Dec 19, 2025
Author's Commentary #20:
Time to talk about Chapter 20: Plum stupid chess.
By that title, I'm sure you can guess that the quality of chess displayed in this chapter was not the greatest. At least Yuusuke got a win.
Perhaps the big twist is that Plum Stupid really is plum stupid. I felt it would actually be really predictable if a character like him turned out to be a secret mastermind, thus I decided that he'd actually be stupid. And while I did harp a bit on the game, I actually didn't have any issues making it.
As for the game itself, 1. d4 a5 actually doesn't have any official title other than just, "Queen's Pawn Opening". Thus, I dubbed it the Kawaguchi Opening. As for the continuation of 2. Nc3 Ra6, that shall henceforth be known as the Plum Stupid Opening.
As for why Yuusuke decided to play this, his loss to Skaberghast shook him, especially since Hagemi was present to see it. Thus, he recalled a game Magnus Carlsen played where he played the same opening he decided to play. Or at least, that's the cannonical reason. The behind-the-scenes reason is that at the time, I just decided to plop the game on Yuusuke without really thinking of whether his character would allow him to play the dubious opening or not.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.