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This is the first of my analyses of the deception chess games. The introduction will describe the setup of the game, and the conclusion will sum up what happened in general terms; the rest of the post will mostly be chess analysis and skippable if you just want the results. If you haven't read the original post, read it before reading this so that you know what's going on here.

The first game was between Alex A as player A, Chess.com computer Komodo 12 as player B, myself as the honest C advisor, and aphyer and AdamYedidia as the deceptive Cs. (Someone else randomized the roles for the Cs and told us in private.)

The process of selecting these players was already a bit difficult. We were the only people available all at once, but Alex was close enough to our level (very roughly the equivalents of 800-900 USCF to 1500-1600 USCF) that it was impossible to find a B that would reliably beat Alex every time but lose to us every time. We eventually went with Komodo 12 (supposedly rated 1600, but the Chess.com bots' ratings are inflated compared to Chess.com players and even more inflated compared to over-the board, so I would estimate its USCF rating would be in the 1200-1300 range.)

Since this was the first trial run, the time control was only 3 hours in total, and all in one sitting. Komodo makes its moves within a few seconds, so it's about the same as a 3 hour per side time control from Alex's perspective. We ended up using about 2.5 hours of that. The discussion took place between all four of us in a Discord server, with Alex sending us screenshots after each move.

The game

The game is available at https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/4MUQcJhY3x. Note that this section is a summary of the 2.5-hr game and discussion, and it doesn't cover every single thing that we discussed.

Alex flipped to see who went first, and was White. He started with 1. e4, and Black replied 1... e5. Aphyer and Adam had more experience with the opening we would enter into than myself, and since they weren't willing to blow their covers immediately, they started by suggesting good moves, which Alex went along with.

After 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4, Black played 3... Nf6, which Aphyer and Adam said was a bit of a mistake because it allowed 4. Ng5. Alex went ahead, and we entered the main line from there - 4... d5 5. exd5 Na5.

Aphyer and Adam said the main l...