Yesterday, I took the opportunity to challenge my fiancé to a chess game! This is a rare occurrence, as he is a much higher rated chess player than I am, so I always lose to him. Being a competitive and easily frustrated person means that I generally do not enjoy the experience of Kelly crushing me in chess games. However, my determination to improve and my idea of making a cute little video to share made me bite the bullet and request a match.
Just to give a little context, Kelly’s rating on Chess.com is approximately 1600 and my rating is around 900. Statistically, this means he should beat me every time. (A 400 point rating difference means that the higher rated player should win 10/10 times. We have a 700 point rating difference so that basically means that the person that can beat me 10/10 times, Kelly should be able to beat 10/10 times.)
So the gap is significant. To close this gap, we usually play with a handicap, which means he takes a piece off the board before we begin the game. For the purposes of the video, I chose to play against him with no handicap this time.
Kelly’s roommate and our long-time friend, Curtis Bourassa, captured a moment early on in our chess game.
Shout-out to him for letting me borrow his tripod and for letting us play at the kitchen table, giving him limited room to eat lunch. Check out his learning project, focused on learning to paint here.
Now for the video you’ve all been waiting for…
I needed some time after the game to pout about losing and how long it took and how much my brain hurt, so we took a break and made some delicious spaghetti and meat sauce for supper. Afterwards, I was ready to learn! In this video, we go through the game move by move, with Kelly analyzing our blunders, identifying weak moves, and suggesting better moves for next time.
This video turned out to be longer than I had hoped. Here are the highlights:
- My first mistake – playing b6. (2:08)
- I miss the opportunity for a queen trade. (7:18)
- I drop a pawn and am down material. (8:00)
- I move the same piece twice in a row (not usually the best idea). (10:44)
- Kelly’s blunder – playing Nd5. I missed the opportunity to fork his Queen and King!!! (13:04)
- I drop my bishop. (15:11)
- Kelly gives a quick recap of the game. (18:15)
I hope that gives you a good idea of where I’m at in my chess learning and what kinds of things I’m working on! I’d love some feedback on the videos I created and some tips on how to make my learning project posts more engaging. Chess might seem boring to the average person, so I’m always looking for ways to spice it up!
