Second day in a row when the main post of the day features a game from GameKnot. This is even from the same mini-tournament as the game in the post yesterday. The mini-tournament is called dim_weasel's XIV. My position in the standings is the same as it was yesterday, I am on last place with 1 point and I have finished three games. The difference to the game I shared yesterday is the opponent and how I played the game. In this one I was able to play better than in the game against dim_weasel. This is far from perfect, but I was never in the risk of losing this game. My opponent, ichthus, has played seven games and has only one game left to finish and it is against me. Ichthus has gathered 2 points so far in this mini-tournament.
The first turning point of the game came when ichthus played 8...O-O-O. During the game I actually thought that I am worse after my opponent castled long and it took some time to find the move 9.Ng5, which I thought at the time to be my only rescuing move. In my mind I was playing against the possible loss of a pawn, which I think explains some of the decisions I made on the following turns. All my moves up to 11.Bc4 were aimed to keep the material balance in the game. I am not really comfortable in playing in a situation where I am down on material, even when I have some compensation for it. The reason why I played 11.Bc4 was that if ichthus takes the pawn on d4, then after some exchanges I can take on e6 with the bishop. My move is not the strongest move in the position and I should have played 11.Bf3 instead. My opponent replies badly to the move played in the game, but I am not able to take any advantage of ichthus' mistake and instead I made a bad move 12.Be2. After my 12th move, the position is equal. Ichthus blunders with 12...Qb4, after which I should be winning, at least according to Stockfish in this after game analysis. The problem with the move 12...Qb4 is that the queen is misplaced at b4 and does not even threaten to take on b2. That is because I could have replied 12...Qb4 with 13.a3 and if now 13...Qxb2, then 14.Na4 traps the queen. Even though I have seen similar queen traps before, I did not consider the possibility of it during this game. Instead I played the passive 13.Qc1 and defended the pawn directly. Even the move I played in the game gave me a clear advantage, but had I played 13.a3 I could have had a winning advantage.
The game went on in my favor up to my move 22.Qd3, which brought the game back into balance. Ichthus played two inaccurate moves in a row that gave me a clear advantage again. I threw that advantage away again with my 29th move. Sometimes I am unintentionally generous in that way... Ichthus gave the advantage immediately back with interest, but I was not able to see the best way to take advantage of my opponent's move, so I was only slightly better after 30.Rc1. I had a plan at this point that involved me pushing the queenside pawns to weaken the pawn structure in front of my opponent's king. I played Rc1 in order to pin the pawn on c6, so that when I play b5, it can't be taken with the pawn on c6. Of course this plan would not have been the winning idea, had my opponent played the most accurate replies to my moves. With the move 34...h6 my opponent goes from an equal position to a lost position. While I replied to that blunder with the correct move 35.Qa8+, after ichthus' reply Bb8, I went a bit astray with Ba7 that gave my opponent chances to hold the draw again. Luckily for me, ichthus made a huge mistake on his 36th move, which also turned out to be the losing move of the game because even with my poor technique, I was able to win the game.
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