Chess960 SP39

This week starts with a post that contains at the moment one chess960 game, but will have another game later this week. The game below was played at lichess.org and it had 25 minutes as the basic time and there was a 10 second increment. The time controls were longer than I am used to playing chess960 on one sitting. This was because I accepted the challenge that was offered by my opponent. For some reason or the other I could not really make myself think about my moves in this or in the rematch that was played after this game for a long time. It did not really have a negative effect on the results, because I won both games, but I did not really feel that I was in the best possible shape.

This game started so badly that I was convinced that I will end up losing this game. I think the game went well for me until I played 6...Qd6. I did look at some of the knight moves from my opponent as a reply, but for some reason did not realise how annoying move 7.Nb5 actually was. I wanted to castle queenside, but I would have needed to play a6 before Qd6 because without a6 I am forced to waste a couple of moves. 7.Nb5 basically forced me to go back to d8 with the queen because all other squares are even worse. Then my opponent played 8.Bf4 and that forced me to play my knight back to a8 in order to avoid material loss. I was really annoyed at that moment of the way I had played up to that point. Actually I should be very close to losing after 8...Na8. There should not have been a way to climb back to the game, but sometimes I just get lucky. RUSSLAN2014 continued with Qd3 with the intention of castling queenside. I replied with a6 in order to drive the knight back and get my knight back into play. For some reason or the other, after my opponent had moved the knight away, I castled and not developed the knight from a8 to b6. I am actually not sure if castling short in this particular position achieves anything useful. It probably does not make much difference if the king is on g8 and the rook is on f8 or vice versa. After both sides had castled, I finally planted my knight back to b6 where it was a few moves earlier. Somehow I was able to get into a decent position after the horrible start.

By the way, I am not looking at the computer evaluations while I type this and neither did I look them when I typed about the other games that I have posted today. I feel that looking what the engine thinks restricts me too much and what I type is not so interesting as a result. I think I will keep doing posts like this in the future too. What I type before the game is based on my thoughts and what the engine thinks can be found in the replayable game. I should have adopted this way of doing things from the beginning of this blog, but back then it was not so clear to me how I want to make these posts. If I had the time, I would redo my older posts and improve them. Anyway, back to the game. RUSSLAN2014 played the mysterious looking move 12.f3 in response to the move Nb6. I have no idea why my opponent played that move, it does not seem to have any purpose on what my opponent does in the remainder of the game. It may prepare the move e4, but for some reason RUSSLAN2014 did not play it. I replied with g6, in order to get my bishop developed. After Bh6 and the trade of bishops, it seems quite clear to me that when I played O-O, it was just a waste of time because I would have ended up in a similar position had I played g6 instead of O-O. After I recaptured the bishop with Kxg7, my opponent started to push the h-pawn aggressively towards my king. Then I played Qd6 for the second time in this game, this time the queen was not to be kicked back because the b5 square was covered by the pawn on a6. RUSSLAN2014 continued with pushing the g-pawn one square forward preparing h5, I guess. Moving the g-pawn does weaken the f4-square where I planted my queen with a check as a reply. That check should not have been that dangerous, but the way RUSSLAN2014 answered it made it the beginning of the end for my opponent. RUSSLAN2014 played 17.Nd2 without realising that the queen on d3 has no squares to which it can go. I took advantage of that fact and played Nb4. After I saw that move, I knew that I was going to win this game. The rest of the game was just matter of technique. I have added one analysed game to the following posts: E24 Nimzo-Indian Defense: Saemisch Variation. Accelerated, B32 Sicilian Defense: Kalashnikov Variation, C25 Vienna Game: Vienna Gambit and B40 Sicilian Defense: French Variation, Normal. I have also added one mate in one, one mate in three and three mate in four puzzles today.

Game number two. This is my second game against RUSSLAN2014. This was a rematch offered by my opponent. Even though I only wanted to play one game with these time controls, I accepted the offer for a rematch because I thought that as the first game did not last that long, maybe this will not last that long either. At the end of the first game, my clock showed 18 minutes 53 seconds still left and RUSSLAN2014's clock showed 11 minutes 41 seconds left on the clock. At the end of this game, my clock showed 21 minutes 59 seconds, while RUSSLAN2014's clock showed 6 minutes 47 seconds. More often than not if I use less time on the moves than my opponent, then it usually has a negative effect on my results, I have noticed this especially in over the board games. This time, however, it did not matter. I opened this game with 1.g3 because in our first game I noticed that the check on h3 or h6 is really annoying in this starting position, so I thought it best to prevent it by opting to immediately open the long diagonal for my bishop. Had my opponent replied with 1...d5, I would have played 2.Bg2 and prevented Bh3 causing annoyance. RUSSLAN2014 played 1...Nc6 instead, so I thought that I can now play 2.d4 and play Bh6+ in case of g6 and trade the dark-squared bishops. RUSSLAN2014 played 2...d5, so I played the move that I had planned against it, Bg2. RUSSLAN2014 continued with g6, which I replied almost immediately with Bh6+ and traded the potentially dangerous bishop after Bg7 was played. I think the position remained quite even until my opponent played 8...Nxe5. It loses a pawn, but I am not sure how bad that loss is because the engine seems to think that RUSSLAN2014 has sufficient compensation for the pawn and that the position is dead even.

During the game I was happy to get that extra pawn and thought that it could be enough to win the game, but as the following moves showed, it was not going to be easy. That is because after 11.Qd4 Qxd4 12.Nxd4 it seemed that I will lose a pawn back. There was, of course, the funny possibility of Ne2# as well, but I luckily did spot that move and did not lose the game. The best reply to Nc4 was in my opinion O-O-O, but even in that case I will lose the e2-pawn due to c5 kicking my knight away. I thought that my best option after c5 was to play b3, in order to have the ability to play Rd2 in response to Rxe2. The knights were traded off and I had to double my pawns on the c-file. I was not that confident of my chances, but I thought that I might get that d4-pawn and maybe be up a pawn again. I might not have been able to get that pawn had my opponent played 16...Rxd2, followed by Rd8. I thought that it would have been RUSSLAN2014's best chance, but my opponent did not agree with me. After I played Bf3, RUSSLAN2014 moved the rook to e7, which I was happy to see because I could take on d4 and be up a pawn once again. Maybe Rxd2 here was a better alternative and not give the pawn for free. After I won the pawn, the game became much easier to play and after 20...Bxd5 21.cxd5 I was quite confident that I can win the game. RUSSLAN2014 resigned after 40.h4 because I will either get to promote my h-pawn or my d-pawn while my opponent has no real counterplay.