Please post your thoughts about un-deserved wins.
I’ll take any win, but it’s a very hollow win if my opponent suddenly resigns when I launch a strong attack, but clearly not anything remotely winning, but rather still has the opponent with a strong game.
Attacks like that are designed primarily to change the dynamics of the board, either make it more tactical, or more positional, and almost certainly get pieces off the board.
I’ll tell you about an undeserved win I had many years ago.
My opponent was rated about 300 points lower than me, but he had me busted. Something about his demeanor told me I might be able to get away with something, so I tried it. I played my move, then immediately stated “I offer a draw”, then immediately pressed my clock.
In other words, I offered a draw in precisely the way it’s supposed to be done. By pressing the clock immediately after I made the offer, I freaked him out. He probably thought I was supposed to give him a chance to respond verbally to the offer before I pressed the clock. He must have gone into “OMG, my opponent already pressed the clock, now I have to hurry” mode. He immediately played a horrendous blunder, giving me an easily won position.
Does anybody think I did anything wrong?
Bill Smythe
No. If he thought what you think he thought then he didn’t know the rule on draw offers. That’s on him, not on you.
The definition of undeserved can vary from person to person.
The OP indicated an undeserved win might be when the opponent simply resigned after being rattled by an attack that may or may not have been decisive. Others would say that a win from launching such an attack was deserved since it crushed the opponent’s will to resist and OTB chess is a game against the opponent.
Putting up what little resistance you can in an essentially busted position can sometimes result in a win when the opponent drops a piece (usually in time pressure). Some would say that win is undeserved and others would say that the win came from forcing the opponent to actually win the “won game”. I’ve had a number of such wins (and some unfortunate losses). The Marshall or Chernev definition of swindles can fall into this category.
A fainter relative of such swindles is when the opponent makes an unforced gross blunder in an even position. (an unforced subtle blunder is more similar to a trap that the opponent fell into).
Another type of undeserved win might be when you are playing a team match and a draw will win the match. The opponent may feel compelled to take risks to try to win, and those risks may end up in the opponent losing.
Maintaining a poker face after making your own major blunder in the hope that your opponent won’t notice it might result in what some would consider an undeserved win.
Personally I don’t consider any of the wins above to be undeserved. Way against expectations? Fortunate? Unintended gifts? Yes to those three questions, but not undeserved.
Bill’s example might be deemed undeserved by some. I had a very vaguely similar situation where my lower-rated opponent was in time pressure in the first time control and I offered a rook trade to go into a K+B+6P vs K+B+6P ending with the bishops traveling on opposite-colored squares. I didn’t make a draw offer, but the trade offer could easily be seen as a tacit draw offer. He accepted the trade and when he had time to think after the end of the time controlled he suddenly found that having the rooks off gave a clear path to my decisive king invasion. Bill exploited the clock to get his opponent to make an unforced blunder. I exploited the clock to get my opponent to rely on general principles instead of analyzing the specific situation (a trap rather than an unforced blunder).
One strong case for deeming wins as undeserved is when Soviet players would concede games to other “chosen” Soviet players so that a Soviet could win the tournament. Fischer countered that ploy by simply beating them all.
Deliberately getting your opponent drunk before a game is another strong case.
Not me. I think it’s reasonable to offer a draw in a losing position. I don’t do that myself, but in a bind, I can be tenacious in converting a losing game into a draw, even if it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I work myself into a draw I didn’t intend. In that case, I’ll do the 3 repetition draw and cut my losses. Although it is mildly annoying for an opponent to offer a draw on the verge of being mated.
I had one of those too, many years ago in a team tournament. My position was one of those where the first player who tries to do anything loses. My opponent’s team captain told my opponent, “Our tiebreaks are crappy. A draw won’t help us one bit.” In effect she was ordering my opponent to play for a win at all costs.
At that moment I knew I was going to win the game. Sure enough, he immediately tried something. It was quickly refuted.
