In yer dreams ...

[Patrick Byrom]

My chess dreams seem to be more about organising tournaments, and nothing about the positions.

I dream that I am playing a regular opponent, and have a strong, if not winning, position, when a distraction occurs elsewhere that means I have to sort it out before returning to my board, only to find that the pieces are suddenly all in the wrong places... (Frustration!)

Attempting to go back through both scoresheets to reconstruct the game (or trying to replay the game through my mind) only proves to be an even more frustrating exercise where I just can't hold my concentration... (all the while my clock is running down)... and then another distraction pops up!

Sometimes it's good to wake up!

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has anxiety dreams about organising chess tournaments - although I'm rarely a player in these dreams!

[Kevin Bonham]

I think this is my first ever dream about being an arbiter.

In last night's dream I dreamt that I was running a small Swiss tournament which included some rather high-rated young players. The tournament has just overcome some interruptions from external noise when one of these high-rated young players (2200-ish), who has already been playing poorly and losing to lower rated players, starts mucking about. He starts doing things like sneaking pieces from the side of the board back onto the board two at a time and bouncing them up and down on their squares, which is obviously totally illegal and distracting to the opponent.

I warn the young star that if he does this again his tournament score will be deducted half a point. However, after a little while, he starts doing the same thing again but more subtly, bringing pieces up to the edge of the board without quite putting them on it, all in a deliberate attempt to "rules-lawyer" my previous ruling by being as obnoxious as he can without quite triggering it. Eventually I spot him sneaking a piece onto the board and decide he has breached my previous ruling, and step in to tell him that I am penalising him half a point. He says something like "oh, that's all for me then", and walks out of the venue making it clear he is withdrawing from the tournament. I rule that he has forfeited his round 4 game (in which he was dead lost anyway), and then notice that he has also lost rounds 1-3, meaning that he finishes the tournament as a withdrawal with a score of -.5/4.

At the start of the next round a bunch of the young player's friends turn up and berate me and argue that their friend is wonderful and cannot possibly have broken the rules, therefore he didn't and that I was just being mean. I listen to them, torn between lambasting them for spouting trash in defence of a badly behaving player, and the realisation that at some point I will have to fess up: Penalising a player's tournament score is not a penalty available to the arbiter and therefore my decision had been wrong.

Then I wake up.

[Adamski]

That brought a smile to my lips, Kev. Tomorrow night I am arbiter for a FIDE rated event for the first time.

[Capablanca-Fan]

An online game played recently featured a line I hadn't played for a long time. When I was in my early teens in Wellington, the leading player of my club was the German-born Bernie Deben, who had recently crushed one of the leading NZ players in what would now be called a rapid tournament:

Bernie Deben vs Kai Jensen
Dominion Breweries 40-40 Tt (1978), Upper Hutt, NZ, rd 4

PGN Viewer

 

But the line isn't really that good for White. Books on the Marshall that were the best thing ~20 years before databases had chapters on anti-Marshall lines like 8.a4 and 8.d4 suggested that Black could play 10... ♖f8 11. ♕xd4 c5 with good compensation. So I studied these lines quite a lot, but I think Deben and I played it only in blitz. And in the recent game, Black had no trouble, and White had to tread carefully:

[Event "www.ChessWorld.net server game"]
[Site "www.ChessWorld.net "]
[Date "2019.12.18 "]
[Round "NA"]
[White "Luther1517"]
[Black "Sarfati_FM"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2203"]
[BlackElo "2478"]
[Board "11505299"]

PGN Viewer

 

I guess I was thinking so much about those long-ago teen years that I didn't stop thinking even while asleep. In a dream, I encountered my old friend and rival Deben again at a chess club. He looked older with white hair, but I can't confirm if he looked over 40 years older, and he still played a good game. He is in my parents' generation, and I have no idea if he is even alive.

[Kevin Bonham]

A few weeks ago I had a dream where Jeremy Corbyn was playing in a World Championship match; needless to say he was not doing particularly well in the game I was watching and seemed about to lose on time. On somehow reaching move 40 he got up, left the closed player's box and immediately started discussing his position with all and sundry.

[Max Illingworth]

The latest chess dream was quite wild.

(left out earlier parts, which were very intriguing but not chess-related)

It's the last game of the 2021 Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi World Championship Match in New York. I had travelled to the event personally, only to be amazed by what I saw.

The city was in complete chaos. Armed mobs of people all over the city were destroying buildings. The country was approaching civil war and the government was in danger of being overthrown. Before the last game, the players had to move again to an antiquated 1860s salon, which had thus far been ignored by the mobs.

A few brazen chess fans braved the situation and stood right outside the windows of the salon, to get a peek at the final game. I found a vantage point on the top of a building, where I could follow the game on my mobile (the satellites, curiously, had remained untouched by the mobs) and more importantly, have a bird's eye view of the city, to watch for any incoming danger.

