to start, that is to advance the King's Pawn two steps, the classic way. I think the late great Bobby Fischer did it all but one game famously. Some go first with the Queen's Pawn, and  some hate when they do as it slows the game and makes it more intricate generally.

I do that usually if I have White, leading off with a Queen's Gambit most times, unless they show fianchetto immediately. It's as much from familiarity as anything else.

 And  Here is Why--the Icelandic Gambit--it throws them off

But the reason I win more with Black, bucking the statistical trend of maybe 5 to 8 percent better results for White from that first-move advantage, is because when I have Black, and they do the King Pawn first, which is most of the time, I go into an Icelandic Gambit and many opponents are surprised and cannot cope with it.

It doesn't always work. There are ways to screw it up from both sides, and for it to really be an Icelandic Gambit, the other side would have to follow a natural script for four whole moves, and they often don't, so it doesn't always even occur because they can do whatever they want. All openings end up that way eventually, some fall off script quickly and others  follow one a long time. If you don't want or like that, then you avoid it.


You can't always get an Icelandic Gambit, since only so many guys will follow the steps laid out for as many as four moves, so it may just be a Scandinavian Gambit if they only follow the script part way. But if they take all four steps as desired, it is the Icelandic Gambit.

A Gambit is a Gamble, a Gambiteer is a Gambler

All Gambits are risky, what it is is you let the guy take a piece or two hoping you can turn that to your advantage somehow, either off the little time it gives while he's busy cutting off your leg, or else the space opening behind his sword arm while he's whacking at you elsewhere.

But it is a way even a nerd can demonstrate King Kong Cojones.

Figuratively it is a little bit like when Beowulf was fighting the Monster's Mother, and the little opening let him get at her heart, but he took a lot of damage in order to get there.   I mean in the Neil Gaiman version of Beowulf.

  You give him your pawn or piece or even two pawns like here and try to beat him anyway. It only appeals to a certain kind of player, and the majority frown on it and think you're crazy, and so it is taught that if you find yourself playing a gambiteer, just take it, and chances are he cannot pull it off anyway.

That Danish Gambit I mentioned is really crazy because you give up three and maybe even four pawns, it is the Gambiteer's craziest gambit of all and often doesn't work.

I haven't got time to figure out how to put up chessboard diagrams although there is bound to be some way to do it that I haven't seen.

If I just nicked the one off the site, that'd probably be copyrighted to them, but the moves are mine. There must be someone who could read the algebraic notation, this is almost international language but not quite, because the letters are based on English piece names. There are ways to do this notation understood in all countries, but this is easier for me and pretty well-known anyway.

So I'll put the moves of my 41st win here, as it is an almost perfect result and has really ticked off a pirate type player more than 250 rating points above me and utterly crushed his ego, humiliating him tremendously and I will bet he even considered breaking his computer or quitting--it happened five hours ago. This guy beat me in the previous game just when I thought I had him.


Ego Destruction Worse Than Regular Sports

Chess is uniquely able to affect the person's ego more than other games, because it is seen as intellectual, so to lose is to be proven a stupid dolt, unless they have better emotional preparation than most actually do. This can result in temper tantrums, and I remember I mentioned how I quit for four years after the Nemesis beat me four and a half years ago.

Excuses Always Are Great to Hear Because of the Ego Thing and the Cover-Ups

By the way, the Nemesis quit in July and says it was 'distracting him from his work too much.'

Tuerckenkriege on Two Fronts
I've been in a tournament that started in August with ten games, and then another one started on schedule the first of September with as many more, plus I already had a few private ones going, and I have been pretty busy fighting it out.

There are three days per move allowed, but you can move immediately if the other guy is online, wherever he or she may be in the world, so I have been fighting two simultaneous Tuerckenkriege at all hours of the day and night, among others, as there is one Turkish guy in each of my two tournaments. One of them is a fast mover, so we are almost done already with that set.

Normally in the tournament there are a certain number of players in a group, it could be four, six, ten, or whatever, who play each other one game as White, one game as Black, as statistics show whoever has White has a first-move advantage. So you do one each as Black and White.

But this September tournament has both games at the same time, instead of back-to-back, so it is a lot of games.

Luckily a week into it I see there are a bunch of fast guys here, so it'll be over probably before the first one is.

In that August one I have moved up to fourth place out of ten for the time being, above several guys better rated.


Break Out Your Chess Sets and Follow Along

This shows a bloody pirate getting humiliated in a bare fourteen moves. He falls from 1705 to 1658 rating, and I move up from 1443 to 1473. He is furious about this, believe me.  The first four moves define the Icelandic Gambit because each one he did what I hoped for, and then in just ten more moves he resigned this afternoon while I was sleeping.

Pirate 1705-1658   v. mekelnborg 1443-1473

1. e4          d5
2. exd5      Nf6
3.c4           e6
4.dxe6       Bxe6              there is the Icelandic Gambit, the rest will vary
5.Nc3        Nc6
6.d3           Bb4
7. Nf3        Qe7
8. d4          0-0-0
9. Bd2        Nxd4
10. Be2      Bxc4
11. Be3      Nxf3+
12. Bxf3     Rxd1+
13. Rxd1    Rxd8+       ouch that was the Queen!
14. b3        Bxe3+
White (pirate) resigned. Kicks dog repeatedly, falls 50 rating points.

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