Bill Smythe
IMO, the only undeserved win is one obtained by cheating, and none of the behavior described in this thread would especially bother me. I find it amusing, rather than annoying, when someone offers a draw in a losing position (even when mate is imminent). It would only annoy me if he/she kept doing this on every move.
Several times I have had significantly higher-rated players surprise me by resigning in positions where I thought I was better, but by no means winning. In one case, a higher-rated player offered me a draw immediately after I had blundered a piece (he wanted to show that he respected me for winning several games against a local expert years earlier). I could not in good conscience accept that offer, and I resigned instead.
My favorite example of an “undeserved” win is a game in which I had lost a piece in a complicated position (it took a lot of analysis to figure out what my mistake had been – it was quite a few moves earlier than the actual loss of material). However, we were both Class C players, there were plenty more mistakes waiting to be made, and we kept playing. Sure enough, I won the piece back a bit later on. Clearly shaken by this, my opponent immediately offered a draw, and, sensing that I “had the momentum,” I turned him down, his play continued to deteriorate, and I won the game. Afterward, a local master who had been strolling by when the draw offer was made told me that my opponent still had an easy win at that point. I don’t remember the details, but he had either a King move or a pawn move that would have resulted in an unstoppable passed pawn. Fortunately for me, neither of us saw that during the game.
In general, I think psychological gamesmanship is fair play, especially at the lower levels. It’s all part of the game. Convincing your opponent to resign is just as valid as mating him.
I once saw a game between two lower rated players, one of whom resigned after giving up his bishop for his opponent’s last pawn, leaving him with K vs K +B + N. There wasn’t a chance in the world the opponent knew how to deliver that checkmate, by his own admission.
I once won a game due to a combination of my opponent’s time management and nature’s call. We were both A players back in the late 1990s. He outplayed me and was up an exchange, although I retained tricks. Significantly, he was down to 5 minutes on his analog clock with 10 moves to reach time control. On the other hand, I had an hour left.
I should add that we played near the front of a large ballroom while the bathrooms were on another floor. Even a quick trip to the bathroom would easily have taken 2-3 minutes.
It quickly became obvious to me that he felt a different kind of time pressure. He was standing and fidgeting; he even muttered out loud in Russian. Once he walked to the ballroom doors, but abruptly returned, worried that I had moved. I had not. He was clearly distracted.
I used about half of my hour to play the next five moves. First, he sacrificed back the exchange for an unclear position that he probably overestimated. Then he flat out blundered a piece. With less than a minute on his clock, he muttered something and ran away, leaving his clock, scoresheet and jacket at the table. I waited a short while for his flag to fall and showed the TD.
This was not my biggest swindle nor my only comeback in opponent’s time pressure. It was, however, the biggest turnaround directly impacted by non-chess factors. I might have had more sympathy if this opponent had not been rude in the past.
Michael Aigner
Let me tell you about my most undeserved win.
I have played many GMs over the years. I lost most of those games of course, though I have a handful of draws, a few of which I am very proud of. Unfortunately, the one and only win I have from a GM was also the single most undeserved win of my entire tournament career.
This game was played in the final round of a two-day event, in which there was a primary time control at move 40 and then a sudden death control to finish (with 5-second delay from move one). In the first control, I got into serious time trouble and had to make the final ten moves in 30 seconds. I made the control but not before committing a serious strategic error which gave him a big advantage.
In the final control, having seen my poor time management, he played a long series of non-committal moves just to see if I would get in time pressure again – and I did. By about move 80, I had one second left on my clock (plus the five second delay of course). He had ten minutes. He won two pawns and was making steady progress towards victory. Of course, I don’t have a record of all the moves but right after the game, I made a point of writing down the critical position. This was it:
H. Terrie (2206) vs. Anonymous GM (2630)
My best guess is that this was at about move 120. I still had one second but he was down to two minutes, so we were blitzing. For maybe 15 or 20 moves, I had been making random rook moves along the second rank (that was all I could think of to do). Finally, in the above position I played a non-random rook move:
1 Rf2 and was astonished when he replied 1…Ra7?? (maybe he was expecting only 2 Ra2). After my instantaneous 2 Rxf7+ he reeled back in shock but did not resign, as I still had only one second. After a few more blitzed moves, he played an illegal move. I immediately stopped both clocks and claimed the two-minute time addition. Then he resigned.
