It's time to put Way Too Much Thought into cats playing chess
Or: an overanalysis of this short, in which I try to find a story where one doesn't exist, and also I leave vapid dribblings about my favorite ship (Vikdecai!!!) everywhere because Fuck You That's Why.
TL;DR: Viktor wants Mordecai bishop. Viktor takes Mordecai bishop.
First off, some caveats:
1.) I'm actually pretty fucking bad at chess. I'm going to offer some commentary on their game later, and although I'm going to put on a very confident face in the interest of making this entertaining to read, you should know that I'm *probably* wrong about lots of stuff, and I'm *definitely* going to massage the analysis to make a story out of it.
2.) I don't think anybody ever intended for the chess board to stand up to scrutiny, since Mordecai's queen and king are the wrong way around and the a2 square (Mordecai's pawn in front of his leftmost rook) is black when it should be white, showing that the chess board is set up sideways:
...But as a Vikdecai shipper I am eminently practiced in the art of expending ridiculous amounts of brainpower reading patterns and subtext where they don't exist. So! Let us sally bravely forth, heedless of the futility of our efforts.
First, a reconstruction of the board, or at least a realistic position that's close to what's presented (the obvious change to make is to put Mordecai's king and queen the right way round). The screenshot above gives us a pretty good idea of what Mordecai's half of the board is; we can combine this with the opposing shot of Viktor to learn some things:
Both of Mordecai's bishops have been captured, so the first shot of Mordecai actually shows the positions of all of White's pieces. Then White's board looks something like this:
Viktor's side of the board is a lot harder to construct because the angle's quite poor, so let's start again with Mordecai's shot and see what we can do. One of his bishops has been captured; from Viktor's shot we can see it's his dark-squared bishop (light-squared in the short because remember, the square colors are backwards in the animation). He's just taken a White bishop on b3 with his knight (presumably the queenside Knight, since the position looks quite early), and he's got a pawn butting up against the White e4 pawn, but it looks like no other pawns contesting the center. So let's lock rows 1-5 of the board down as something like this:
Now the guesswork begins. Black's kingside pawn structure looks unchanged, and his kingside Knight is developed somewhat, I'm going to assume to f6. I have absolutely no idea what the hell's going on with his queenside pawn structure. His d-column pawn is no longer in the d column, but it hasn't been captured? We can see from this shot that he's got two pawns on row 5 (side note look how CLOSE TOGETHER they are in this shot they're MERE INCHES from KISSING):
...*ahem*. So let's assume that his d-rank pawn was pushed to d6, then captured something on c5. That lines up with his shot where we can see an advanced pawn on a light square (so dark in our correctly-colored reconstruction). Then the final board position looks something like this:
After all that work I was super excited to plug this into some online chess databases and find out if it actually matched any historical games...
...Only to be quite disappointed.
But wait!
If we roll back one move, before Viktor initiates the bishop<>knight exchange that's put such a bee in Mordecai's bonnet, we *do* get something: Olga Dolzhikova vs. Nikolay Bodnar in a 1998 correspondence game.
That game ended in a draw, though Viktor and Mordecai's might not have, after Viktor's divergence. Getting to that would be jumping the gun, though. First, let us stray even further from the folds of probable reality and assume that Viktor and Mordecai played *exactly* this game, which lets us crack on with the narrativizing:
First we have e4...e5, a very standard opener:
Then Mordecai bares his teeth with the Vienna Game:
The Vienna Game is quietly threatening, but at this point noncommittal. The idea here is to threaten pushing a pawn to f4, making an immediate and aggressive play for the center. Of course, we know from the position we reconstructed earlier that this *doesn't* happen. So was Mordecai just posturing, or did Viktor manage to defuse the threat?
Viktor plays Nc6, the Max Lange Defence:
Which takes the fangs out of the Vienna Gambit. Pawn to f4 is most dangerous when Black plays Nf6 rather than Nc6 because there's a nasty trap line to the intuitive response from Black, namely e5xf4 followed by e4 e5, which forces the f6 knight back into its hidey-hole and allows White uncontested control of the center, where he can set a whole slew of hazards for Black to step into trying to get out of the cramped back rank.
None of that matters since Viktor played the Max Lange.
Perhaps Mordecai chose the Vienna Game hoping to catch Viktor, whom he suspects has no formal chess education, with his pants down (yes that wording is very much intentional); it seems Viktor's wise to the tricks, though.
