On the role of confessional booths in chess
An entertaining episode from Nakamura - Pragg game
Yesterday, in the 4th round of the prestigious Norway Chess tournament, there was an interesting episode in the Nakamura - Praggnanandhaa game. On move 24 they reached the following position (Pragg sacrificed a knight a couple of moves ago). It’s White (Nakamura) to move. Should he take the pawn on d6? Nakamura spent whopping 47 (!) minutes thinking in this particular position (being in prep for most of the game, so he had time).
Meanwhile, Pragg, probably somewhat bored while waiting, made his first appearance in the so-called Confessional Booth. It is a relatively modern invention in chess tournaments, designed to make chess a more spectacular sport: players can share their thoughts, fears and hopes to all online spectators — right in the middle of the game! Usually their speech is augmented by a board on the screen following along with the variations they are verbally describing.
Coming back to the position. Taking that d6 pawn is tempting, but as we later learnt Pragg thought that it was impossible due to the following beautiful line.
If White takes the pawn Nxd6, we play Qb6, attacking the knight. But this seemingly walks straight into a knight fork from c4:
Then the knight has nowhere else to go, so the fork is actually forced: Nc4. But then Black exploits the exposed White king: Qf6+. There is no other move other than to hide on g1: Kg1.
Can you spot how to continue the attack from here?
(leaving some space here to hide the answer)
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There is a beautiful Re2! attacking the Queen, the rook in the corner and threatening Qf2 checkmate. White needs to take the rook: Qxe2 and black grabs the rooks in the corner: Qxa1+.
Now, White can’t play Kf2 — because then the rook on h1 is lost. So White is forced to block with the Queen: Qf1, but then Qd4+ Qf2 Qd1+ Qf1 Qd4+ is a perpetual check, hence a draw. Which is a good result for Pragg with Black from the starting position of this post.
So the commentators were demonstrating and discussing this variation proposed by IM Anna Rudolf. But then they discovered a flaw at the end: actually, taking the rook with Qxe2 is not forced, White can instead play inventive Rf1! instead, counter-attacking the Queen:
And now there is no perpetual. If Black takes the Queen, we have this: Rxd2 Rxf6 gxf6 Nxd2 and White preserves the extra piece. Or if Black decides to give a check: Rxd2 Rxf6 Rd1+ Rf1 — Black retreats the rook and blocks the check simultaneously.
So this whole variation doesn’t work for Black and it means that the pawn on d6 can be taken!
Coming back to the Confessional Booth: when Pragg came there he described exactly this first variation, saying that pawn on d6 can’t be taken, because of this and that (quoting the variation Anna suggested, that works in Black’s favour). But just as he was saying that, he took a brief pause and said: oh, but there is Re2 Rf1, hmmm, White is better… And left the booth.
So Pragg has discovered that refutation line right in front of the audience, in runtime so to speak, and we could see it, that was quite a treat to watch! However, unfortunately he already stepped in that line, and Nakamura, after 43 minutes (probably carefully validating everything) went for Nxd6 and grabbed the pawn! And the game progressed just like the second refutational line with Nakamura eventually playing Rf1. Pragg went on to lose the game.
To me this clearly demonstrates the “rubber duck” principle/joke that goes as follows. Each programmer is well advised to have a rubber duck at their desk, so that whenever a problem occurs - you first relate that problem to the rubber duck. While doing so and putting the problem in actual words, you are normally understanding it much better and can solve it without any input from the listening party (in this case the rubber duck). In this way you can save time of your colleagues who otherwise just play a role of the rubber duck (i.e. listening to your problem and not even comprehending it fully before the active party realises themselves how to fix the problem).
So maybe, as Anna Rudolf suggested, players should use the Confessional Booths more often and more seriously — to have such revelation moments like Pragg in this game?
You can watch this whole episode, including Pragg’s confession and Anna’s analysis of the line, in real time in this YouTube video (starting at 2:49:57).
And you can play over full game here on chess.com
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