Winning a Queen Down

Submitted by Phobetor on Fri, 08/29/2008 at 6:17am.

Most people think material is very important in chess. Obviously, if you have less pieces, in general you have a worse position. Especially if you are more than a queen down... But chess isn't just about material. It's also about how active the pieces you have are.

Below is an example of how one side, my opponent, can be a queen up but still lose! There is no inevitable mate-in-two, but there are some threats and he had to give up a full queen and rook to prevent mate, which would leave him (only!) a piece down.

The 5-minute(!) game with annotations and analysis is below. Just skip the first 28 moves, because they were bad and uninteresting :)

Have fun!

» posted in Phobetor's Blog

| 704 reads | 4 comments

Comments:

by BigOto - 3 months ago
Kirkland, WA United States

Member Since: Dec 2008
Member Points: 4029

My opponent got two queens!

He resigned with still some hope of winning w/ 2 queens?

by uritbon - 10 months ago
tel aviv Israel

Member Since: Apr 2008
Member Points: 963

very insitefull.

by Phobetor - 10 months ago
International

Member Since: Aug 2007
Member Points: 1108

Well, at that point (moves 1-28 ) there were better moves for both sides, yes. But like I said, this was a 5-minute game, so please take that into account as well

I was very surprised afterwards when I checked the game with Fritz that my "sacrifice" (letting him promote) was actually correct. At the time I couldn't find a defense for black, and I saw that it would be very dangerous. My intuition said that he couldn't afford to lose so much time for getting another queen, even if it meant he got two queens.