Road to be the Best Chess Player in the World!-Chapter 477: Back to the Winning Track

As always, it all started with a small crack.

This time, though, Sheva had already waited for the crack to appear, as he had already predicted this would happen. He knew that Vaishali had a huge weakness in her game, and this time, he intended to take advantage of it to the fullest.

The weakness that he mentioned, of course, was the girl’s ability to stay calm under time pressure.

Yeah, even if she was one of the most talented girls on the planet, Sheva noticed that whenever her time was already down by ten minutes when she was still far from reaching the 40th move of the game, she would panic and start moving frantically, and more often than not, a mistake bound to happen in this stage.

That was why Sheva decided to play very slowly, wanting to lure the girl into a false sense of security, letting her think that this was a tough game. It was a deliberate move, as, with his quick and aggressive style that was already famous among the players here, once he started doing the opposite, the opponent would also do the same unconsciously, dragging the game into the tempo that she wanted.

As for Vaishali’s tendency to make a mistake during that stage, Sheva himself didn’t really know how or why, but he didn’t really care about it. While the boy pitied her, this was not the time to show mercy.

’After all, mercy to my opponent is cruelness to myself. So, sorry, Sister Vaishali, you will have to fall before me!’ He clenched his fist tightly under the table, eyes burning with the desire to win.

The mistake itself was quite simple. It was so basic that Sheva could see it at first glance.

In a situation where Vaishali’s king was in a weak position, where Sheva’s queen was so close to the diagonal where the black king lived, the girl decided to reroute her rook first. It was a normal decision, except that she put it straight in front of the lion’s mouth.

Yeah, the knight, which was in the A6 square, a bad spot that was also blocked by the pawn, decided to move back to the original square, A8, and probably go for another route from behind. However, before he could do that, Sheva could sacrifice his rook first, taking away the queen’s protection from the knight to launch a devastating attack in the next move.

Vaishali didn’t have any choice but to accept the sacrifice, since her queen had to protect the other knight. However, by doing that, one of her knights had to be abandoned, and to make it worse, Sheva’s queen took that knight with a fork, a check, while also getting the free rook on the A8 square.

This would make her down to a piece instantly, and true enough, the computer engine also acknowledged the advantage by giving +5.4 score to evaluate Sheva’s favorable position.

Once the move was on the board, even Vaishali herself realized the grave mistake that she made, and the girl couldn’t help but groan, covering her face in desperation.

’Again?! How could I make such a rookie mistake like this again?!’ She wailed inwardly in despair.

Yeah, this wasn’t the first time that Vaishali made this mistake. At rounds two and three of the tournaments, she also suffered defeat from such a silly mistake at the clutch moment, and now, with this, it should be the third time in a week, definitely a bad sign for the girl.

She herself also noticed the glaring weakness in her game, knowing that most of her opponents always took advantage of that. However, it was one thing to figure out the weakness, but fixing it was a completely different matter.

To put it simply, if any top players could fix their weaknesses, they would be able to stand toe to toe with Magnus Carlsen. However, the Norwegian GM had been the top of the world for more than ten years, and during that time, no one was close enough to shake his dominance. That showed how difficult it was for even the most elite players in the world to fix their weakness, even though they should have known about that at this point.

Seeing how frustrated Vaishali was, Sheva also took a note on the back of his head. ’Later, I have to console her about this.’ Of course, that should be for after winning the game. For now, he couldn’t show any mercy, believing that someone’s downfall more often than not came from arrogance instead of the enemy.

Even with a major advantage, he still played like the usual, ruthlessly stripping Vaishali’s defense one by one. With him having a bishop’s advantage, his job was easy. Try to exchange the remaining queen and knight on the board, and once that happened, he could just march all of his pawns forward, getting supported by the bishop from afar.

This was a basic strategy that any player knew about, so Vaishali was prepared for the worst. She still kept going, trying to put more fight and avoid every little trap that Sheva put. She managed to prolong her life for a while, even forcing fifteen more moves to get to the 40th move of the game, adding 40 minutes to their time. Sheva had to give her a hat’s off for her resilient spirit.

Still...

’Sorry, Sister Vaishali, no offense to you, but I have to finish it quickly.’ He narrowed his eyes dangerously.

With that thought in mind, he started to do everything more decisively. All of his moves were targeted at the place where they hurt Vaishali the most, not giving her any chance to breathe. He also started to activate his king, marching forward to support the remaining soldiers who managed to stay alive until the end.

In the end, as one of his pawns got so close to the promotion square, Vaishali covered her eyes one last time; the desperation on her face slowly shifted into acceptance. Sheva could see that she was reluctant, but in the end, she had no choice here.

She smiled bitterly at Sheva, and right after that, the move that everyone had been waiting for was finally on the board.

Vaishali resigned, putting Sheva back on the winning track again.