Chess960 SP493

This was played in a team match called 960! