Chess960 SP684

Today it is time to share yet another chess960 game from ChessRex. This one started on December 1st, 2015 and finished on February 11th, 2016. This has been the only unofficial game I have played there and it is sort of a shame that this was not a rated game, because I could have gained a decent amount of rating points from this game. This is because my opponent was higher rated than me by roughly 300 points. My rating at ChessRex is currently quite low compared to other sites I play at, but I should be able to get to a similar rating there as I have been able to get on other sites. For each of their moves, both players could have used 7 days, well most of it anyway.

This is one of those starting positions where I do not like the initial squares for the bishops. This is because I woould like to avoid playing both c4 and f4, due to the fact that I would like to castle to the kingside or the queenside. I would probably prefer castling kingside because I would like to get my queen active by moving the b-pawn and if I fianchetto the queen, I would probably be facing some troubles on the long diagonal if I were to castle queenside. Then again it might not be that easy to take advantage of the long diagonal in this particular starting position because the bishops start pretty much at the worst possible squares.

I started the game by playing 1.e4, I decided to move the e-pawn instead of the pawns that could have helped in the development of the bishops because I wanted to take the center in control with one of my pawns. I prefer e4 over d4 because I want to castle kingside and also because now I can develop my f-knight to e3 where it eyes on squares like d5 and f5 and further increases my control over important squares. RAGINGBULL replied e4 with Ng6, with the idea of preventing me from playing f4 and opening the diagonal for the bishop or that is what I assume at least. The knight on g6 also controls the important center square e5. I go ahead with my plan of 2.Ne3 and RAGINGBULL replies with f6. It is true that RAGINGBULL's move opens the diagonal for the bishop where it is probably better placed than tucked away on h7, but positionally f6 does not look so great to me. I continue by trying to get the center even more firmly in my grasp with d4, but now my opponent challenges it with e5. 4.Nf3 might not have been the best idea from me, but it is not a huge mistake either, more like an inaccurate move. I think both players continue with natural looking moves until we come to the position after 8...fxe5. Actually already after 7...O-O, I was quite certain that I could win a pawn. I could not see any real problems with 9.Nxe5, so of course I took the pawn. If I do not see a clear reason why I can't take some material, I usually end up taking it. I would have been better off by castling than taking the pawn, but everything worked out in the game continuation though only because RAGINGBULL was not able to take full advantage of my mistakes.

If a move like 11.f4 could have put me in a clearly worse position, then my moves 14.Rfe1 and 15.Bd4 should have been bad enough to lose the game. The game does go towards a more even position yet again on move 17, but with my 18th move my position starts to go down the drain again. Luckily for me, this was the last time in the game when I made a huge blunder. RAGINGBULL went astray couple of times after this and those two blunders were enough for me to keep the advantage on my side until the end of the game. I have added one analysed game to the following posts: A45 Indian Game: General, C41 Philidor Defense: Exchange Variation #2, B01 Scandinavian Defense: Icelandic-Palme Gambit and C46 Four Knights Game: Gunsberg Variation. I have also added one mate in two, three mate in three and one mate in four puzzle today.