Chess960 SP482

Today I will share two chess960 games in this same post. Both of these games were played in a team mach called 2.) 1/2/2016. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2016. It is played between MY FRIENDS, International, Moji prijatelji&Φίλοι μου and ♦♦ Respect ♦♦. The match consists of 11 boards and I played on board 2 for MY FRIENDS, International, Moji prijatelji&Φίλοι μου. I did end up winning both of these games, but the only reason I was able to do so was the fact that my opponent lost both games on time. Had the games continued, the result of these games would have been much grimmer from my point of view. The results of these two games did not have any impact on which club would be winning the match after all games have finished, because that had already been decided in our favor. The score in the match is 16 - 4 in favor of MY FRIENDS, International, Moji prijatelji&Φίλοι μου.

The game below started with both players making reasonable moves up to White's 6th move. My opponent, athistamravindran, did play the first few moves quite aggressively, which occasionally can be a good way to play against me. However, the move 6.Rc3 is no longer a good idea because the rook lift does not help my opponent in any way, actually it is just in the way of the bishop that is located at a1. I had some good replies to 6.Rc3, but I did not play any of them. Qc7 was an okay move, but not the best option. 6...Ne7 or 6...b6 were better alternatives. Athistamravindran chose to play 7.Ne3, which is a small inaccuracy. I was maybe slightly better until I went astray with 8...Be7 and the position became more even again. The advantage shifted back to me immediately as my opponent blundered with 9.h4. I do not really understand the reason why my opponent chose to play this move. Maybe the idea was to push that pawn all the way to h6 and maybe open the h-file for the attack, but at the moment that idea is easy to stop. I replied with h6 because I wanted to drive that annoying knight away and maybe castle short. I thought that castling long would be the riskier option. Athistamravindran moved the knight to h3, probably to avoid trading to one of my knights, but this is not a good decision, it was better to move the knight to e4 where it is more centralized. In the game continuation I have a clear advantage according to Stockfish in this after game analysis. The game went on in my favor until I made a huge blunder on my 16th move. For some reason I did not consider the possibility of 17.Nf2, which shows the error of my ways. It was really silly of me to go for 16...Qxh4+, but these things happen when I do not have enough time to look at positions in my correspondence games. For the rest of the game, my opponent had the winning advantage, but for some reason or the other did not move on time. I have added one analysed game to these three posts: E44 Nimzo-Indian Defense: Fischer Variation, B84 Sicilian Defense: Scheveningen Variation. Classical Variation and C11 French Defense: Classical Variation. Delayed Exchange Variation. I have also added two mate in two, two mate in three and one mate in four puzzle today.

Game number two. In this game we see a different approach to play with the white pieces than in the first game. There is nothing really wrong with this one either and actually I was able to get some advantage after a few moves had been played. Actually after 6...Qd6 I should be clearly better. For some reason my opponent wants to bring the queen early into the game, which usually does not work out that well. With either 7.Nc3 or 7.Ne3 I could have gotten more out of the position than with the passive 7.d3, but I am just trying to maintain material balance and not give my opponent pawns, even if I would get some compensation out of it. My opponent followed with two bad moves in a row, 7...Qe6 and 8...Qg4. Athistamravindran is just trying to attack with a queen and a knight and perhaps with the bishop if the long diagonal opens up. The h-rook can also join the attack if the h-file is opened up. After Qg4 I could have been in a winning position if I had played accurately, but instead I played slightly into my opponent's hands with Nxg5. After 9.Nxg5 the position is only slightly favorable to me.

The next noticeable shift in the advantage came when my opponent played 11...Nf6, after which I should be clearly better. During the game I did not really feel that my position is all that comfortable to play as I felt that I am on the defensive side of the board. Couple of inaccurate moves later the position is even again after the move 13.Bxf6. For the first time during this game my opponent starts to be on the favorable side after my move 14.Ng4. It is a rather silly move, but I could not come up with anything better, my other option was to play Qb2, but I thought that it would not be as good as Ng4, so I played that instead. I was, of course, wrong in my assumption. I did end up in a losing position after 18.Kh1, but like in our other game, my opponent did not make another move in this game and lost on time. Therefore I was very lucky to win both of these games that I could have just as well lost.