Alekhine’s Gun Almost Backfires Again

Game 3 of the Western States Open was the beginning of my comeback. Chris Harrington titled one of his posts “Fighting Back” which reminded me of the Naval Piranha Plant on Nintendo’s Tetris Attack. I used to play that game so much that the blocks danced around in my dreams. Hmm… strategy games with squares.

After losing to two 2100+ players, I was up against a fellow tail-ender who was probably sitting on his rating floor just like me. Sometimes I think I’m really a Class A player who got lucky once, got floored as an Expert and who has since been wandering around in the wrong section.

This game features a tripling of the heavy pieces that again almost backfired for me. A while back I wrote up a postmortem on a game where Alekhine's gun almost backfired for me. Just because Alekhine’s gun looks intimidating doesn’t mean that there can’t be some tactics against the pieces of the gun. Technically, Alekhine’s gun has the two rooks in the front forming the ammunition, so this game features a mixed up Alekhine’s gun.

I don’t think I did anything special in this game except take over the initiative early. It was my opponent’s decision to sac the exchange when he didn’t have to and then he resigned when he still had fighting chances.

I almost felt disappointed, not because a little sadist in me wanted to torture the guy for another twenty moves (or as chessloser would say, "grind his dick in the dirt"), but winning when I don’t think I deserve it is bittersweet. I can’t just accept a win; I’ve got to overthink the hell out of it. Still, rules are rules and a resignation is a resignation. And this was the game that pulled me out of my funk. In the spirit of the season, I am thankful for the good fortune that comes my way in life and on the chessboard. Happy Thanksgiving!