The game I share today was played on the second round of the 2014 October Split II tournament. There are only two games left to finish in this tournament and those two games will decide who will be on third and on fourth place in the final standings. I am one of the two players involved in those two games and I need to at least win one of the two games or draw them both in order to secure my third place finish. On the first round players were divided into two groups of 12 players. I played on group 1 and I was one of the three players that advanced from group 1 to round 2. Only the leading player or players advance from each round, so this was a rare thing that three players advanced from the same group. All three of us were able to gather 56 points on round 1. Interestingly also the winner of group 2 was able to get 56 points. One might think that the second round was evenly fought because of this, but it really was not. It was quite clear from the start who are the players who will fight for the win of the tournament and who are the players who fight for being not the last one in the group. The winner of this tournament is NN Cheap (2052), who was able to gather 15 points in this last round. The second place went to aukermdr, who was able to get 13 points.
This game shows how poorly I can sometimes judge positions. I should not have resigned this game, but instead I should have continued the game and tried to get a draw. While I did not see any immediate way how my opponent could have converted that two pawn advantage into a win, I also could not see how I could hold the draw. I was quite convinced that my defenses will crumble and continuing the game would have been just waste of time. However, when I looked the end position after the game had finished with Stockfish, it thought that I had full compensation for the material. It even suggested the move I thought about of making before I resigned. I value material still too much sometimes and I need to learn that it is not so important all the time. I am not really a fan of playing against the Sicilian Defense, but obviously I have to face it from time to time due to my choice of the opening move 1.e4, which Bobby Fischer said to be best by test. However, in my games, I have probably struggled more with 1.d4 openings than with 1.e4 openings. That being said, from the games I have published in the blog, I have been doing really poorly against the King's Gambit. I should check at some point the actual statistics from both 1.e4 and 1.d4 and how I have actually done in those with both colors and see which one is truly the better one for me and with which color. I know the statistics per opening variations that I have posted, but those do not take into account the color that I have played with.
The game below reached the position that I have been facing many times since I started this blog when my opponent played 5...a6. I have usually played 6.Be2 in reply, but in this game I wanted to try another move, 6.Bg5. I had some vague memories that Bg5 was a theoretical move, but after that I was completely on my own. I did remember watching games where the move 6.Bg5 had been played, but I could not really remember all that much about them, only vague ideas. I think I made reasonable moves until I played 12.g4. I do not remember anymore why I chose to play g4 instead of h4, but whatever the reason, I did not choose the right move. Luckily for me, neither did aukermdr because my opponent replied with 12...Ne5, 12...d5 would have been a better alternative. I continued with 13.Qg2 with some ideas of queen getting to a better square and assist with the attack. I also did not save my bishop from being captured this time because I thought that the bishop would just be in the way of my other pieces if I move it. However, the move I chose was the biggest mistake of the game so far. Aukermdr replied with a less than ideal move, which gave me some chances to hold the draw. I was slightly worse after 13...Nxd3 though. Around this time in the game it became much harder to come up with a good plan. While taking back on d3 with the rook seemed like the obvious choice, the square d3 did became a little bit awkward for the rook after I played 15.Bd2. I played 15.Bd2 I guess to get the bishop out of the way of the advancing pawns that I thought might help in demolishing my opponent's defenses. Aukermdr replied by moving the knight out of the way of the advancement of the g-pawn and also wanted to place the knight on e5 and maybe try to harass my badly placed rook on d3.
After the knight maneuver to c4, I knew for sure that I am on the worse side of things. I should have still been able to hold my position together, but then on move 21 I carelessly moved my bishop to c3, which was a clear blunder that allowed some tactics. I remember using similar tactics on some of my opponents in the past, but for some reason I completely missed the idea that aukermdr can take on a3 with the knight because if I take back with the b-pawn, my opponent can then take on c3 with the rook. That would have won a pawn, but for some reason aukermdr did not play Nxa3 immediately, but instead played 21...Qd7. I guess I was not the only one not noticing the tactic. Unfortunately for me, I kept ignoring the threat of Nxa3, so aukermdr was able to play that on move 22. While the loss of a pawn for basically for free did make things more difficult for me, I still kept playing and tried to improve my position. When aukermdr played 43...d4, with the threat of getting another pawn, I probably lost my focus because I saw no way to defend the pawn on e5. I did think about the possibility of Rxh7+ and follow it up with a queen check on h3, but for some reason or the other did not see anything good quickly, so I stopped looking. This is probably one of my biggest problems in chess, I think that I can see the potential of these kind of attacking moves quickly and see if they work or not, but obviously time after time I am reminded by the fact that I should just calculate variations further than I currently do. One reason why I rejected the Rxh7 idea was that I saw no mate, but of course I should have been happy with a draw in that position. I have added one mate in one and four mate in four puzzles today.
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