This week starts with games I have played at GameKnot. The game below was played in a mini-tournament called dim_weasel's XIV. Apart from the winner of the mini-tournament, jug_head (2061), other players have been quite evenly matched and the places from 2nd to 5th are still not decided. Jug_head managed to win all of his games, so he got the impressive result of 8 out of 8 points! I am currently on second place with 2.5 points and I have two more games left to finish. Two other players have also managed to get 2.5 points, the one who is on third place has still two games to finish while the player on fourth place has played all of his games. The mini-tournament creator is currently on 5th place, which is also the last place, but if he wins both of his remaining games, he can overtake me if I lose both of my remaining games.
For these comments I did not check what the engine thinks about the positions, so there might be some disagreement between what I type here and what the engine thinks about the positions in the notation. I prefer open games to these rather boring closed games, but the way I usually handle the first few moves, I occasionally have to play even these more closed games. After the move 8.b3 I am not really sure what I should do in a position like that. I played 8...b6 in order to develop my bishop, but maybe I should have played 8...Re8 and tried to play e5 later on. The way I played in the game does not seem like the right idea at all. The move 9...Bb7 is a bit sloppy in my opinion and the bishop might be somewhat better at a6, where it at least would have prevented the move Nc3 as a reply. I continued with Qc7 and I thought that if Bf4, I could just play Bd6 and the trade of those bishops would be good for me. After jug_head played 13.e4, I was not really sure that I had played this all that well. I did end up taking on e4 as I wanted to open lines and get more space for my pieces, but that may not have been the best idea either. I should have considered playing 13...e5 instead. Then again that move poses other problems. I took on e4 twice in order to play Nf6 to Qxe4, but after I had moved my knight to f6, I thought it might be more useful on the square d7. That is because I could play Nxe5 in case my opponent plays his knight to e5, which he did in the game on his 17th move. I replied with the wierd looking Rc7, the point of which I am not sure about, but I guess it protects the bishop in some lines. I guess I wanted to play c5 and make sure that the bishop is defended. Jug_head continued by pushing the a-pawn and unfortunately I replied in kind, which made the move c5 a good one for my opponent. I had to take on c5 and after 20.dxc5 Qe7 21.Rd6 I was quite sure of the fact that I am going to lose, but I did try and hang on for a few moves.
The position seemed quite lost after jug_head won the pawn on a5, but later on I played Rxd6 thinking for a brief moment that I am able to get my pawn back. Unfortunately that did not happen as I never had the time to take that pawn on d6. I may have been able to take that pawn, had I played 26...Rd8 instead of 26...Rc8. The problem with the move I played in the game was that I did not want to take on d5 with the c-pawn after Bxd5. Taking with the c-pawn seems quite risky anyway because it gives my opponent two connected passed pawns. If I was not lost before 27...exd5, I am definitely lost after that move. The queen on f4, the pawn on d6 and when the rook lands on e7 work perfectly together towards the win. His knight and those two pawns on a4 and b4 are not even relevant, they could be taken off the board and I would still be lost.
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