This was a pretty embarrassing way to win. When it comes to “undeserved” wins (in the sense intended by the OP), I think it gets a pretty high rank. Can anyone top it?
– Hal Terrie
I have an undeserved win from way back in the 1990s that might top Hal’s, if only because the unbelievable blunder that handed me the game was not due to time trouble. I don’t have the technology to embed diagrams, but it was a relatively short game, so I’ll just give the game score:
Anonymous Expert - Dennis Kosterman (Class C):
So far, we are following the game Peters-Mestel from Hastings 1980/81. According to opening books of that day and age (such as BCO-2 and Sapi/Schneider), the position is roughly equal. I only knew the theory because my opponent had crushed me like a bug in this variation a few months earlier, and knowing that we would be playing again with the same colors, I “studied up.” From here on, we are on our own.
I had hesitated to grab the c-pawn because I was afraid of 19. Qd4, which looked very strong. But then I saw that he couldn’t play that because of the Knight fork on e2, so I went ahead and grabbed the pawn. I almost fell out of my chair when he responded (without much thought) by playing 19. Qd4?? Ne2+ 20. resigns.
This looks like a cheap trick, but I really had no intention of winning his Queen – I just wanted the c-pawn. I never dreamed that he would actually play the forbidden move!
nothing undeserved about that at all, ya ask me!
…scot…
Thanks! I was pretty happy with my play in this game (especially compared to our previous game in this opening), but it’s not every day that an expert walks into a royal fork (“I haven’t done that in a while” was his comment after the game). If he doesn’t do that, I’m only a pawn up in a messy position that my opponent, who outrates me by ~600 points, is likely to handle better than me. He was a very strong attacking player (and probably still is). I considered myself lucky to win in such a fashion.
Lucky and undeserved are two different things. We’re all lucky frequently in our wins. But if your opponent does something silly, that doesn’t make it undeserved.
I once lost to a much lower rated kid (OK, I’ve done than many times). He sacked a piece for an unsound attack. Every time I thought I’d shut it down for good, he came up with another idea. Finally I had the move that would shut it down, but it looked a little risky. I played something else which also seemed to shut it down. It didn’t. I told his mother afterwards “He kept posing questions until I answered one incorrectly”. He deserved his win.
I also have an “undeserved win” against a Grandmaster that occurred very recently. This event was an online event and it was the US Chess Championship Qualifier back on the Saturday of Thanksgiving Weekend. The final position should have been a draw, and I had offered a draw about 10 moves before the end of the game, and he offered me a draw with about 7 seconds left on his clock and since we were both moving so fast, I did not see his draw offer in time, and he ended up flagging, giving me the win. When I got the tournament report the following Saturday, I was somewhat saddened as this Grandmaster opponent is a very good friend of mine. He had a King, Rook and Pawn, and I just had a King and Rook, and could achieve the Philidor’s position where he could not beat me. A real unfortunate situation occurred, and I ran him out of time.
Respectfully Submitted,
David A. Cole, USCF Life Member, Franklin, NJ
okay, i have to give ya mine… was playing in a cleveland, ohio event back in the late 70’s early 80’s, probably one of Bill McElyea’s events… or Jim Schroeder’s… anyway, i’m just an awestruck high school kid paired against Mr Calvin Blocker. I’m slowly(?) getting out-played and i look at the clock, Calvin’s running low on time but still doesn’t move. he’s deep in thought, head clutched between his palms, and i tell him, “your flag fell”. he looked perplexed until i reminded him the time limit was 40/60, not 30/60… he was supremely gracious about the whole thing.
okay, not my best moment but i was just a high school kid so cut me some slack… lol
cheers, …scot…
Scot L Henderson