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On The Reckless Capture Of Pawns

After all, a pawn is a pawn!

– Alexander Koblencs in Study Chess with Tal

A recurring theme in my games is the sacrifice of material ending in devastating fashion; albeit rarely in my favour. It is a form of artistic expression, where my current state of mind is (potentially) reflected in the carnage that I leave on the 64 squares. Any period of successful sacrifices, which are validated by the elusive !! (indicating a brilliant move) on chess.com, are generally followed by longer stints of largely unsuccessful sacrifices, which are punctuated by the familiar ?? (indicating, what seems obvious to the engine, a blunder). As an aside, I find that such a colour-coded punctuation of chess moves is highly expressive as a tool across media. One may of course question the fidelity of assigning such symbols to matters that are subjective: do we really know if the move 1. e4 is better than the move 1. d4 (see the chess board below for reference)?

In the same vein, if I choose to punctuate my sentence with !!, am I claiming its objective unquestionable brilliance??? Inspired by the chess annotations, I proceed to annotate a particular phrase or sentence with !! and ?? indicating the particular joy I derived!!.(although, I find punctuation a bit harder as a consequence). The annotation of chess moves, on the other hand, will be solely the responsibility of the chess.com analysis. In the future, I may attempt to expand this legend to capture more granular sentiments. Now to the matter at hand…

In my imagination, each of my pieces are burdened with glorious purpose and yet they fall short at seemingly erratic moments. Furthermore, their soundness is questionable and this fact becomes evident to me in a fairly haphazard manner as well. The relative value of the pieces is of no consequence either, i.e., over my last few years of playing chess, I have gifted my opponents pieces ranging from the measly pawns, to the ambidextrous knights, to the infinitely valuable king and everything in between!!1. None of these however compare to the most frequent piece I sacrifice, immaterial of win/loss/draw: my priceless piece of mind. The game of chess vexes and astonishes me in equal measure, as it does2 the scores of poor souls that log in to chess.com or lichess in the hopes of attaining that ever-elusive glory to distract from the everyday drudgery and all-in-all unholy practices of the physical world. Waxing lyrical of the highly elusive allure of chess is well and good, but my chosen style of play begs of me to initiate any kind of systematic study of sacrifices and dynamic play. What better piece to start with than the measly pawn???

the one who sacrifices first…

The avid chess player with a burning urgency to sacrifice material, specifically pawns, may do so only after the second move (if they play as white). A more enthusiastic and creative player with the white pieces may devise a variety of mechanisms to violate my claim and sacrifice one or many pawns on the first move itself!!. I must admit that it must be an honour to be on the receiving end of such a pawn sacrifice, an honour I yearn and pine for. Alas, for now, I must restrict myself to white pawn sacrifices on only the second move. Fret not, dear reader, I did however count?? the number of possible pawn sacrifices on the second move (by white) and on the first move (by black). Broadly speaking, the pawn that white sacrifices on the first move is a Gladiator who was moved on the first move (and then left to die, morituri te salutant) or is a Serpent who was moved on the second move (a poisonous offer). For the sake of uniformity, I call black pawn sacrifices on the first move also as Gladiator’s.

Gladiators

If a Gladiator is sacrificed by white, then a pawn must have moved on the first move. Observe that there are 8 volunteers to the post of Gladiator. As the ever perceptive reader probably guessed, black also has control over whether the pawns moved by white qualify as Gladiators. Black has to attack white’s moved pawn for it to be a Gladiator. Additionally, white’s second move must ensure that black can capture “for free” the pawn that white moved in the first move. At this stage, one realizes the magnitude of the task that lays ahead and realizes that resignation constitutes a valid strategy. Although, I am tempted to subvert the reader’s expectation, I instead attempt to cajole a computer to count the number of ways pawns may be Gladiator’s??. In other words, I used chatGPT and vibe-counted the number of ways pawns become Gladiator’s. To my surprise, chatGPT counted not that differently from me: started systematically, identified how Gladiator’s are not born, exhaustively attempted to enumerate all variations that do lead to Gladiator’s all while sounding fairly certain of the quality of the analysis??. Humbled at the newfound knowledge of mine own dimwittedness, I instead present a very glorious Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius. Maximus used to be a white f-pawn, who appears in the line 1. f4 e5 2. g4 (see below)

Maximus perishes at this point, in one move: 2. .. exf4 but ensured that the lives of the other potential Gladiator’s could have been saved.3

The above discussion considered only white Gladiators while completely ignoring black Gladiators who interestingly have better representation in chess theory. A large number of theoretically studied openings have introduced Black Gladiators, I present two of my favourites below:

  • The Scandinavian Gladiator: One of the oldest of their kind4 and trained for battle in the unforgiving Scandinavian weather5, the Scandinavian Gladiator is the venerable d-pawn of black !!. The Scandinavian Gladiator arises upon the moves 1. e4 d5 (see below).

