Nov 04, 2024
Author's Commentary #248:
Time to talk about Chapter 248: Beauty in mate.
This chapter seeks to introduce the final member of the Japanese men's team, Ryonosuke Hobou. I'll give his bio first and then talk about the game.
保房 涼之介 (Hobou Ryonosuke) is how his name is spelled in kanji. 保房 means "preserve" and "chamber", while 涼之介 means "cool", "to go", an "intermediary".
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
His birthday is September 27th, which he shares with Japanese FIDE master, Yoshiharu Habu.
His favorite piece is the rook, as it is also one of the most powerful pieces in shogi.
Ryonosuke is an obvious parody of Yoshiharu Habu. While Yoshiharu Habu is primarily a shogi player, he did manage to achieve a peak chess rating of 2415 as well as the title of FIDE master. This is why Ryonosuke has a rating of 2415, and this story's equivalent to the FIDE master title, WWCF master.
As for the game, it features some new openings. First up is The Anderssen opening: Prussian, Kaiser gambit 1. a3 d5 2. e4 . And second, The Anderssen opening: Prussian, Kaiser, Richthofen gambit 1. a3 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. d4. Okisato named the moves in honor, or perhaps dishonor, of Red Reaper due to the sequence of moves not being well regarded by the eval bar.
I was originally going to have the game end in a resignation, but then the beautiful checkmate at the end occurred, and I knew I had to have the game end with it. This checkmate truly made me step back and admire how beautiful it was. I dubbed it the "Bull's-eye mate" mainly because the mate was reminiscent of an arrow flying into a target, with the rook being the arrow, and the pawn the target. While I doubt the game itself will crack my top 10 favorite games, the checkmate itself is by far one of my favorites in the series.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
