Combining Work and Pleasure

Over the winter I worked on coming up with a lot of lessons for students who had been doing chess for at least a couple of semesters already. One of these lessons was inspired by the famous game Polugaevsky-Tal, where the great world champion was undone by an inspired performance (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1111871 ). Polugaevsky claimed afterwards that the position after move 25 of that game was on his analysis board the day before. When I turned this game into a lesson, I knew it was too long for one class period, so I found a game where black fell into the mating attack instead of almost managing to defend like Tal did.

While unwinding last night I played a blitz game on ICC against GM Suat Atalik, the number two player from Turkey. Previously my ICC record against him was +1, -7, =3, so my expectations weren't too high. He took the game into one of his tournament openings, the Semi-Tarrasch defense, the same line as my Polugaevsky-Tal lesson. I actually forgot to play one move from the opening, giving me a slightly worse version of Polugaevsky's attack. With what turned out to be one inconsequential rook move missing for each side, GM Atalik and I followed my lesson plan perfectly. He even made the same mistake that I had inserted into my lesson plan to allow a quick mate.

Next time I teach this lesson it will be my game, instead of a GM game, but otherwise it will be basically unchanged. Enjoy: