Halloween and the Dragon
Matt: Excitingly, today we not only have a special Halloween article, we also have our first guest post! Let me introduce Chris, who has a story about Chess. What has that got to do with Halloween you ask? Well read on and find out…
Chess and I
I used to play chess a lot as a teenager. I took part in and later ran the chess club at my school, and played for my town’s C team on board 4. There were three teams of five boards, making me 14th out of the 15 people who played. I was in the unfortunate position of easily beating anyone who didn’t play chess much, but mainly losing to anyone who really knew what they were doing. But our team did fairly well in the league, and I often won, mainly due to other teams also fielding weak players on board 4 of the lower league. My friend Nick and I were a rarity in our town’s team as we were at least 40 years younger than the average age of the players. However, there were other young players in our main rival team, the RED DRAGONS.
In the shadow of the dragon
The top player of the Red Dragons was formidable, and his reputation preceded him wherever he went. Fortunately, a weakling like me would never have to face him, right? WRONG. Whilst we would never have to face off in the league, we both entered the same under 18 tournaments and one year, the Swiss draw meant that we faced off. He’d won 4.5 out of his 5 games, his only draw with my friend Nick. I’d won 3.5 games, but my early loss had drawn me against weaker players. It was the last game of the tournament and he was smiling, he knew me only as Nick’s weaker friend, surely the trophy was his!
A Spooky Opening?
In casual club play at the time, I had become fond of a very unorthodox opening called The Halloween gambit. You start with the usually sedate four knights opening,
but then sacrifice a knight very early on by taking the central pawn.
Despite the material loss, you get a very strong attack going very quickly. This involves rapidly advancing your central pawns, forcing black’s knights to retreat to weak positions.
The Halloween Gambit is widely considered to be unsound, however, if you don’t know how to play against it, you can blunder easily. My repeated plays of it in the club lately meant that a) I knew a fair bit about how to use it effectively and b) that people in the club were getting annoyed at me.
Showdown
Back to the action. I open with my pawn and knights ready for the Halloween, hoping that he doesn’t transpose it into another opening. I take the pawn, leaving my knight hanging…. He looks up, and you can see the joy in his eyes, “He is even worse than I thought, this game is mine!” This is what lost him the game! He was sufficiently better than me that he could have easily swapped pieces back and destroyed me. Even continuing the opening with careful play, he probably would have prevailed. But his cocky confidence was his undoing. By believing me a fool, he did not pay attention or see how strong my position was until too late. Never have I seen anyone so crushed by a defeat as when I slew the Dragon with Halloween. He knew that I had tricked him, and that his assumption of my stupidity had been his downfall. He not only lost the game but the tournament, with my friend Nick’s name replacing his on the trophy ending his streak of several years!
You and the Halloween
So this Halloween maybe give the Halloween a go! Or tell us about your own awesome chess plays in the comments. You can check out this blog and this wikipedia article for more information on this reckless and stupid opening with a bite!
Matt: This was our first article about a more traditional board game! Let us know your thoughts! Did you like it? Would you like to read more articles about traditional games? And more importantly, do you have any halloween stories you’d like to share?
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