This game was played in atadros's mini-tournament V at GameKnot. This high-stakes mini-tournament consists of 11 players. I am currently on 10th place with 2.5 points. My opponent in the game below, john_wr, is on 7th place with 6 points. I have three games currently in progress in this mini-tournament and 7 games have not even started yet. If I win all of those 10 games, I will be able to tie in points with the player who is currently on 2nd place, but it would mean that the player who is on 2nd place could not get a single point out of the 5 remaining games he has left. It would be very unlikely for me to win all of my remaining games due to the fact that I am one of the lowest rated players in this mini-tournament. Actually only two players are lower rated than me at the moment. A player called foogie1 (2251) is currently on 1st place with 14 points and he has three games left to finish. The only threat to foogie1's mini-tournament victory is desaparicidos (2056), who is currently on second place. Desaparicidos can actually overtake foogie1 by a half a point even if both players win all of their remaining games.
I felt that this game started to go wrong for me as early as move 3. I regretted the move 3...Bb4 almost immediately as I started to see what my opponent was up to. While the moves 4.Qg4 and 5.Qf3 were certainly annoying, I did not think that I would be in huge trouble just yet. Admittedly I was somewhat worried of the move Nd5 at a convenient moment, well convenient for my opponent that is. I think I should be okay after 6...O-O, but the moves d3 and 8.Bg5 were constantly on my mind, because getting the bishop to g5 could have caused really big problems for me. I was somewhat happy to see my opponent play 7.h3, because it did not seem as dangerous to me as 7.d3 would have been. I replied with 7...Nd4, which I thought might lead to some beneficial trades from my point of view. However, I am not so sure if Nd4 was such a good move. It does basically force my opponent to play Nxd4 and I obviously need to play exd4 in order to maintain the material balance, but the problem is that I have now doubled pawns on the d-file. The doubled d-pawns are not my biggest problem though. It is the continuation d3, Bg5 and e5. I think I should be able to defend against that but it seemed quite bad for me during the game. After 8...exd4 john_wr played Nb5, which is better than Nd5 because to Nd5 I would have replied with Nxd5, after which I should be okay. Nb5 does cause me some problems. I thought about Bc5 and c5 during the game as a possible answers, but rejected Bc5 because I thought that the bishop is needed on b4 to pin the d-pawn so that the idea d3, followed up with Bg5 would be delayed at least for the time being. C5 has a problem attached to it as well, it blocks the diagonal for my bishop on b4, so that it can't go back to e7 for defensive purposes.
I think I defended reasonably until I played 16...Nh5. The purpose of the Nh5 move was to stop my opponent from playing f4 and Bg3 ideas. Then again I am not sure if there was anything better to play. I know though that my 17th move was the move that cost me the game, without that blunder I might have had chances for a draw. After the moves Bxf6 and Qxd7 I felt that I was quite lost, but continued on even though my position was not all that promising in view of counterplay possibilities. The game went further and further down the drain for me and I had to accept the loss after 24.f6+ because I saw only easy wins for my opponent at that point.
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