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An Extraterrestrial Gambit

Alien Gambit, MY GAMBIT, MY LEGACY!!

– the witty alien

Exactly a year ago, the author set himself the ominous task of writing a chess blog !!, and to his chagrin, followed that up with additional tasks in the footnotes of the first post for future posts on said chess blog ??. Given the author’s predisposition to procrastination, such an imposition on oneself was laughable. One of these tasks was to investigate dishonourable gambits; while the task itself seemed honourable at the time, the identification of honour (or dishonour), proved to be fairly perplexing1. It is fair to say that a truly singular event caused the epiphany that is leading to this post. The timing, of this event occurring approximately a year since the genesis of this blog, is purely coincidental, of course.

an extraterrestrial threat

Numerous fans of the game of chess are familiar with the eccentric and charismatic chess content creator, Volen Dyulgerov, with the online tag: witty alien. In addition to being an extremely energetic presence on screen, the witty alien is an extremely good chess player with an insatiable fetish for brilliant moves. On the 30th of September, the witty alien played a game of blitz against Magnus Carlsen. Here is the position of Magnus Carlsen vs the witty alien after some 19 moves were played

Upon careful observation, one may note the following:

  1. the witty alien (with the black pieces) is down an exchange: he has a bishop in exchange for Magnus’ extra rook. This excludes all the pawns that the witty alien has lost and is set to lose: for instance, 20. Rxd6 loses another pawn with white maintaining the advantage.
  2. The black king on h8 is more or less suffocated by his own pieces with white’s pieces marching down the board to deliver eventual checkmate in a brutal fashion.
  3. There are extremely limited avenues for our beloved witty alien to cause complications as he usually does. The rook and queen are tied down to the 8th rank to protect the poor king on h8 and the bishop on a2 is the only piece that has made it into the white camp and is incapable of an attack on the white king.

It seems that the witty alien has played himself into a downright diabolical position against one of the greatest players of the game of chess and in doing so is also down by almost 80% of the clock time allotted to each player, 1:08 against 4:20 on the clock. With all these gargantuan odds stacked against him, the witty alien seemed almost down and out in altogether unremarkable fashion…

In the matter of 3 and a half seconds, the unthinkable occurred, lightning struck 42 times at the same location, something so improbable that it even caused a moment of literary creativity in the author, Magnus Carlsen played the move heard all over the world2: 20. Rde1. The witty alien immediately, pounced on this opportunity, screaming and hyperventilating at the prospect of almost sure victory. He made sure to tear off a meaningful amount of his clothing while playing the absolutely devastating move, the only move in the position, 20. .. Rb1+!

The white king is in check and is forced to move to d2; of course, if Magnus did not play 21. Kd2, the witty alien could have captured the white king and proceeded to celebrate in truly obscene fashion. The black queen would then resurrect herself and join in the onslaught against the white king, 21. .. Qd5+, yielding the following magnificent ending position

While the position was hopeless for our dear witty alien, a mere 2 moves ago, the position is now completely hopeless for Magnus Carlsen. The white king may not escape to e2 and then f1 as the white bishop would mercilessly hunt the king into the center of the board. Moreover, the witty alien would capture the white rook on e1 and gain an unsurmountable material advantage.

the extraterrestrial gambit

The game described above piqued the author’s grey matter, “Well that was a fun game! Hmm.. the alien gambit may be a dishonourable gambit.. But only in the eyes of a skilled player, which I am not..”. The author then realised that the truly dishonourable gambit would be one that is plagiarised from the alien gambit!!. While the idea was sound in principle and the author had a candidate plagiarism in mind, the soundness of the gambit was in question. Would this “new” alien gambit, this extraterrestrial gambit3, be usable? Would there be any creative ideas that enable a difficult to mitigate attack? Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? In true dishonourable fashion, the author quashed such doubts and proceeded to prepare the ensuing, which is meant to serve as an introduction to The Extraterrestrial Gambit:

how?

The easily manipulated reader may wish to get their hands dirty and play The Extraterrestrial Gambit, themselves. Here are a few important ideas to keep in mind:

  1. The Extraterrestrial Gambit is played with the white pieces. If this is not possible, resign the game immediately, that is, gambit the game itself!
  2. This opening leads to the loss of a knight and an advantage that is equivalent to a knight and 0.6 pawns. The all-seeing all-knowing engine is capable of utilising fractional pawns. Alas, such techniques are not afforded to middling chess players such as the author.
  3. The Extraterrestrial Gambit is more of a psychological weapon, in that, unsuspecting opponent with the black pieces will be almost surely bewildered. As Sun Tzu states in the Art of War,

    The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent4.

Here is an ideal setup for the the gambit. White begins with the classical move by white 1. e4 which is met by the French Defense 1. .. e6. White with the intention to leverage Black’s absence in the center of the board follows up with 2. d4. Black continues with 2. .. d5.

White then plays 3. Nc3, developing a knight, and defending the pawn on e4. Black proceeds to capture the e4 pawn, 3. .. dxe4. White, being frugal (with the malicious intent to give up the knight very soon), takes back with 4. Nxe4. Black then develops their own knight, 4. .. Nf6

The well-informed reader may note that this is the Rubinstein variation of the French Defense. The ensuing moves are the creative effort plagiarism by the author: 5. Ng5. Note that this is exactly the fifth move of the alien gambit as well. The only salient difference being that, in the alien gambit, black played 1. .. c6 (the Caro-Kann) instead of 1. .. e6. Black observing that white has moved the knight three times in the opening without attempting to develop any other piece, proceeds to punish white with the logical move 5. .. h6, attacking the capricious white knight.

And now the pièce de résistance, white moves the knight again, much to black’s confusion/amusement, 6. Nxf7!!5

why?

Why not?

what next?

Wait for the next blog post in this series, while the author investigates in detail…

some notes

The uninitiated reader may see the final position above as absolutely mortifying and may also question the efficacy of the alien gambit itself. The key tradeoff of the alien gambit is the fact that black can no longer castle and white with the additional tempo may now develop their pieces, in somewhat standard fashion: Nf3, Bc4 and so on. While white already had that tempo, having availed the benefit of beginning the game, with the black king on f7, the potential to launch direct attacks increases. I suspect something similar could be true for The Extraterrestrial Gambit as well. However, the engine evaluates the alien gambit to be better for white by a pawn and a half; alas, I do not know why, yet.

footnotes

  1. The author admits that the investigation lasted for sporadic half an hour intervals in the past year. Each of these intervals was brought on by abject boredom and was followed by the unique frustration that one experiences when interacting with the game of chess. ↩

  2. It is quite unlikely this move was “heard around the world”, but the phrase does lend a sense of grandeur to the mundane, i.e., this blog post. Moreover, the ever-perceptive reader may have guessed that the author was exaggerating when 42 lightning strikes were claimed to have been colocated. ↩

  3. The author has chosen to also plagiarise the name of the gambit… albeit with a minor edit. ↩

  4. Our real intent, of course, is to confuse the enemy. ↩

  5. I did promise in the first post, to leave the chess move annotations to chess.com, but in this case, I could not resist. For the curious reader, chess.com annotates this particular move as a blunder, that is, ??. ↩