Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Don’t Count Your Chickens!
This post is a collaboration with Mr Andrew Crosby who is an expert in chess gambits and usually plays them in his games with great success. Andrew is a member of our virtual Chess.com club taking active part in our online tournaments and matches.
The most unsatisfactory outcome when having an absolutely dominant position in the game is to stalemate the opponent. It means that the opponent has absolutely no legal moves and the game ends in a draw.
This situation frequently happens to beginners but also experienced players can be victims of it.
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion who has won the World Championship on six occasions.
Kasparov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1963 and began the serious study of chess at the age of 6 after solving a chess puzzle set up by his parents.
From age 7, Kasparov attended the local ‘Young Pioneers Palace’ where he studied chess with experienced trainers.
His international success started in Dortmund where he won the World Junior Chess Championship at the age of 17.
Kasparov became World Champion in 1985 at the age of 22 after a dramatic and exhausting match against Anatoly Karpov.
He kept the title until the year 2000 when he lost to Vladimir Kramnik who had been his student in the famous Botvinnik Chess School in Moscow. Kasparov also holds the unbelievable record of winning fifteen tournaments in a row during 1981-1990.
Soon after winning the prestigious international tournament of Linares (Spain) in 2005, he announced his retirement from the chess competition.
After his retirement, he mainly devoted himself to politics, writing books and promoting his ‘Kasparov Chess Foundation’.
But also devoted time to coaching. The year 2009 he coached the actual World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. And in 2011 he trained the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura.
With that astonishing chess career, you will hardly believe me if I tell you that Kasparov also made mistakes. But it is true!. He made even beginner’s mistakes as in today’s game which he played when he already was World Champion.
Looking his victory so close, Kasparov relaxes and makes a basic mistake.
A game is not won until the opponent is checkmated. Here applies the English proverb: “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch”.
You can see the frustration for that elementary mistake in Kasparov’s face in the following video.
As you can see, it was a blitz game and, as usual in those games, both players ran short of time.
In blitz and bullet games, mistakes and blunders are frequent and fatigue often causes loss of attention.
Here is also worth recalling the famous Fischer’s quote: “Chess demands total concentration!”
Due to COVID pandemic, Nairobi Chess Club remains closed.
However our virtual Chess.com club keeps organizing online tournaments and matches.
Almost 450 members enjoy that chance and new players join every week.
New tournaments will start soon and there is Blitz every Saturday.
Join now! Limited slots!.
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Stay safe!
