My brother Brendan popped around for a visit last weekend. While he was here, we had a game of chess over a cheap bottle of chardonnay.
I was getting pushy at the start, and commented around move 9, "All this just to get a bishop?"
He replied, "Oh yeah, I'd better take it then," and then I realised the trouble I was in - I had no way of saving my queen. My own 9th move should've been to shift my white-square bishop to another square (a few options seem good), so that it was guarding the square it had vacated, preventing the knight from going there.
I can't quite recall the sequence of moves after this, but I somehow managed to even things up, and eventually I was actually better off coming into the endgame by having a rook to his knight (and a few pawns each). A silly hasty move saw me accidentally sacrificing the rook for no gain, and it was soon all over.
Nice work, brother.
1. b3 d5 2. f3 e5 3. Nc3 d4 4. Ne4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Qh4 6. d3 Nf6 7. Kd2 Bb4+ 8. c3 Bxc3+ 9. Kc2 Bxa1?? 10. Nxf5!! Qf4 11. Bxf4 exf4 12. Nxg7+ Kf8 13. Nf5 ...