I was quite surprised by the opening in the final game, which went 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 a6 3.Nge2 d6 4.f3 Nf6 5.d4 e6. However, the next moves were stunning, showing that Carlsen had not blocked out the crazy uncertainty outside. He played 6.e5, and then I saw he had played 7.f4, but I didn't see the rest of the game, as I heard gunshots not far away.

I look around, listening for approaching people. Fortunately, the building's empty and derelict, so the mob focused their attention elsewhere.

The mob moved closer and closer to the salon. The spectators, however, were transfixed by the game, and couldn't look away.

Finally, as the mob was just across the road from the salon, I checked the position again. And it was shocking - Carlsen had resigned in 28 moves, from a position that resembled the famous Karpov-Kasparov Linares game in the Samisch King's Indian.

As Nepomniachtchi was crowned the new World Champion, an old model of a Mercedez-Benz arrived at the venue. So old, that it's a manual car - but the driver was ready to pick up Carlsen. Carlsen ran into the car which sped off as the mob shot bullets at the speeding car to try to stop it. The spectators were less fortunate as they were mowed down by the mob.

Looking up from my position, I saw that Carlsen's car was moving in the direction of another mob, and as it moved out of my sight, I hoped that he would escape.

However, when I heard more gunshots in the direction the car went, I checked my phone, hoping it wasn't what I thought.

But it was true - Carlsen had been shot dead by another mob in the city.

What of my family? Are they all right?

I was nervous to leave my safe position at the top of the building, but I knew I couldn't stay here forever.

Seeing that the mobs had dispersed to another location, I hijacked an abandoned car. Thankfully, there was still gas in the tank. I drove to my small retal property in New York, only to find it torched, with 4 bearded men cheering. They were so euphoric about the carnage they were causing, that they didn't even notice me walking around and hiding, trying to get more information.

Once I was clear in a bush, I called my mother, to tell her about the gangs and what happened. I even mentioned the Arthur Gang that had torched my home. My mother told me 'You know the history of this gang, right?', and I shook my head.

She then revealed, 'The Arthur Gang of New York used to be called the Illingworth Gang'.

I laughed at the irony of the situation. The gang had, in its rage, torched the founding home of the Illingworth Gang. I'd bought at a bargain price of $200K, when The Great Depression of the 21st Century happened in late 2020. I didn't overly care, because I had insurance on the property and knew I could restore it.

Then I woke up.

[b.nancarrow]

The latest chess dream was quite wild.

Who needs movies when you can have dreams like that!

[Kevin Bonham]

Amazing contribution!

[FM_Bill]

I sometimes have chess dreams. Sometimes I have trouble getting to the game on time.
Other times I have trouble making out the exact position.
Sometimes the board has too many squares.
Sometimes I can recognise players.
I always dream in colour.

[Kevin Bonham]

Posts moved

Caissa posts moved to new thread http://www.chesschat.org/showthread.php?18123-Caissa

Any discussion of this decision may occur in the Help and Feedback section only.

[Capablanca-Fan]

Last night I dreamed that a colleague was giving the rest of us a lecture, and showing some chess analysis presented by a friend of our organization, somehow using a mobile phone to project on a screen. The moves of the losing side were so crass that they should have been pointed out. I was holding back irritation and waiting for him to give me the phone so I could show what was missed. Then my wife woke me just before my alarm was due.

Totally unrealistic, because I am not aware that this colleague even knows how to play chess, let alone present to an audience including a master.

[ER]

I dreamed of an ice made multidimensional type of chess board murmuring something like: I am October and I am going to freeze you!
That was in Italian! Woke up scared shitless desperately reaching for the air/condition plug. No need, it was a rather warm night!

[Kevin Bonham]

Nigel Short
@nigelshortchess
I had a nightmare in which I was playing a tough game of #chess and my opponent suddenly announced "checkmate", without the slightest justification. Unfortunately, 2/3 of the Appeals Committee supported his claim.

[Desmond]

I had a dream in which I was playing a tournament game. The game was nearly over, I had queened a pawn and had another on the 7th rank. My opponent just had a couple of pawns left and a long way from queening them. My opponent made a move, and it was time to start calculating quickest path to mate. I had about 3 mins left. Any move wins, there are no stalemates. I spent about 30-60+ seconds on this, and then I suddenly realised that my opponent had left his king in check! I stopped the clock, called the arbiter. The arbiter agreed, added some time back to my clock (less than I had spent on the move!), and set up the position from a few moves earlier with me to move. Not the move in which my opponent had made an illegal move, but an earlier position. I couldn't remember what I had played in that position, and the arbiter demanded that if I am to make a claim I must know the moves, and I had to re-play them. I argued on, while my time ran down...

[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.)