I've been playing a little bit again recently and thought... at least a few of us play and like to chat about it now and again, might as well actually have a thread with the occasional interesting tidbit, or a bit of a game, or an interesting position, puzzle, whatever. Rather than start a new thread, I figured I'd just start throwing more shit into this one.
So I was playing a game today against one of the middle-level AI opponents in
Chessmaster: the Art of Learning which I have on PSP. The game itself is pretty damned average, and a lot of the "learning" features are kind of lame, but it provides a pretty good portable chess game that's functional and consistent.
Chessmaster - Grandmaster Edition for PC, which I also have, is basically just
CM10 with a... uh... well, I'd say new coat of paint, but it doesn't really even have that. They tweaked some stuff and made minor changes, but it's almost entirely the same game as 10, right down to the chess sets they've provided (you can use downloadable fan-made sets frolm 10 as well). Which is really quite weird. Though if you have neither one, it's a great thing to have. Those are both the newest versions of the product, portably and on PC.
Anyway, I was playing a game against this chick, and I had to quit at one point and so saved the game. You can kind of abuse it because you can turn off the machine and load a saved in-progress match to start over from that position, but it's also kind of nice in the sense that you can save at an interesting position and play out multiple ideas. Obviously this makes your in-game Elo rating kind of not so accurate, but if you're just experimenting it doesn't matter too much (and who really cares about ratings anyway?). So I loaded up the position, which I think is a quite strong one in my favor (I'm playing white), and I obviously have a 2 pawn advantage in material. Should have been a cinch, yet I managed to blunder my way into a stalemate by making a stupid move in the end. I knew the game should have been mine, so I said screw this... loaded the game back up and tried again, using a similar set of moves. Somehow she outmaneuvered me and managed to eventually turn the tide until eventually mating me. Suck. Tried again... after a pretty damned good rest of the game, I totally blundered at the end and allowed her to get a back row mate with her rook when I failed to realize that she could manage it one move before I could finish my final attack. I tried one last time and finally managed to win, but it was a bit frustrating because I mostly won due to a couple of blunders on her part where she traded a rook for a bishop and gave me a clear shot at the center (which is weird, because this particular AI almost never trades... the board stays crowded for quite a long time usually).
So here's the position I was playing from:
The moves I really wanted to make were Qf4 or Ra1-e1. She'd invariably attack the leading bishop with Nc8 or Nf5, and I'd invariably retreat with Ba3. After that is when it usually started to get interesting. The E and F columns saw a lot of action, and all 4 bishops played pivotal support roles during the remaining halves of each game. Quite the exasperating tug-o'-war. Things usually started to continue in my favor if I could force her to start trading pieces, which was easier when she brought the queen down to f6 and started trying to make trouble.
