A painful miss

Sometimes I feel like this blog is mostly an exercise in self-flagellation, a continuing rumination on what a bad chessplayer I am. This installment might be the best example so far. But what the heck, it's more interesting to read about someone's failures than successes, and I've got a never ending supply of material. There's nothing like repeatedly subjecting yourself to public humiliation, so awaaaaay we go.

I played the following game recently on Lichess. I had a lot of other things going on so I didn't finish the analysis for about a week. When I did the analysis sans computer I was very dissatisfied and even embarrassed by my play. But once I had the computer look at it I felt even worse.

Here's the critical point in the game:

Black has just played 16. ... Nxe4. I didn't consider this much of a possibility before he played it since it appeared to just lose material, so I was taken by surprise.

Here I made a horrible blunder, just taking the knight with 17. fxe4 which loses instantly. I'm at a total loss to explain why I did this since it practically forces Black to play the winning tactic, which of course he was planning to do and did. It's not as if seeing what would happen was difficult, nor was it difficult to see that this was losing. Nor was I in any kind of time trouble. Nor did I blitz the move out. Nor is the move forced. Yet despite all of that I never really gave serious consideration to any other move. It makes no sense. White can easily save his rook and only lose a pawn, after which I would have been objectively losing but at least I'd still have had some chance to save the game.

I was really upset at myself for doing this and during the postgame analysis I was silently (and occasionally not silently) berating myself for being a complete moron and not a serious player at all and how I would never be any good because I keep doing dumb things that make no sense.

After I finished with my pre-computer postgame analysis I let the computer have a look at it and if I felt dumb before (and I did) it was nothing compared to how I felt afterward.

The computer pointed out that I had an available tactic that not only saves the rook but actually turns the tables and gives White a better, even winning, position: 17. Rxe7+! Kxe7 18. Bg5+ Nxg5 19. Qxd3. Aaaaargh!

Why am I so upset about this, you wonder. Okay, so I had an available tactic but didn't see it. It was hard to see because it involved a rook sacrifice. Some tactics are hard to see and I missed it; it happens.

But here's the thing: I didn't miss it. I was looking for that tactic at least two moves prior. I saw that Black's queen was unguarded and if only I could get in a check with the bishop I could win Black's queen. And I saw that I could put the Black king on a square where it could be checked by the bishop by sacrificing the rook on e7. I saw all of that. But at first it didn't work because the Black knight was on g8 where it guarded the e7 square. Then when he played ... Nf6 it didn't work because the knight blocked the bishop check. I made notes of all of these observations when I was doing the postgame analysis.

The first move on which the tactic works is move 17. Actually it's even better now because Rxe7+ forks the king and knight. But after looking at it on moves 15 and 16 I decided it was a nice idea and it's too bad but it didn't quite work and promptly filed it away in the dustbin of my brain. The tactic worked now but I had already given up on it and didn't even consider it. Even in the postgame when I had all the time I wanted to look at all of this, I never put two and two together and realized that I missed this--even though I was making notes about the idea for the previous move. Again, aaaaargh!

I can think of two reasons why this happened. One, Black's move surprised me and I panicked. The fact that I never considered doing anything but taking the knight shows that I was completely stunned and not thinking straight. Two, and more importantly, I was in a bad frame of mind for the whole game. My opponent was rated so much higher than me that I was convinced I would lose no matter what I did. This is a really bad habit to get into; it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where you think you're going to lose so you don't give the game 100% effort, so you do lose.

Sometimes the most difficult thing about chess is getting out of your own way. It's a hard enough game as it is; you don't need to be battling your own mindset in addition to your opponent.