Another interesting chess player who was known to have played and developed the theory of the Scandinavian defense was Joseph Henry Blackburne. Nicknamed the Black Death, Blackburne used to hustle amateur players with the absolutely scandalous Shilling Gambit named after him6.

  • The Weeping Gladiator: A biblical gladiator7 who is a witty trickster akin to the Black Death8, is the venerable c-pawn of black !!. The Weeping Gladiator arises upon the moves 1. d4 c5 (see below).

The black Gladiators (especially) the ones described above sacrifice themselves but one typically has to consider deeply the acceptance of their sacrifice. Upon accepting the sacrifice of the Weeping and Scandinavian Gladiator’s one has to be careful, else the wrath of the rest of the black army comes crashing upon them.

Serpents

The Serpents appear in far more complicated mechanisms than Gladiators as they may occur after any move by white. Having learnt a valuable lesson from the perils of counting the number of variations that yield Gladiators, it seems appropriate to primarily discuss interesting Serpents. For the longest time, I used to feature a prominent Serpent in my games, il Calabrese9 who was an ardent subject of the queen and very often willing to die for her!!. il Calabrese however was poisonous and capture typically led to extreme discomfort. il Calabrese is the white c-pawn and appeared in my games via the iconic Queen’s gambit after the moves 1. d4 d5 2. c4 (see below).

Furthermore, il Calabrese may appear in a delayed fashion and presents very similar threats. I end the discussion of early pawn sacrifices, Gladiators and Serpents by presenting one final Serpent: The Romantic. The Romantic is, in some sense, the analogue of il Calabrese. The Romantic exhibits similar bravado and integrity as il Calabrese but has strong allegiance to the king !!. The Romantic is the white f-pawn10 and arrives in emphatic nature in the famed King’s gambit after the moves 1. e4 e5 2. f4 (see below).

footnotes

  1. I really liked that I could rhyme in that phrase although it seems like a bit of a stretch. ↩

  2. Or so I hope. I would very much like to shake the hand of that fortunate soul that both plays a lot of chess and is not vexed by the game even a little. ↩

  3. Observe that instead of 2. .. exf4, the move 2. .. Qh4#, is checkmate. But I think the story about Maximus is heart-wrenching and worth a retelling, even if it is with a pinch of satire. ↩

  4. The Scandinavian defense is one of the oldest recorded chess openings in history, first appearing as a fictional game in the poem Scachs d’Amor by Francesc de Castellví, Bernat Fenollar, and Narcís Vinyoles. See FIDE Candidate Master Arnie Moll’s interesting article on the same. ↩

  5. The Scandinavian defense was played extensively by the Swedish brothers Ludvig and Gustaf Collijn. At the first Nordic Chess Championship held in Stockholm in 1897, both the brothers played the Scandinavian defense extensively. Both brothers had the black pieces for 5 games in the tournament, played the Scandinavian defense in 4 of those games and won with the black pieces only once and when they played the Scandinavian defense. See the games of the tournament. ↩

  6. TODO: a blog post on dishonourable gambits. ↩

  7. The Weeping Gladiator is named after the classical opening the Benoni defense, which is now called the old Benoni defense. Benoni or Ben-Oni is a biblical name that translates to “son of my sorrow”; hence, the Weeping Gladiator. ↩

  8. Joseph Henry Blackburne was one of the first players to have used the Benoni defense with success (I suppose this means he’s the first one in documented history to have won with the Benoni). See his game against Preston Ware in the Vienna Tournament in 1882. ↩

  9. il Calabrese is the namesake of Gioachino Greco who was one of the first to analyze the venerable Queen’s gambit. ↩

  10. The nosy and unsatisfied reader may have noticed that the f-pawn is somehow Maximus Decimus Meridius and The Romantic. I admit I did not foresee this plot hole arising when I was writing this post. However, I note that it is easily resolved: They are both the same entity!!. For those readers, who are aware of the source of my plagiarism of the name Maximus Decimus Meridius can attest to the fact that he was definitely Romantic. TODO: Backstory for the Romantic Serpent-Gladiator. ↩