Chess960 SP571

It is time once again for the last post of the week. While this week did not feature any chess games, only two 3 check and three chess960 games, it does not mean that I am abandoning the idea of sharing chess games. Chess games will appear again at some point and when I have finished doing all the necessary updates to the blog, the amount of games shared per day are likely to increase a bit again. The game below was played at lichess.org as a 10 minute rated game. The first peculiar move that my opponent played was in my opinion 5.Kb1. When I saw that move, I thought that Adam-Bernstein wanted to castle, but did not do it properly. I might be wrong of course, it is possible that my opponent wanted to move the king to b1. However, I do not see any reason why anyone would play Kb1 in that position. The next move I did not understand was 7.Bxc6 because that move gave up the bishop pair and helped my development as I was able to take back with my knight. It was the first real mistake of the game and you can see the position in which Adam-Bernstein played it below.

After 8.d3 I probably thought about going to d4 with my knight, but as I did not see good enough reason to do that I played my bishop to f7 instead. Moving my bishop to f7 was not the best move as I needed to play it to e6 on the next move, it would have been better to develop the bishop to d7, so that I would have been able to avoid moving my bishop more than once at this stage of the game. The position after 8...Bf7 is close to being even, though I may have a small advantage. The position after my 8th move can be seen below. Adam-Bernstein played the move 9.e4 and I had the opportunity to take a clearly favorable position. The right move for my opponent was 9.Bc5, it was the only move that kept my opponent in the game.

I played the best reply 9...Be6 and things looked good at that point. Adam-Bernstein then played 10.Ne3, to which I replied with the inaccurate 10...f4 and it gave some of my advantage away. Then on move 12 I went astray by taking the knight on c3 with my bishop. Interestingly I made a similarly bad move as my opponent did earlier in the game, I also gave up my bishop pair too early. The position where I played my 12th move can be seen below. I should have played either 12...Rf7 or 12...g5 instead of 12...Bxc3.

The game was evenly fought quite a short time after this because the blunder 14.h4 was the starting point for disaster for my opponent. Adam-Bernstein's 14th move could have already been the losing move, had I continued accurately. 14.d4 was a much better idea than 14.h4 and it would have kept the position equal. I played the sloppy 14...h6 in reply and I was only slightly better. The correct move was 14...g4, but 14...Bh3 would have been a good move too.

The next position started my opponent's final downhill. In this position Adam-Bernstein played 16.Re1, which was a big mistake. The best choice for my opponent was to move the rook to d1. I answered with the move 16...a6 and then my opponent made the second mistake in a row and played 17.e5. The moves 17.a4 and 17.d5 were better alternatives. The strongest reply would have been 17...Bf5, but I went for the move 17...O-O-O instead.

My 17th move was not the best one, but it was a good move that allowed me to be clearly better in the position. Adam-Bernstein then played 18.e6, which was the final losing move. I had the winning advantage after that and it remained to the end of the game. My opponent resigned after 27.Qd1.

Game number two. This was a rematch I agreed to play against Adam-Bernstein. When you play a rematch at lichess.org in Chess960, you will get to play the same starting position with different colors. If you play a third game against the same opponent, then the starting position will be changed. When Adam-Bernstein was White, he played 1.g3. I played 1.d4 in this game. It is possible that when I play a lot more games of chess960, I will change the post where this game is going to be and do similar opening based stuff for chess960 as I have done for chess. This was a much better played game by both players and the first clear mistake was played by my opponent in the position below. Adam-Bernstein played 22...Rd8 in the position below. My opponent should have gone for the move 22...Qg8 and maybe he would have been able to hang on in the game.

The position was not lost for my opponent, however, though it did not take long until I had a winning advantage as Adam-Bernstein blundered a couple of moves later in the next position. In the position below Adam-Bernstein played 24...Kc8. It would have been a better idea to prevent me from moving my queen to e7, so moves 24...Kd7 and 24...Ke8 were better.

I replied by playing 25.Qf6, not realising that 25.Qe7 was a better alternative. The final mistake was Adam-Bernstein's 25th move Qf1+. After that the game was completely lost for my opponent.