Is This Chess, or the Battle of Hastings?

Here are a couple of online blitz games I recently played against an opponent who had a penchant for flank pawn openings, moving pawns rather than pieces in the opening, and almost always accepting exchange offers. Those foibles enabled me to enter the late-middlegame and endgame both as white and then as black with small but decisive advantages in spite of any middlegame errors and blunders...

I set myself up for my online chess party with a couple of Splinterlands battles. The Blitz chess begins at the 4:08 mark:

Commentary

"Okay, folks. Tonight I'm going to have a battle or two on Splinterlands and then try my hand once again at live blitz chess on Gameknot.com.

"Let's see if I can get in a quick win here on Splinterlands. Splinterlands is an NFT monster battling game. You can win battles and also win some crypto on the Hive blockchain. The main token that you win is called SPS.

Splinterlands Game 1: "The equalizer rule means that the health of all the monsters is equal to the health of the healthiest monster at the start of the game ... My opponent's gone for plus one magic [Marlai Singarial].

Splinterlands Game 2: "We'll try one more battle. I like this one. This is a good card to have on the front - Old Commander Slade. We've got a strong one on the back that causes some trouble by burning through health [Shock Trooper]. This one snipes, so it gets in a quick pre-battle shot [Sultry Barmaid]. ... We're on plus one magic [Marlai Singarial], so it [Ujurak Elder] will go up to two. Okay, let's do that.

"He's doing minus one magic [Kaylia Silverleaf], so those two cancel out. This one heals, which is a bit annoying. We need to get some quick hits in. Come on. Yes, get rid of that. If we can survive one more round, we'll be okay. Yes, nice one. We’ve got two clean victories there!

"Now let's head over to game.com and play some live blitz chess."

Blitz Chess Game 1: I am White, Queen's Pawn / Nimzo-Indian Defence

"Here we are. Let's get some live chess underway. We're off pretty quick. d4, straight in with c4. What’s this wing opening? Hard to tell from the rank on live chess whether they’re any good or not. It’s a kind of Nimzo-Indian with an extra move, which means he may be a tempo down somewhere in development."

Compare my opponent's opening with a standard Nimzo-Indian with 4... Ne4:

After I moved 6. Qc2, Black accepted the exchange, leaving me with the bishop pair and a central pawn majority after 8.bxc3. "That gives my rook a quick avenue out," and in my opinion is worth doubling pawns.

1. Bd3 a4 - "Now he doesn’t have his knight protecting his h7 pawn. We’ll grab that pawn and pull back again."

"He’s massively behind on development; two minor pieces still unmoved. I’ll put my bishop on b2 and see if I can open things up."

As things turned out, d2 would probably have been a better choice because Black closed the centre with 14... e5, and I decided to castle on the queenside and attack with Harry the h-pawn.

After exchanging a rook each, minor pieces and queens, White entered the endgame with a material and positional advantage.

In the next screenshot, White has three passed pawns. I decided to attack the rook with e6-e7, lose the two d-pawns, promote on e8 and secure my king behind the c3 pawn.

It worked a treat!

1-0 to the #PubChessBluffer 😊

Blitz Chess Game 2: I am Black, Hypermodern Defence ("Sniper")

"I’m going to try a version of the Sniper. He likes wing openings, so let’s do something similar (1... c5). This is a deferred Sniper. He’s lost tempo as White."

White's opening game reminded me of the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings (1066) - the ones who charged down Senlac Hill only to be cut to shreds by the Norman cavalry once they had broken ranks...

In the next screenshot we can see that my Norman knight on f6 can cut down the e4 Saxon while the g7 Bishop Odo aims his whacking great club at the rook on b2.

I had noticed that my opponent usually accepted exchanges and I was happy to offer them, so we entered the endgame with my having a three pawn advantage.

However, I got careless and blundered away one of my pawns by failing to notice that my king and his queen were on the same diagonal!

However, a few moves later I found the winning move:

White's response, h3-h4 let me break in with my queen, Qxf4+ and that was that.

2-0 to the #PubChessBluffer 😎

Even if White had defended the f pawn with his queen, I would have been happy to trade off queens and sacrifice one more pawn then race my b pawn to the first rank, bring my King to the centre in front of my e-pawn and force a promotion one way or another.

My opponent lost both games because he failed to develop, failed to control the centre, exchanged when already material down... and because my blunders were not as fatal as his!

Not a bad midweek-evening's entertainment!

Cheers!

DH
#PubChessBluffer
#InspiredFocus

P. S. The live blitz games were played on Gameknot.com - sign up for free and challenge me ("hirohurl") to a game or two!