Many chess books for beginners show the fool's mate as an example for getting checkmated as quickly as possible (1. f3 e4 2. g4 Qh4# 0-1) and falling for the fool's mate (or one of it's variants) in a chess game is probably one of the biggest fears of a chess player. After playing chess for about 11 months now and finishing about 70 rated correspondence games at ChessWorld I finally managed to make my fears coming true and got checkmated in only 8 moves. The mating pattern had no similarity whatsoever with the fool's mate. In fact, white playing against my Scandinavian defense first left a bishop en prise: 1. e4 d5 2. e5 c5 (After this traumatizing defeat, I will go for the 2. ... Bf4 in the future) 3. Bb5+ Bd7 4. e6 ?? Bxb5. The game continued with 5. Nf3 fxe6 6. Ne5 g6 7. Qf3 (see diagram). I analyzed this position before I played ... g6 and playing 7. ... Nf3 would have given me good chances to win the game being a bishop and pawn ahead. Instead I switched my brain into the "I will win this one" mode and pulled a "Kramnik" by playing 7. ... Nc6 ?? leading to sudden death by 8. Qf7#. Does this mean that I am on the way to become chess world champion now? (see this article for an interesting attempt to explain Kramnik's blunder based on psychology) I only hope this loss will make me play more carefully in the future. Please leave a comment if you managed to get checkmated in less than 8 moves (winning doesn't count, after all we learn most from our losses, right?).

After I wrote this post I saw J'adoube's post about the first annual J'adoubie price categories, among them the "J'aDOH!" which will be "Presented to the chess geek having committed the biggest bonehead blunder all year." Chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik seems to be the top contender in this category due to his above mentioned blunder in his match against Deep Fritz, but who knows, may be I have some chances now?

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Streatham & Brixton Chess Club
written by Tom Chivers, December 07, 2006

Kramnik's blunder conceivably cost him $500,000 . . . I'm afraid he still gets my vote

Nice to see another chessworld blogger btw - my handle on the site is Ihaveagirlfriend.

Re: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club
written by Sciurus, December 07, 2006

Nice to "see" you, too!

However, I disagree with you here: Although Kramnik got paid $500,000 less by losing the match against Fritz, he still got paid $500,000 just for trying. I actually had to pay to lose on chessworld!

Ha Ha!
written by Tom Chivers, December 07, 2006

Very funny! Maybe you should enter that in the J'ahaha category too?

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