The light-squared bishop retreat to h7 is a standard idea in this formation with the Black pawns on c6/d5/e6. The bishop is much stronger than a White knight, and White cannot easily oppose it with his own LSB. (Compare the Caro-Kann line 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Bd3.)

Playing 23...Rxf1+ is a nice little finesse. If he plays 23...Nxd4 first, White can reply 24.Rxf4. After 24...Rxf4 25.cxd4 Bb4 26.Qe2, White is attacking the rook. Black would have to play 23...gxf4, when his kingside pawns may become targets.

White could surely have played on. After all, he's only a pawn down. And has a lousy position with no prospects. And that passed c-pawn is going to be hard to stop.

I've been in this sort of position enough to know White is feeling Sheer Disgust at this point. He's conscious of having been totally outplayed, and has the feeling he's just going to embarrass himself by playing further.

26.Qd1 Bxe1 and Black will have his choice of 27..Bd3, Bf2+, R(f4,f2), Qc3, or even something with his N. White can't play any of:

27.Ne3 Bf2+ 28.Kh2 Qc3 fork <and 29.Nc2 isn't possible>

27.Bb2 c3 28.Bc1 c2 <this is happening regardless, no need to invite it :)>

27.Bd2 Rxf1+ 28.Bxf1 Qxd2! 29.Qxe1 Qxd4+ 30.Kh2 Qxe5+ <even the alternative 30.Kh1 Be4+ 31.Bg2 Bxg2+ 32.Kxg2 doesn't let White skewer a pawn, because now his K is forkable: 32..Qxe5 33.Qxe5 Nxe5 34.Re1 Nd3 haha 35..Kf7>

Had I played better that night and the game lasted longer I would not have arrived at my wife-to-be's home early enough, never met that friend of her father's, never gotten that job interview, and never gotten that first job that got me in a little known field at that time (software). It turned out that I had an aptitude for it and recently retired after 40 years. Needless to say, my life would have been very different. I think it's been referred to as the "butterfly effect".

You relate some very deep truth, and your story really brings the point home. It could almost be taken from Confucius.

Eames wins this game with astonishing ease, I never saw the KIA demolished quite so comprehensively as this.

<rilkefan: Is 7.Qe1 and 9.Qe2 book?>

Indeed they are, because of a trap well worth knowing.

click for larger view

If White wants to play e2-e4 in this position, preparing it with 7.Re1 won't work. After, say, 7...Be7 8.e4 dxe4 9.Nxe4 Nxe4 10.dxe4 Qxd1 11.Rxd1 Bxe4, Black wins a pawn.

Playing 7.Qe1 avoids this, and 9.Qe2 is just getting the queen out of the way. It's not the most graceful of maneuvers, but Black has wasted a little time with his LSB anyway.

In fact, there are probably players who take up the King's Indian Attack just so they can play moves like 7.Qe1, befuddling their opponents and impressing their spouse-to-be.

Though you have to be careful about that. I need to toss in my NN story here.

While attending the US Open over the years, I got involved in an ongoing early-morning hearts game with a bunch of other regulars. Just a way to relax after the game.

Except for NN. He regularly won because he took the game seriously. That wasn't so bad. What really bugged the rest of us is that he kept reminding us how good he was and what stupid misplays we had just made.

<Chessmensch: <AylerKupp> You should assemble additional examples of such turns of fate and write a book.>

I recall the British chess author "C.H.O.D." Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander once wrote about his own version of this. As a poor university student, he had his Immortal on the board, wandered the hall in a fit of nerves like Kasparov at Wijk ann Zee, saw the forced win, came back to the board, and ... <transposed the 2nd-to-last move>, losing instantly.

A Digression: Before I retired we had a yearly holiday party just before Christmas. I used to have a "Stump Ed" contest with the following rules:

1. Every contest participant would write a topic in a piece of paper.

2. I would read every topic and I had 15 seconds to come up with a story about that topic, or make one up (which I thought would be equally if not more impressive). If I could do it within 15 seconds, the person whose topic it was would give me $ 1.00. If I couldn't, I would give them $ 5.00.

I warned the prospective participants that they shouldn't be fooled by such seemingly attractive 5-to-1 odds; the odds were not really in their favor. And, sure enough, each year I made money.

Now back to a card-related story. My wife and I used to play bridge on a regular basis, and she was my partner (not a good idea!). One time I took a losing finesse on a 3 NT hand.

My wife: "Why did you take that losing finesse?"

Foolishly thinking that she wanted a reason, I proceed to review the bidding, review the play of the hand, and I indicated that I had therefore concluded that the odds were overwhelming that the queen that I was finessing against was in the proper position. Which, of course, it wasn't.

My wife: "You should know better than to play the odds at no trump".

My own chess/career story is a bit more positive. I had applied for a job in a library, and was selected primarily because the interviewer thought being a chess player meant I was really intelligent.

1. Knuth paid out several $10 rewards (for a person's 4th bug), but never* (as of a couple decades ago) anything higher than that.

2. TeX is now one of the most thoroughly debugged programs in the history of computing :)

<Phony Benoni: <Gilmoy> If that's an Alexander story, he borrowed it from this game: A Kreymborg vs O Chajes, 1911.> No, the incident I recall was from a book by C.H.O.D. Alexander (~150 pp, hardback, weird oversized aspect ratio), and he wrote that it happened to him. And it seemed that it was either mate-in-2, or no mate at all. So he resigned instantly; there was no end-game.