There's my checkmate, and you can see my original queen is actually outside. That one there is a promoted pawn.
Let me walk you through where it all started. I won’t bore you with the start of the game :: just where it started to get interesting.
So yeah, it was a tough game but somehow we got here. Now you can see the knight positioned at D4, ready to protect. So I decided to take a ballsy step and move the pawn from e5 to e6. I'm usually reluctant to just leave a piece like that. As an intermediate player, I tend to have short sight and might end up moving the knight away without realizing it was supposed to be protecting a pawn, or even worse, I get threatened by the opponent and forced to move out.
But I got audacious today. I wasn't gonna keep playing safe forever, right? How then will I become Magnus Sherif 😅
Of course, they'd take their king out of check.
I then got this dangerously exciting idea: since their king isn’t heavily guarded, what if I just weaken the cover and infiltrate? My crazy idea: still move that knight supposedly protecting a pawn, sacrifice the knight, and checkmate (perhaps). Felt scary, but why not try???
So the plan at this point was to take out the black pawn at f5 - black retaliates by happily taking a knight for a pawn - Mrs. Queen aggressively takes h5 - and then, you know, a couple of moves and I have their king captured...
But here's how it played out.
Moved queen d1–f3. I wanted to take the route from h4 to f6 in case my plan didn't work. Just wanted to infiltrate, so I had to first get to f3, of course.
Black's response
Then black responded with this move, which was obviously sketchy.
If I blindly now move my knight as initially planned, the evil queen (haha) will take my pawn at e3, simultaneously check my king, and perhaps, depending on my response, take pawn c3 and just start a spree. You know how scary queen sprees are: they continue to check your king and take out your pieces. So yeah, I wasn't gonna let 'em cook. And I did this instead:
She (Queen Black) simply laughed at me and was like, “Okay... protect your pawn. I’ll be gunning for your king when I get to a1,” and guess what? Mummy Queen won’t be able to save you from her weak position.
Of course, I laughed back. Come get me then.
Covered in shame, she went back inside.
I proceeded with my plan.
Fast forward >>>
Happily sacrificed my Queen 🥺🥺
To get another, of course 😜😜
Fast forward >>>
Locked in the poor king - scratch that - EVIL king.
And boom -- checkmate!!!
(PL)
This might not be something special in the chess world or to professionals out there, but it was such a great play for me. It's the first time I actually ever sacrificed a significant piece for the bigger plan, and it worked!! Feel crazy proud of myself.
I think I need to make a little introduction at this point...
I'm Sherif by name, from Nigeria. I’ll be 22 years old by August. More about me in my intro post...
How did I come to like chess or even know chess at all?
Well, as a child, I grew up watching people play it, passively actually. I never really started. I simply thought of it as some boring game old people played...
Growing up, when I got my first phone, I was literally game hunting for more than a year. It was pretty much the most unproductive year of my life. So I'd tested shooting games, car racing games, you name it... but it all got boring at some point. You win level this, level that, ehn ehn, then proceed to the next level, and when you're done, what next??
You start to look for another game to download. But with chess, it was different. Technical, psychological, practical, and challenging!! And who am I if not a lover of challenges?
I simply fell in love with the idea of having to think 2, 3+ steps ahead before making a move...
So I downloaded one on my mobile. Let me go and check, it seems I froze it...
You can imagine 😅😅
It's been long since I last opened it, I'm talking several months. So yeah, I played and played till I got to grandmaster level and couldn’t win a single game. Once in a million games ended in a draw, otherwise, I lost. I'm not sure if I gave up or got busy when I finally got into the university...
So fast forward (been saying that too much lately 🥲)
We are in our final year and as part of the activities to commemorate, we’re engaging in various fun games and sports. My coursemate in charge of taking down participants approached me to write down my name. He said he remembered I told him I played chess, but I turned it down. It's been long, and I would need to practice...
So I just felt this urge to reconnect to my chess person and decided to go chess-hunting (plus I had a system now, so it'd be bigger and more enjoyable)... and finally found "3D Chess Game." Quite the rating and review it has got... and downloaded it. I've been playing obsessively for the past couple of days.
I'm at level 17/25 right now...
And this is my current stat.
Not sure how truly representative the ELO estimate is... but I'm glad I'm progressing.
I think I lost a lot of games between level 10–14, but it really helped me focus. I see my mistakes, oversights, and short sights. And gracefully, I won levels 15–17 on the first try. I hope to maintain the streak.
Let's call it off here. I'm not some learned chess player who has mastered all those openings, endgames, and whatnot... and I simply am not hell-bent on learning them. I'm more of a practical person; play as it comes. I do, however, understand the importance of mastering the art of building up (setting up your pieces to protect each other and making infiltration difficult for the opponent). That has without a doubt helped me in my last two games.
Bye for now, I'm gonna proceed to level 18 nowww... catchu later.
