Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Homer Nods (IV)

It's been awhile since I highlighted a great chessplayer playing badly; here is an example sportingly provided by GM Chris Ward in his excellent book Unusual Queen's Gambit Declined. Ward calls it "possibly my most humiliating ever encounter."

Ward-Rausis
Le Touquet, 1992
Queen's Gambit, Baltic Defense

1. d4 d5 2. c4 Bf5 3. Qb3 e5 4. cxd5 exd4 5. Nf3 Bc5 6. Nxd4 Bxd4 7. Qa4+ Nc6 8. dxc6 b5 9. Qxb5 Ne7 10. e3 Rb8 11. Qe2 0-0 12. Nc3 Nxc6 13. g4 Bxc3+ 14. bxc3 Be4 15. Rg1 Ne5 and Ward's comment:

It's simply horrendous!



The game concluded 16. Bg2 Nd3+ 17. Kf1 Nxc1 0-1

He annotates the game in detail in the book, but I think the lesson is clear here; if one plays the most 'critical' moves at every turn and neglects development, even a GM can end up looking like "NN" as in NN-Morphy, New York 1857!

2 comments:

Sancho Pawnza said...

I stumbled across your blog through Patrick's site, very interesting read. Hopefully this weekend will allow some free time to dig through the archives. Keep up the good work.

Tom Chivers said...

Good stuff. There aren't enough short GM losses against 1.d4.