Chapter 180: Trash Talk & Volatile Evaluation Bar
"You are starting to get sloppy, Master Priasmoro. What happened? Did you get flustered?"
Tak!
"Oh, shut up! Don’t you know that chess is a game to be played in silence?!"
Tak!
"You have that rule here?! I mean, you started talking smack first, and this is your excuse when I punch back? Don’t tell me you cannot handle this little trash talk!"
Tak!
"Who said I couldn’t handle you, Boy?! Let me show you how a grandmaster plays!"
Tak!
"This again? You always talk about how a grandmaster plays whenever you don’t have any comeback. Master, you really are bad at trash-talking. I think Arfan is better than you, you know?"
Tak!
"Shut up!"
Honestly, no one knew how the game could go astray to this point, where both players kept talking shit to each other in each move. The fact that the players resorted to trash talk itself was quite dumbfounding, as it was quite rare for something like this to happen. It was as if they were a bunch of old men playing on the edge of the road, always cheering and cursing in each move.
Still, no one stopped them from doing this. They all knew that this was triggered by Master Priasmoro’s unnecessary provocation earlier, and Sheva just returned the favor. Also, this was just an informal game, so there was no need to act so stiff and proper. Hell, some of them even enjoyed this, including, to everyone’s surprise, the IM Aulia Medina Warda. It seemed that the quiet woman also had some sort of beast inside her, and this game really poked it out of the sleep.
The game itself still went quite boring, with both players going steadily and not wanting to take the initiative first. Contrary to how heated the talk was, the battlefield was pretty much quiet, with them both still poking each other’s defense left and right. Instead of going all out, both players decided to go for the attrition war, choosing the route of a psychological war.
However, no one thought that this game was boring or felt that this would end up in a draw.
No, this was a blitz game, where the real war happened after the time left for both players was below 20 seconds. This was when all the calculations went out the window, and intuition was needed for every move they made.
As the game approached that stage, half of the board had already cleared, leaving few pieces for both players. Sheva still had six pawns, a queen, a dark bishop, and a knight on his side. Meanwhile, Master Priasmoro was also on the same boat, yet instead of a knight, he still had a full set of bishops remaining on the board. Also, even though the material was equal, at first glance, it looked like Seva was at a disadvantage, especially considering the doubled pawn on the B file.
Still, Sheva himself wasn’t worried, especially since everything was protected. He just wanted to wait for Master Priasmoro to make a mistake here, and the boy was sure that this would happen soon.
*Author’s note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.
After a while, though, the waiting period was over, and Sheva noticed Master Priasmoro had finally made a mistake. The computer really wanted him to move his queen to the D5 square, protecting the D6 square from being infiltrated by Sheva’s bishop. The engine didn’t want Sheva to force an exchange to Master Priasmoro’s light bishop, especially since it was in a very strategic position, sniping from the B7 square.
However, instead of doing that, Master Priasmoro just pushed his G pawn one square forward, probably wanting to give his king more room to breathe. The thought was definitely decent, but he did it at the wrong time. Just right after the move was made, the evaluation bar spiked up, giving +1.2 evaluation for Sheva.
*Author’s note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.
Of course, not a single person in the room knew the details about the engine’s evaluation. After all, besides the fact that none of them had their phone on hand, in a blitz game where every move was made within two or three seconds, it would be hard to follow all of them directly. Hell, even in the highest stage, like the World Blitz Championship, there were a lot of delays from the computer to translate what was going on at the game, let alone in such an informal game like this.
Still, that didn’t mean no one noticed Master Priasmoro’s mistake.
Irene frowned immediately when she saw the man’s move, while Master Susanto also leaned forward as if he had caught something interesting on the board.
It would be alright for Master Priasmoro if only those two had noticed his inaccurate move. Unfortunately, fate seemed to be cruel here, as the worst person to catch the mistake, his opponent, Sheva, was able to do so. The boy’s eyes lit up immediately when he saw this, and within a second, he made the best move possible, pushing his dark bishop in front of Master Priasmoro’s one, offering an equal exchange.
If the man accepted it, though, this would end up in a fork by Sheva’s knight. So, the correct way to handle this was to exchange the knight with Master Priasmoro’s light bishop first, then kick out the dark bishop far away from his own defense.
Much to Sheva’s surprise, though, Master Priasmoro didn’t go for those two routes. No, he went for the worst one, taking back the dark bishop into the eighth rank to avoid the trade. This move worsened his position immediately, as not only did he put his bishop into a bad place, but he also gave up the control of a strong diagonal that could be his king’s route to escape in the future, and now, that route was completely in Sheva’s grasp.
However, the situation on the board was still pretty much complicated, and it was hard for Sheva to take advantage of it. True enough, in the next turn, after thinking and hesitating for five whole seconds—a way longer than the average in this game—he finally made a move, yet right after that, the evaluation bar dropped instantly to the neutral zone again.
Sheva made a blunder, and all of his advantage was gone out of the window.