Against Stockfish: Game #39: A living proof of success

I played this game yesterday using the newly made intuition-based averaging algorithm, the IAA. This game proved that this algorithm works and revealed many areas for improvement. I haven't analyzed the game as I normally would because I don't think many of you read the analysis anyway. Instead, I have taken the most important details and summarized the game.

The Game

• Even though I lost this game, I think I played really well. My theoretical knowledge ended on move 4 of this game, but I managed to maintain equality by going for a brave 6...Bc5 and 7...Ke7 idea. I am happy that I dared to trust my algorithm and go for such an idea against Stockfish.

• The next highlight was 17...Be6. I went for this move because I had calculated that after 18.Bf3 I have Nd4! sacrificing the b7 pawn. In the back of my mind, I knew that going for calculations against Stockfish was a recipe for disaster, I was up for it. And as I expected, Bf3 was played. Here my search went crazy. After a lot of calculations and evaluations, I averaged the position to be very minimally better for Black. But here's the thing, Stockfish's calculations were better than mine. When calculating from the position after 18.Bf3, I thought it could not play 23.Bxh7 because of 23...g6 24.Bh6 Ke7 25.Bg5 f6, but I should have calculated further as all of that happened, and Stockfish played 26.Bf4 Rb4 27.Bc7 and it's saving the bishop on h7. It is understandable as I was calculating this forced sequence from a position 16 plies prior and hence I am not that annoyed that I missed it. If I had used the algorithm before I played 25...f6, I would have seen this idea and would have gone for Kf8, but when it played Bg5 I was already too convinced it was worse for white (I am still human alright?) and hence I just played f6 and then immediately was like "Holy, why didn't I calculate Kf8?".

• 27...Rd5 was the next highlight. I thought that Rc8 was maybe the best move, but now that I knew I was worse, I was trying to swindle. If white is not careful against this move, he can run into some serious trouble. There are some positions arising after Bxg6 where after moves like f5, Rc4, and f4 one of the bishops gets trapped. But it's Stockfish and it managed to dodge all my tricks. Starting from this point, I wasn't strictly using the algorithm as I had to end the game quickly. I had spent a lot of time on the position after Bf3. So analysing this position and the game after this point further is not that insightful. Hence, I will not get involved in that.

Where can I improve?

• Practice more calculations so you spend less time on positions that require calculations.
• Define the situations in which you should switch to calculating another one of your candidate moves. For example, if I had switched to calculating Rac8 in the position after 18.Bf3 instead of Nd4, I would have realized without much difficulty that it was also equal. Defining these situations would need a change in the algorithm. This requires some work.
• It is important to adequately use the algorithm even in the middle of calculated lines. For example, if I had used the algorithm after 25.Bg5, I would have seen that playing Kf8 was better than f6.

That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed the article, and see you next time!
P.S. - If you want to learn about the Intuition-based Averaging Algorithm I talked about in this article, click here.