White is Archil Ebralidze Petrosian's first coach. and the Black
player is Viacheslav Ragozin who went on to coach Botvinnik.
Here Black played.
40....Rc7?
We now let GM Mikhlchishin take over.
"Upon seeing the move on the demonstration board, the people started
laughing and thought that the young demonstrator made a mistake.
Immediatly, jokes about his competence started raining. He blushed and
embarassed went to "check again". But the rook was really standing on c7!
The boy returned to his post and responded in kind to the crowd...
Silence fell upon the hall, as the people were left in shock.
There was no time trouble and Ebralidze sank in deep thought. Ragozin lit up his
favourite cigar and took a walk around the playing hall to see how others were doing.
Ebralidze was of course thinking about trading rooks - both players saw the position
after 41.Rxc7 Bd6+ and the bishop versus knight ending would be winning for black.
The fact that the bishop was pinned hadn't even occurred to either player.
After having watched Ebralidze thinking for about 15 minutes, the
crowd went literally crazy. The most impatient began shouting out:
"Archil, take the Rook!".
Ebralidze didn't react. Louder cheers followed:
"Take it, Archil, take it!"
Ebralidze heard them, of course, and after many more shouts he got mad too:
"I can see that, you patzers!"
......and resumed his thinking. After another five minutes, he finally played
42.Rd5?"
After that double tragedy this is how the game went.
Ebralidze - Ragozin, USSR Championship (1937)
When your opponent is a strong player you don't expect them to make gross blunders like this and it's quite easy to miss them when they do occur. Many years ago I had Black against FM Steve Berry in the last round of a rapidplay tournament. He outplayed me from the start and after fifty minutes or so we reached an ending where we both had a rook, knight and pawns with him a couple of pawns up. I was just looking for somewhere to fall by then and was about to make yet another defensive move when I noticed that Steve's face had turned bright red. I took another look at the board and realised that he had left a simple knight fork on, allowing me to win his rook for nothing! I didn't have my blunder antenna turned on because Steve is such a strong player and it was only his alarming colour-change that alerted me. If only all players were so accommodating! I should add that I still wasn't good enough to win the ending and we agreed a draw when we were down to about a minute each on the clock.
Originally posted by greenpawn34They were so stupid they didn't see black gets it right back and is then a pawn up?
[center]I recently stumbled across this game and the following story.
White is [b]Archil Ebralidze Petrosian's first coach. and the Black
player is Viacheslav Ragozin who went on to coach Botvinnik.
Here Black played.
[fen]8/p2Rbk1p/6p1/8/2rN4/1P6/P6K/8 b - - 2 40[/fen]
40....Rc7?
[fen]8/p1rRbk1p/6p1/8/3N4/1P6/P6K/8 w - - 3 41[/ ...[text shortened]... RxR and NxR+ and Nxa6.} 45... Be5+ {This time the Bishop fork is legal. White resigned.} [/pgn][/b]
I had a similar situation this weekend at the Florida State Championship. I had won the exchange and a pawn, only to blunder into a knight fork and hang a rook.
My opponent only had 12 minutes left, and his endgame skills (outside of forks) were rather poor, so I filled myself with a terrible resolve that could be satisfied by only the sleaziest of swindles or the drawiest of draws.
It worked, and we ended up in the following position:
With 2 minutes left on his clock, I casually played 48. ...Rxf2??. Only after I took my hand off of it did I realize that I had overloaded my king as a defender, and he had the picturesque Rxh2+ to swindle me right back.
I sat there with the best poker face I could muster, and stared straight at the clock. He stared at the clock with me as the seconds ticked off, and then with a minute left he replied in kind with 49. Ne2??, and I exhaled and snapped it off with my rook for check and the game.
After the game, four of his friends had been watching (all kids, and the pressure on my opponent with his friends watching probably helped me) and only one of them saw the correct move. Sometimes endings blind people to the simplest of tactics.
OTB chess and CC chess, in so many ways, aren't even the same game.