Silliest Move Ever?

White = Qe6. Black = Kh8 Qe4 Rf7 g7 h7. I played Qe8+ :unamused:

That way, after checkmating him, you can pick off his R at f7.

You must have thought your Q at e6 was blocking his Q at e4 from capturing your Q at e8.

Actually, that was a pretty decent move. After he takes your Q you have no legal moves, stalemate.

Where was the white K?

Bill Smythe

I had this position in July.

I figured I needed my king to mate, so I played …Qg6 and offered a draw.

Alex Relyea

I wonder what kind of rating a computer would give those moves in either of these positions?

Ouch. I twice missed mates in one against 2300+ players – but fortunately one of those had sufficient time pressure that it was almost justified. The worst part is I scored .5 out of those two games.

White King was on g1. Black’s last move was RxN on f7 defending smothered mate) I saw Qe8+ followed by Qxf8#. I presume everyone sees white’s mate in 3 in the shown position. Correct? :smiling_imp:

Pretty typical “sight” mistake that can happen when one is in time pressure or not. Get over it and move on. Don’t beat yourself up over trivial stuff. A good chess memory allows you to laugh and forget silly mistakes.

I’m over it :smiling_imp:

“I’m over it.” Yeah, sure you are! :wink:

No chess players ever get over a game, they rehash it until they convince themselves that they should have won. :slight_smile:

If it’s any comfort, I looked at that position for 2-3 minutes before I figured out why you didn’t need your king to mate.

Bill Smythe

LOL I have been doing Tactics Burn-in yet again in my life, this time after being away from chess for over a quarter of a century, but this time I am doing it very thoroughly as I have the time. After doing a lot of it with a1 in the lower left no matter which side was to move, I have been looking at Tactics Times positions for a bit. That book set gives you the over the board view, which took some getting used to. When I saw this position, I went into brain freeze, knowing something needed clarification. Then I finally realized, we were not told where a1 was. So the brain freeze was a reasonable reaction for a change.