Suppose White gives away a pawn, and then the next move White accidentally lets Black put him in checkmate. White made the next-to-last mistake, but lost, so the saying must be false in a mundane sense. Is there an esoteric sense in which the saying is true?
This is true if you only count as mistakes moves which turn a winning position into a losing position, as gRR said elsethread. (I think I picked up this meaning from Chessmaster 10′s automatic analyses, and was implicitly assuming it when reading the Tartakower quote.)
On a purely empirical level most amateur games once they reach critical positions are blunderfests punctuated by a few objectively strong moves that decide the game, and many complex positions near the end of games are similar blunderfests even among masters, and if you’re assuming that the majority of moves are blunders then Tartakower’s point is generally true. But I don’t think that’s what he meant.
Hmm, I suppose, a “mistake” in a technical sense is defined in terms of mini-max position evaluation, assuming infinite computing power:
eval(position) = −1 (loss), 0 (tie), or +1(win) IsFatalMistake(move) = (eval(position before the move) > eval(position after the move) AND eval(position after the move) == −1)
With this definition, either giving away the pawn or missing the checkmate (or both) wasn’t a fatal mistake, since the game was already lost before the move :)
Does “you shouldn’t give up after a mistake, because many chess games involve both players, even the winner, making multiple mistakes” count as esoteric?
Somehow I’d imagined chess without really knowing.
The roll of the die is still in effect: unanticipated consequences of only-boundedly-optimal moves by each player can’t make the original move more or less of a true mistake.
Ksawery Tartakower
Suppose White gives away a pawn, and then the next move White accidentally lets Black put him in checkmate. White made the next-to-last mistake, but lost, so the saying must be false in a mundane sense. Is there an esoteric sense in which the saying is true?
I read this as implying that the loser is the one who makes the last mistake — the mistake that allows his opponent to win.
But yeah, I think the quote is kinda sloppy — it assumes that the opponents take turns in making mistakes.
This is true if you only count as mistakes moves which turn a winning position into a losing position, as gRR said elsethread. (I think I picked up this meaning from Chessmaster 10′s automatic analyses, and was implicitly assuming it when reading the Tartakower quote.)
On a purely empirical level most amateur games once they reach critical positions are blunderfests punctuated by a few objectively strong moves that decide the game, and many complex positions near the end of games are similar blunderfests even among masters, and if you’re assuming that the majority of moves are blunders then Tartakower’s point is generally true. But I don’t think that’s what he meant.
Hmm, I suppose, a “mistake” in a technical sense is defined in terms of mini-max position evaluation, assuming infinite computing power:
eval(position) = −1 (loss), 0 (tie), or +1(win)
IsFatalMistake(move) = (eval(position before the move) > eval(position after the move) AND eval(position after the move) == −1)
With this definition, either giving away the pawn or missing the checkmate (or both) wasn’t a fatal mistake, since the game was already lost before the move :)
Does “you shouldn’t give up after a mistake, because many chess games involve both players, even the winner, making multiple mistakes” count as esoteric?
I like this even though it violates the correct standard of “mistake”: was the choice expected-optimal, before the roll of the die?
I like that it suggests continuing to focus on the rest of the game rather than beating yourself up over a past mistake.
Tartakower was a chess player.
Somehow I’d imagined chess without really knowing.
The roll of the die is still in effect: unanticipated consequences of only-boundedly-optimal moves by each player can’t make the original move more or less of a true mistake.
Tartakower also said “No one ever won a game by resigning” indeed.