Tactical Genius Discovers Winning Combination Exactly Four Minutes After Pressing 'New Game'

A club player's winning combination was confirmed by his own engine four minutes after he had pressed New Game, according to a clock transcript he filed with his own post.

The transcript covers Saturday's third-round rapid at the club, 15+10. He had White and a London System stored under D02, twenty-two moves deep, which has produced four games and one win. His opponent left the file on move seven with an early ...b6, a move that appears nowhere in the twenty-two, and the game went on anyway, which is how games go on.

On move 19 the board offered 19.Bxh7+ Kxh7 20.Ng5+ Kg8 21.Qh5, with Black's king on g8, the g-pawn still home, and 6:12 on Black's clock. He thought for eleven minutes and played 19.Rfe1. He flagged on move 26 with his knight still on f3.

He opened the engine four minutes into the next game. At depth 24 on his laptop's build it posted +4.6 and kept the sacrifice at the top of its list for as long as he let it run, which was until his cat shifted on the spacebar and paused the analysis for the eleventh time. He moved her to the a-file and let it finish.

The practical part sits on Black's clock. The engine keeps returning to 21...Bf5, a move his opponent would have had to go looking for with six minutes and no reason to suspect anything. What his opponent actually received was a rook retreat, answered in under a minute, in a position where nothing had to be found at all.

The first reply to the post gave the evaluation to two decimals and the move number, in that order.

Inez Gable of the standards board was asked whether the finding changes anything. "The board does not accept retrospective brilliancy," she said. "A combination found after the result is signed is a study. Studies do not score points."

Tessa Fenn, who lives with a devotee, has adjusted her own procedure. "I stopped asking whether he won," she said. "I ask how long ago he pressed New Game. That tells me which answer he's still assembling."

This week's Dario's First Questions received one entry from a new player asking what it means when someone says they saw the whole thing after the game. It means the file is open and the position is gone.

Thursday's pairing gives him Black. The line he spent four minutes recovering is a White line, and it is now saved under an opening he will not be playing this week.