Yesterday I tried out for the very first time 3 check chess. It is a chess variant where the starting position is the same as in chess and the same rules with one additional rule, you can also win by checking your opponent's king three times. While this variant may not seem different enough from chess, it does provide some out of the ordinary games because you want to prevent your opponent giving checks. Lately I have been somewhat tired of both chess and chess960 and trying the other variants will maybe rejuvenate my interest towards chess and chess960. For some reason even the changing starting positions in chess960 are not enough to keep my interest towards it. I will probably also look at other chess variants and if I can post the games in a reasonable way, those games will be added sometime in the future to the blog. This is an experiment and the way I am posting the 3 check games may vary from time to time. I am not sure if it is possible to analyse these 3 check games with an engine, fox example. As time goes on, I will probably have a better understanding of this variant and the way I comment these games may improve. I noticed a few things from the first two games I played this variant yesterday, one of the things actually is not even tied to the variant, but to the place where I played the game. The game below was played at Chess.com and it was the first game of 3 check chess that I played. The interesting thing about this game was that the notation disappeared as soon as the game was finished. That made me think that I can't publish this game in my blog, however after some time I did find the notation, but it did take some time. Before I found it, I went to play 3 check at lichess.org and I noticed a feature which I really liked, the name of the opening is automatically added into the notation after the move that is the last one in the opening variation that has been played. It is something that no other chess site to my knowledge does. At Chess.com, for example, it does say the name of the opening, but it is not added to the notation. Well, actually it says that in chess games, I am not sure about the variants, at least in 3 check it does not even say what opening was played. That made me think that maybe I should only play chess at lichess, because it would save me some time when adding opening variations to my chess games. However, I do not know how well the openings are recognised at lichess because I do not have enough experience of playing chess or 3 check there. By the way, I have noticed that some of my recent posts have not been automatically shared to Google+, in case this happens in the future, I will post them to Google+ myself.
Before this game I had some ideas on how to play this variant, but I had mainly considered 1.e4 and how to reply to that and how I would play with the white pieces. The move 1.g3 was a move that I had not thought about before and I probably did not reply to that move in the best way possible. 1...e6 was probably still okay, but 2...d5 does open up possibilities for my opponent to create check threats. My opponent, 2004ADITYA, most likely replied with the best move 3.c4. Due to the threat of Qa4+, I played 3...c6. For some reason or the other I preferred that to 3...Nc6. I guess my opponent was testing me a bit with the move 4.cxd5, to which I replied with the only reasonable move in my opinion, 4...exd5. Despite of the start that seemed less than ideal to me at first, I had a decent position and the game went on a reasonable way to my move 7...O-O. 2004ADITYA replied with 8.Qc2 and due to the variant, I had to consider Qxh7+ as a follow-up. As I saw that after Qxh7+ 2004ADITYA does not get enough checks to justify the sacrifice, I replied with 8...Bg4. 2004ADITYA continued with 9.Ng5, which did not seem to do all that much, but I still decided that it was a good idea to drive the knight away with 9...h6. If I were to end up in position again, I would probably do something different, maybe 9...Qd7 would be a better alternative. After the knight retreated, I did play Qd7 with the idea of coming to f5 with the queen and maybe trade queens. Had I been able to trade queens, I think I would have been able to avoid those three check possibilities better. My opponent avoided the queen trade, but offered some material to me instead, which I avoided of taking, thinking incorrectly that Qxb7 is too annoying move and that I should stop that possibility. The line I put in the notation shows in my opinion that I should not have avoided taking on f3. Starting from the move 12...Qd7 I started to be unnecessarily passive in my opinion.
The next position that I think is worth considering a bit more is the position after 15.Ne5. I did end up taking the knight with my bishop, but maybe I should have just played 15...Qe7. However, 15...Qe7 might get replied with 16.f4 and it would be a bit unclear to me on how to proceed after that. The game continuation did work out well for me in my opinion and I was confident of my chances after 17...d4. However, I think that I messed up in my next move. The move 18...d3 was a bit too hasty and the pawn did end up being very weak there. I offer the move Nc5 as a better alternative to d3 in the notation, but now I think that 18...c5 is even better. In the position after 23.Qxd3, I started to be a bit worried about the result of the game again. It seemed that the position had opened up a bit too much for nasty checking possibilities for my opponent. I did not see an easy way to deliver checks and I thought that I was somewhat on the worse side of things. I did take on b2, which might have been a too risky thing to do, but as I saw that my queen can escape from b2, I took the extra pawn. The clear downside of taking that pawn was that my opponent took the initiave, something that should be more important than the mere pawn I was able to get. I think I played decent moves until I played 30...Ne6. The reply 31.f4 made my life a bit too difficult. I should have maybe played 30...Qd7 and tried to trade queens again. My opponent's queen was the main culprit of me losing this game and I am not sure why I did not want to offer the trade in this position. Maybe I foolishly thought that because my queen was the best piece to deliver possible checks that I can't afford to trade it. However, I should have realised that the enemy queen was too dangerous and I should have tried to exchange it. My final mistake was in my opinion, 34...Nh7, after that I am lost, 34...Ne3 might have given me enough play to avoid losing the game. I have added two mate in one, one mate in three and two mate in four puzzles today.
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