Hand/brain is a way of playing chess and popular in chess streaming where one person names a piece, and the other person moves that piece. You don’t get which piece is to be moved, where it is to be moved, etc. If the brain says “pawn” you have 8 to start with, “bishop”, you have two, and so on. This game was played as a hand/brain game for a stream my brother and I did last week. We were surprised to find a titled player, a national master (NM) come up as our first opponent.
When our opponent played 1.e4, I knew when my brother Dustin said “pawn” we were going into the Sicilian, as we both play this opening almost exclusively against e4.
Anyway, not much analysis, but just wanted to share the game. Towards the end, we blundered into a forced perpetual check which our opponent could have used to force draw (as well as continuously avoiding the obvious tactic of taking the knight with the rook, which was outright winning). But, in hand and brain, you don’t get to say “rook takes knight”, you can only say “rook” and hope the other player doesn’t fuck up. It was an exciting game, and ended on time — with the NM dead lost, about to lose a queen or get mated. So, in the end position, we were -10 as black, which is the equivalent of being up a queen (the most powerful piece) and a pawn.
We’d like to think had he more time on the clock, he would’ve resigned after our last move. We’re playing with the black pieces, under our hand/brain account KamikazeInsurance @lichess
Of course, the game ends here:
Also, note the time remaining on our respective clocks: my brother and I (the hand and brain) have 13:42 seconds, while the professional, National Master, has 0.08 seconds to deal with the above position.
Spoiler: it’s lost. -10 for black is so winning that, had there been more time remaining, we would have surely seen a resignation here.
brandon the writer | author & staff writer for sir swag 