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Kurnell is a seaside suburb of Sydney, and geographically a small peninsula and the south head of Botany Bay. Most of the area is protected national parks. It is historically significant as the landing place of Lieutenant (later Captain) Cook and the crew of the HMS Endeavour in 1770, which led to the British settlement of Australia.
Until a few years ago, my family and I stayed frequently in Kurnell, managing a beachside AirBnB on Silver Beach. It’s a lovely, quiet, and peaceful place, very different from the hustle and bustle of the Sydney CBD. As I had some time to myself today, I rode my motorcycle to Kurnell and brought along my new Chessnut GO.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do well today with a string of losses… 😂
Game 1 was in one of the local cafes, a Vienna Gambit Declined 3… d6. My opponent outplayed me in the middlegame, but the loss was from a blunder near the endgame (25. Bd8??) where I miscalculated the capture sequence. Up to that point, we were fairly equal and we both had a bit over 2 minutes left on the clock.
I played Game 2 in the fresh air on a bench and table next to the beach. I played a pretty good Smith-Morra Gambit Accepted against the Sicilian Defense, and thought that I had a mating attack, or forced-queen win with a (18. Qd3). However, Black found the one good response (which I didn’t see), which was (18… Rh7!) and I suddenly realised that Black was somehow completely fine with their king on h8!
I managed to hold my own against my higher rated opponent, but I was bleeding time. On move 32, Black played (32… Bc5!!), a move which the chess.com analytic engine rated as a brilliancy! And here, I cracked and blundered. I thought that I had a fairly powerful tactic with three attackers on Black’s f5-pawn, which was pinned to Black’s king. However, this didn’t work. Under significant time pressure (1 min vs 10 min!), my defence and attack collapsed.
With the sun getting a bit lower in the sky (and getting windy and cold!), I decided that I wanted to record at least one game that wasn’t a miserable defeat before riding home… The last game in the video is against one of the seasonal chess.com bots, “Summer Jimmy”. The bot responded with a weird (2… d5) against the Vienna Game and so to my relief, lost quickly. The big takeaway? You can always bully a bot to pick yourself up after having a run of losses! 😁
Game 1: https://www.chess.com/game/live/111204059633
Game 2: https://www.chess.com/game/live/111211809915