Chess960 SP231

This is my second Live 960 game that I have played at Chess.com. The ratings shown below are the ratings that both players had after this game was played. It is currently not that easy to get a live chess960 game to play at Chess.com. I think my challenges have been the only ones there for the most part, though during the time this challenge was shown in the graph, there was one other player who issued a chess960 challenge. I am not sure if the times I go to play there are not ideal for other people who also enjoy live chess960 games or do people rather play chess960 with correspondence time controls. One option is of course that people use the old version of the site where live chess960 is not an option and for some reason have not gone to play to the new version of the site.

The first move that seems a bit odd to me, was the move 2.Ne3. It might be a good move, but I would prefer to put the knight on e3 after the pawn has moved to e4. I placed my f-knight behind the e-pawn as a reply to 2.Ne3 and then PIEROS16 played 3.d3 wanting to develop the bishop somewhere on the c1-h6 diagonal, I assume. I continued with 3...Nb6 with the idea of d5 next if that plan is not stopped. The move 4.Nc4 does stop the plan of playing d5 at least for the time being because it basically forced me to take on c4. I did not like the aspect of losing a pawn or getting doubled pawns on the b-file, so taking on c4 seemed like the right thing to do. Taking on c4 also doubles PIEROS16's pawns, so that was an added bonus. I do not really understand the reason behind playing that knight to c4 in the first place. White should have better alternatives here, fox example, 4.c4 would have been a better plan in my opinion. Then again, the position after 5.dxc4 seems reasonable for White, maybe even slightly favorable for my opponent.

After 7...g6, my opponent thought for around 24 seconds and played 8.Nc2. I think I would have preferred the more aggressive developing move 8.Bh6 because 8.Nc2 allows me to do develop my pieces freely. PIEROS16 continued with 9.Ne3, which does put the knight on a nice square, but it leaves the bishop on c1 behind it as a bad piece. I wanted to get to h3 after Ne3, which blocked the bishop's path, so I moved my knight to g5, so it would be ready to jump to h3. I knew that it would be hard to get anything actually done with just the knight on h3, but at least it would force the king to block the path for the bishop on h1. So after 10.Qd2, I played 10...Nh3+. I also thougt about possilities to use the long diagonal for attack, but there were no convenient ways to make anything work on the long diagonal. After 11.Kg2, I was not at all sure on how to continue the game, so I spend almost a minute to consider my options and decided to play 11...Bh6, with the idea of pinning the knight and maybe prepare the move Qg5, followed by Nf4+.

PIEROS16 thought about the move 12.Qc2 for 48.6 seconds, the second longest think of the game for my opponent. It was followed up by the longest thought process I had in the game for one of my moves. I thought about the move 12...Qd7 for over a minute. During that minute I did consider at first taking on e3 with the bishop because I wanted to take advantage of the awkward position of the queen on c2 and the rook on b1, by playing Bf5. However, I quickly rejected the idea because Bf5 would be answered with e4. I could have doubled my opponent's pawns on the e-file, but I did not see it beneficial enough to give one of my bishops in the process. After 12...Qd7, I was already down almost two minutes on the clock and the pressure to win this game started to increase. That is because my rating would have dropped quite a lot in case of a loss, but also had I drawn this game, my rating would have experienced a considerable dive. PIEROS16 replied with the annoying 13.Nd5, which threatened a fork on f6 and thinking about the reply cost me another 32 seconds on the clock. At the time I played 13...Bg7, PIEROS16 had 7 minutes and 15 seconds on the clock while I had 5 minutes and 8 seconds. My opponent went for tactical threats at this point in the game and played 14.Bh6 and had I taken the bishop, PIEROS16 would have played Nf6+ and it would have likely meant my resignation. I continued with tricks of my own and played 14...Nf4+. The idea was that if it gets replied with gxf4, then Qh3+, followed up with Qxh6 should be good for me.

However, PIEROS16 played Bxf4 instead, which wins a pawn momentarily in the game continuation. Had my opponent played 16.gxf4, PIEROS16 might have been able to keep the pawn. It is an awful looking move and I understand the unwillingness to play that and I might have also preferred 16.Nxf4. I was down 2 minutes on the clock after 16.Nxf4 and as the position did not seem that good for me, I started to be a bit worried. On move 17 I was able to play my move about 40 seconds faster than my opponent, so I was able to get the time difference on the clocks a little bit less. Unfortunately after that I was the slower mover again, until on move 23 I was able to move faster than PIEROS16 once again. That was because Bxe3, doubling my opponent's pawns seemed like an obvious move, so it did not take long for me to play that move. Around this time I was just trying to play faster than my opponent and even out the time difference on the clocks. After 32.Rf1, the time difference was only 30 seconds in favor of my opponent, I had 2 minutes and 19 seconds left on the clock. I was fairly confident that I can make moves fast enough from this point forward though. Also at this point I had to notice to play 32...Re7, because otherwise I could be close to losing this game.

When I played Kg7, I was surprised to see that my opponent played 37.Rf2 in reply. I would have expected 37.Rdf4 increasing the pressure on f7 and keeping my pieces more tied up. For some reason, it was the move 37.Rf2 that PIEROS16 used the most thinking time during this game and I have no idea why my opponent decided after 48.9 seconds to play Rf2. It was after this longish think that I was for the first time during this game up on time. I was quite confident that time will be deciding factor in this game, so I kept moving fast and tried to stay up on time, which I was able to do for the rest of the game. I actually won this game on time, but before that I had gained a winning position. After I played 37...f5, my opponent made the blunder that lost the game, PIEROS16 played c5, which gave a pawn for free and because it seemed that I can also win the pawn on e3, the rest of the game was easy to play. I have added two mate in three and three mate in four puzzles today. Until Monday, my fellow chess960 and chess enthusiasts!