>Use your time, look around the whole board, do either side have a loose piece? Can I give a check or make a threat? Does my opponent have any threats? What did the last move do? Beyond that it's primarily just practice.
If I recall Petrosian's biography, this blunder led him to reconsider his play and adopt the strategy of defending threats before his opponent was aware of them (as described by Fischer).
There's something comforting in knowing that, just like I lay awake at night thinking about some awkward thing I said 15 years ago, Kramnik lies there cringing about the time he blundered mate in 1.
3:21 I also know that if I'm facing someone named "Smith" or "Wilson" I'll probably be okay. If they have "villi" at the end of their last name (not only are they from Georgia), I'm probably going to have a rough time.
Petrosian accidentally bumped the knight I believe. I believe he was reaching for the queen with a cigarette permanently affixed to his hand and hit the knight.
When touching the wrong piece is catastrophic, tournament players resign, and the higher the ranking of the players the more certain this is. The score has both Petrosian's move and his opponent's game ending one. In any case, after the game Petrosian said it was humorous that he lost his queen to Black's only active piece, which indicates it was a blunder rather than an accident.
In the Deep Fritz versus Vladimir Kramnik game, Ben Finegold says at 39:53 - 39:55 that he didn't know why Kramnik missed Qh7#. But I remember Kramnik's excuse. Kramnik explained that had the White knight been on g5 or f6 he would have seen Qh7# and prevented it but with the White knight on f8 it was on an unusual square for a knight to support a Qh7# threat so he missed it. Of course it's still extremely surprising that Kramnik missed it but now you know his excuse.
I think Karpov went to win the tournament from which his blunder is taken; it was a 2-games matches format. Karpov won the second game, then beat Christiansen in the tie-breaks...and every other player he faced (too lazy to check, because I think I remember that well!)
Steinitz vs Chigorin 36:21 Ben says "I don't understand why he allowed Rxd5" If Rxd5, Nf4 forks the rooks winning an exchange. Maybe he was trying to provoke Rxd5.
In Kramnik's defense, his opponent was using an engine. Or were they? Is playing an engine the same as your opponent using an engine? Can an engine use an engine? Is water wet or does it just make other things wet? This is getting too philosophical for me.
Hello Ben. I am very grateful to you for what you do and for the way you do it, and I want to clarify that first of all I do not mean chess, but your attitude towards others, especially children. I wish you and your family all the best
There is a great book "How to beat Bobby Fischer, his 61 losing games of chess". Some cracking blunders in that, including a simple miscalculation of a pawn run.
Man, that Petrosian blunder hurt me. I genuinely sat there for about 15 minutes with the video paused just admiring the strength of his position. And then the knight move is just the cherry on top. Distressing
Someone told me a story about a Botvinnik versus Bronstein game and despite Ben Finegold saying (at 24:35 of this video) that there was no time pressure, if memory serves, actually their game featured in this video had an extremely wild time scramble. Thus Bronstein was reduced to making knight moves to make time control on move 40 and he made 8 knight moves in a row, his last being ...Nxd6 capturing the hanging queen. Then according to what I was told (I only turned 3 in 1956 so I only heard about it years later) at the closing ceremony Bronstein took the queen off the cake being served, gave it to Petrosian, and told him "now we're even."
Kramnik wasn't the only one missing that mate against Deep Fritz. I hope I remember correctly, but I think the whole commentary team missed it too. And it wasn't a weak team, some IM's , GM's, think even Anand was there.
Indeed. I was also expecting Kasparov Karpov 1985 (game 11 where Karpov played the wrong rook to d8). I love the selection, most are unfamiliar to me, few obvious choices here!
For the Magnus blunder, I thought you could have had the classical game Giri-Carlsen from the 2011 Tata Steel tournament. I seemingly remember Giri (then 16 years old) saying he blundered mate. But on further review of that game, it doesn't satisfy the requirement for it to be a blunder since I would need to see that it's a blunder, and I probably wouldn't spot it. Also magnus was getting outplayed already and then made the big mistake. Oh how times have changed huh.. pretty cool game to see though
I actually made a 3D animated short film about the 1892 game. i'd forgotten the video but seeing the position again I'd remembered this was the game in the video
Gothamchess claims in one of his vids, that petrosian was extremly bored cause Bronstein was mooving slow and bad, so he got up everytime he made his moove to then come back and again moove quickly. So he made a quick moove, realized the blunder and gave up.
To answer your question Ben, I would prefer to lose very late in the game after hours of playing. I feel like there would be more respect in someone fighting hard for so long.
Firouzja was jealous that he wasn't in this video and just handed us the spectacular blunder against Fabi, 1. c4 c6 2. Nf3 d5 3. g3 Bg4 4. Ne5 Bf5 5. Qb3 Qb6 6. cxd5 Qxb3 7. axb3 Be4?! 8. dxc6 Bxh1?? 9. Rxa7 1-0 The resignation because if black plays Rxa7 then c7! and white will make another queen; or else white will play Rxa8 in short order and have compensation for the earlier Bxh1.
Could some of these matches had been fixed? Cuase its unbelievable that a grandmaster would blunder their queens like this lol. Considering that theze guys can see 15 moves ahead, right?
