#wrap up asks

[anarchist-chess]

How many people were playing? What moves had the most and least votes? Was there any correlation between how many people voted on a move and how good the move was?

a little over twenty people voted total, though in general most positions got between 6-8 votes, with probably about 10-12 people playing throughout most of the game. Moves tended to be better when more people voted, though were pretty consistently good anyway barring a few specific mistakes, so it might not be a very strong correlation. My speculation is that a larger voting pool would mostly reduce mistakes, rather than directly increase move quality. After all, move quality can only go so high.

The move with the most votes was the post that got blazed (move 10 or 11 I think), I think it had 18 votes. The one with the least was move 51 or 52 (I forget which, it was one of the last moves), which got 3.

[anarchist-chess]

Was there a particular blunder that kicked us from "can force mate" to "will definitely lose", or was our loss more gradual than that? ... is that even a thing in chess i never played it all that seriously

While at no point were there any forced checkmates for us (or indeed against us until near the end), according to the computer, we maintained an effectively even position until 20. ...a4 which loses a pawn, and while that was salvageable, we then failed to capture the rook with bxf8 with move 24. ...Rb1? which loses a rook for a bishop. As it turns out, the pawn promotion was not actually enough of a threat to go down the exchange with a rook for a bishop. It all slowly deteriorated from there, with few opportunities for recovery.

However, the game was even until then, which is pretty impressive, I think, as it means we were consistently playing the best or close to best moves before 20. a4.

In general, outside of beginner chess, a player doesn't switch from "about to win" to "doomed" particularly quickly. (This isn't to say very skilled players don't make bad moves that immediately change the entire course of the game often, but it's much rarer, and more commonly what they do is accidently cause a draw in a game they should have won.)

[anarchist-chess]

Could you post the full game? I’d like to take another look at it, but don’t feel like sifting through months of posts to find all the moves.

The Image Limit on tumblr posts does unfortunately make it impossible for me to post screenshots of every move, however, thanks to Captious-Solarian, we actually do have the complete notation, so here it is.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d4 exd4 5. e5 d5

6. Bb5 Ne4 7. O-O Bc5 8. Nxd4 Bd7 9. Bxc6 bxc6 10. Be3 Qe7

11. Nd2 Bxd4 12. Bxd4 Nxd2 13. Qxd2 c5 14. Be3 d4 15. Bg5 Qe6

16. b3 O-O 17. Rfe1 Qb6 18. f4 Bf5 19. Rad1 a5 20. a4 d3

21. cxd3 c4+ 22. d4 cxb3 23. Be7 b2 24. Rb1 Bxb1 25. Rxb1 Rfb8

26. f5 Qb3 27. f6 Qa2 28. Qd1 Qd5 29. Qg4 g6 30. h4 h5

31. Qf4 Kh7 32. Qd2 Qa2 33. Qc2 Qb3 34. Qxb3 Rxb3 35. d5 Rab8

36. e6 Kg8 37. d6 cxd6 38. Bxd6 fxe6 39. Bxb8 Rxb8 40. Kf2 Kf7

41. Ke3 Kxf6 42. Kd3 Kf5 43. Kc3 Kg4 44. Rxb2 Rxb2 45. Kxb2 Kxh4

46. Kc3 Kg3 47. Kd4 g5 48. Ke5 Kxg2 49. Kxe6 g4 50. Kf5 Kh3

51. Kg5 h4 52. Kf4 g3 53. White Resigns, 0-1