The game continues with Bc4:
So Mordecai settles in for the long haul and plays for the center in a more reserved way, now preventing Viktor from moving his d pawn by threatening d5 with three separate pieces. Viktor responds with...
The Copycat Variation?????
Once when I was a young child who was tired of getting their ass beat by their dad in chess, I decided "fuck it" and just mirrored the moves he made. We ended up in this exact position.
My dad played Qg4. I suspect his intention was that if Black continues copying and plays Qg5, then White takes g5xg4 and now White's up a queen. So Black can no longer mirror White's move; if Black was *actually* just brainlessly copying White, then this forces them to stop it and think about what they're doing, and Black will wind up adrift with no real gameplan. Easy pickings.
Of course, that's assuming your opponent is an actual literal child, which might not be the case. It's not like this position isn't one that a serious player would never wind up in; much like the board is symmetrical, the advantage is symmetrical, and I believe the Vienna Game, Copycat Variation is considered generally even.
So there's a distinct possibility that Viktor *does* know what he's doing, and he's just decided to play the Copycat Variation for whatever reason.
Maybe that reason is because he knows Mordecai will be pleased by the symmetry and he likes seeing Mordecai happy.
Mordecai chooses to play d2 d3 instead of developing his queen:
Is this... begrudging respect?? Another compact push for the center instead of a trap with the queen. Granted it's not much respect, the only assumption you have to make is that your opponent isn't a total idiot with the chess ability of a toddler, but still! My Partner's Not an Idiot With an Underdeveloped Brain! That's the first small kernel that leads to the blossoming of a beautiful marriage friendship!
Viktor continues with a conventional sort of play, developing his knight:
And Mordecai pushes his bishop to e3, offering an exchange of bishops:
I'm not sure what Mordecai's going for here; the obvious line for Black is now c5xe3...f2xe3, which is still pretty much a dead even position. Maybe he thinks a more open center will let him outmaneuver Viktor?
It doesn't matter, anyways; Viktor doesn't take the exchange, instead pushing a pawn up to defend against the threat while keeping the exchange open:
"No." Viktor says obstinately. "You come to me."
At first glance I thought this was just *worse* than Viktor taking the exchange, and I was watching Viktor hurt himself by being obdurate about not dancing to Mordecai's beat. My thought was that now we'll see e3xc5...d6xc5 and Viktor will lack a pawn on the d column, denying him potential center influence...
But on second examination, the d column pawn was already pretty locked down, and now his queen and bishop are opened up. The positions are still even, but that was a surprisingly deft way of not initiating the exchange.
Mordecai rolls his eyes and does what he was going to do anyway:
And Viktor, satisfied that Mordecai had to take the first step, gladly reciprocates:
With that little do-si-do out of the way, Mordecai continues developing his pieces:
And Viktor makes a mistake:
It's not the end of the world, but it's still not amazing -- Stockfish (a chess computer) evaluates Viktor's previous position at -0.1, meaning pretty much even but with an imperceptible advantage for black (more negative means black has more advantage, more positive means white has more advantage), while it evaluates this position at +0.3, a 0.4 point swing.
Insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but the largest difference in this game so far has only been 0.2 points, so this is a change in advantage twice as large as anything that's happened before.
Back to the game: the obvious intent here was to threaten the c4 bishop with his knight, but not only did he have to lower the threat level on d4 to do it, but he's also pushed his knight to the edge of the board where it's quite boxed in.
The threat against the bishop is idle, as well; the bishop can simply retreat to b3, still threatening d5 but making the exchange unappetizing for Black, since then a5xb3...a2xb3 results in an even exchange of material for a slightly better White position.
It's an odd misstep for how solid Viktor's been playing so far.
Mordecai, testing the waters, retreats his bishop:
And Viktor takes the bait, pushing the evaluation to +0.5 and realizing the losing exchange:
Mordecai's perception is unravelling now. He's slowly coming to the conclusion that Viktor doesn't know the Vienna Game. He doesn't know the term 'Max Lange Defense'. Maybe he played the Copycat Variation for shits and fucking giggles, or because he wanted to make a joke about Mordecai's predilection for geometric perfection.
Viktor has not been driven by tactical acumen and a surprisingly agile intellect, carefully considering all variables before picking lines of play. He has not been carrying on a delicately intricate wordless conversation with Mordecai.
Viktor's been putting pieces Wherever the Fuck He Wants because Fuck You, That's Why.
And Mordecai is *incensed* by this because he can't stop imagining Viktor pursuing him with that same brutish efficacy Viktor's almost kept pace with him while putting in 5% of the work and brainpower.
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