CHAPTER 91: A GAME FULL OF BLUNDERS!

The mistake itself was pretty obvious. Instead of taking the hanging D pawn and exchanging one of the rooks to simplify the game, Sheva’s impatience finally clouded his judgement as he pushed his G pawn forward, trying to break the deadlock and get a passed pawn on the H file. It was a decent strategy, but Arfan’s knight was in such a good position to plant itself on the E6 square, getting supported by the pawn on the D5 square that Sheva should’ve taken earlier.

*Author’s note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.

The evaluation bar shown on everyone’s screen spiked up instantly, showing that Arfan had the immediate advantage due to the mistake here. It showed +3.5, meaning that the position was so good that the computer itself thought it was equal to Arfan having a three-pawn advantage here.

Of course, Arfan noticed the mistake too. The boy could feel his hand trembling, yet still tried so hard to calm his mind and control his emotions. In such a moment, it was important to be calm and composed, or all the advantages that he had been waiting for would’ve been gone already.

In this situation, it was important to show his cold-blooded side. First, the boy took Sheva’s G pawn and gave him the passed pawn on the H file, just like what his opponent wanted. But right after that, his knight jumped instantly to the strategic square, checking the black king while also controlling several good squares in the middle of the board.

However, his calmness wavered a little bit after that. It seemed that after more than two hours playing a steady and boring game, he couldn’t keep his calm mind for too long.

What he should’ve done was to take Sheva’s C pawn, exchange the rook, and reroute his knight to the D4 square to put it into safety. However, Arfan thought that his D file was pretty weak and needed protection, so he brought back his queen to its original square to guard everything from the back. Not only that, he also didn’t want the H file to be controlled by Sheva’s pawn for too long, so Arfan also slid one of his rooks to that file to put more pressure. Unfortunately, the computer engine didn’t like that, and while the advantage was still on Arfan’s side, the evaluation bar moved down a little, giving a little breather for Sheva.

’Damn, his knight is dangerous; I need to get rid of it as quickly as possible.’ Sheva gritted his teeth. ’No, not yet. I need to get rid of his queen first.’ Yeah, he didn’t feel comfortable at all seeing Arfan’s queen staring at the open file directly next to his king, so Sheva didn’t hesitate to exchange the queen. Fortunately, it was the best line that the computer suggested, so he didn’t make his position any worse than before.

Still, now that he was down a pawn while his structure was pretty chaotic, it was clear that the advantage was still not on his side. Arfan also noticed that too, as he kept his knight jumping from one square to another. It didn’t take quite a long time before another pawn fell down, and now, he was already down by two pawns.

The situation was pretty dire for Sheva, especially since his opponent had two connected passed pawns on the A and B files. It would be hard for him to stop once those two pawns decided to march forward. True enough, right in the next few moves, Arfan’s A pawn was just one step away from promoting into a queen. Sheva also had his E pawn marching forward to the seventh rank, yet on the promotion line, Arfan still had a rook protecting, so that he couldn’t make a queen that easily.

*Author’s note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.

Naturally, Arfan should be able to convert this position into a winning game easily. All he had to do was render the threat of Sheva’s passed pawn on the seventh rank first by sacrificing his knight, and that was when he promoted his own pawn into a queen. However, it seemed that he was too eager here. Instead of addressing the threat immediately, the boy decided to ignore it and went straight to get a new queen.

"Oh, no!" Master Irene squealed in surprise when she saw that. "Arfan loses his calmness here! All he has to do is get Sheva’s pawn first before promoting, but he is way too eager! Now, he will lose one of his rooks for nothing, and the game will turn into a draw! No! Not a draw! Sheva returns it with another blunder! No, Arfan also makes his second blunder! And Sheva ups it with another one! What is going on here?!"

Yeah, it was pretty nuts for Master Irene, who watched it from the sideline to see how two talented players kept exchanging one blunder after another. Just in the last few sequences, both players had already made six blunders; three for each of them. That was a higher number compared to their first forty moves.

Of course, based on the last couple of moves, it seemed like the game was played by a bunch of noobs. However, Sheva and Arfan couldn’t be blamed for this. They were both just normal humans who could be exhausted, not just a mere computer. They had been playing one round earlier in the morning, and coupled with the fact that this game had been running for almost three hours and that they both had already entered time scramble here, there was no way they could maintain their high accuracy game again.

Both players were already on the verge of collapse. Sheva’s face was sweating profusely, while Arfan himself felt his hand trembling whenever he picked up his pieces. The game somehow turned into a blitz one with how low their time was, and the move they made relied fully on their intuition.

However, even in such a chaotic game, none of them were willing to give up first. Their eyes somehow met for a second, and even without saying it out loud, those two teenagers had the same thing on their minds.

’One of us will go down first, and it would never be me!’