Chess960 SP251

I am not sure why I kept playing this game for so many moves. I guess I was hoping that my opponent would mess up, but it never happened. Also it was hard for me to believe that someone rated nearly 600 points less than me can be crushing me in this game so badly. I expected to see at least some horrible blunders by my opponent to justify the low rating of 1273, but those blunders never happened. You can judge for yourselves, but I think juozaskaz played much better chess960 than a player of that rating usually plays. Then again, I did play some really bad moves that were not that hard to take advantage of. I am probably happy with the three first moves that I made, but after that my decision making was far from ideal. I mean 4.Ba5 is a rather silly move to make. It is probably just a waste of time after the reply 4...b6. When it came time to consider what to play on move 6, I was not at all certain what I should do. I was rather disappointed with my decision to play that Ba5 move and now there did not seem to be that great moves to play. I ended up playing Bg2 for no other reason than have the possibility to play Bh3 maybe some day and that the bishop is slightly better placed at g2 than on h1, but most likely no real difference between the two. I should have gone for the more active looking e4 and maybe I even consider it, but for some reason rejected the idea. Already after 6.Bg2 my opponent started to be slightly favored.

On move seven it was starting to be really hard to think of anything decent to play. I played e3 because I needed to defend the d-pawn and at the time it seemed like the best way to do it, even though it makes it very hard for me to develop my knight. At this point I would have really liked to play 6.e4 instead of 6.Bg2, because it would be much easier position for me to play. I did not have a clear plan and played 8.Qf3 knowing that the queen is akwardly placed there, but could not think of anything better. At this point I did not even consider the possibility that my queen could get trapped. Only later on I discovered how low on squares my queen actually was. I was able to save my queen, but only by giving pawns, so that my queen would have squares to go to. I can't understand why I did not play 10.h4, but instead played the horrible move Bc3. After 10...Ng5 I knew that I am most likely going to lose this game. I did continue on because of my opponent's low rating. After 11...Nge6, I could have just gone for Qf3 and I should be happy at this point to get a draw by repetition, not that my opponent would go for that. I was actually thinking during the game that 11...Nce6 would be extremely annoying move to meet, so I was somewhat happy to see Nge6. I would have played 12.Qf3 had I seen what my opponent is going to do next. After 12...Be2 I was pretty certain that my queen gets trapped, at which point I would have seriously considered of resigning this game. For the rest of the game I was waiting for a mistake from my opponent that could allow me back into the game, but juozaskaz played very well and did not give me any chances to get back into the game. This game was pretty much lost after 10...Bf3, but the game lasted 41 moves, much longer than it should have, considering how much material I was down before move 41. I have added two analysed games to my post A20 English Opening: King's English Variation. General and one analysed game to these two posts: C64 Spanish Game: Classical Variation. Charousek Variation and A15 English Opening: Anglo-Indian Defense. Mikenas-Carls Variation. I have also added one mate in two, two mate in three and two mate in four puzzles today. Until Monday, my fellow chess960 and chess enthusiasts and huge thank you for all the people who have come here to view this blog!