In yer dreams ...

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Originally Posted by Kevin Bonham

This is silly but last night I dreamt up "bookshelf chess" as a chess variant, based on a position where I played what appeared to be a back rank mate and then it was noted that books on the bookshelf next to the chessboard were chesspieces and could be interposed to delay the mate.

As best I could determine "bookshelf chess" had a duplicate row of each side's pieces on the lines a0-h0 and a9-h9. The duplicate pieces normally don't do anything but can be moved onto the board to block checks and become real active chesspieces at that point.

(The dream didn't consider captures but if the duplicate pieces can capture then Scholar's Mate is not mate and is actually a blunder, because there's a knight on g9.)

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I wonder if this dream reflects and resolves in some way the internal struggle between the priorities of book learning and practical play.

Last night I dreamt I was playing some games of uncertain status against GM Ian Rogers. I played credibly in the first two games but Ian still of course beat me in fine style. In the third game I made what I thought was a principled decision then immediately realised was just a rush of blood to the head and after (I'm white) 1.d4 f5 I gave up a pawn with 2.g4 without having any idea whether this was even a gambit with the slightest merit. I tried to get an attack going but kept having to adjust my position to defend against kingside threats and was soon obviously losing ... until around move 15 when I was able to line up some heavy pieces on the now open d-file and it appeared I could actually swap queens into a reasonable endgame where I could get a rook on the seventh with full compensation for the pawn. I was analysing this for some time and drifted away from the board. When I returned Ian had restored the pieces to the starting position and it was unclear to me whether he had decided the game was a draw, decided he had won, or was just in a hurry to get to the airport.

Later in this dream I was viewing the first 15 moves of the game on an online server connected to ACT chess in some way, only the colours had reversed, white was now a prominent Tasmanian anti-pokies campaigner who was not a noted chessplayer, and white had been recorded as beating me and was receiving such comments as "onya Pat way to go great win" in the comments section of the webpage. I rather weakly protested that the game was in fact Bonham - Rogers and that it had been agreed drawn on move 15, and in evidence of this was working out many lines from Stockfish analysis showing how the evaluation had magically improved from -5 to close to zero.

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Originally Posted by kevin bonham

when i returned ian had restored the pieces to the starting position and it was unclear to me whether he had decided the game was a draw, decided he had won, or was just in a hurry to get to the airport.

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:lol: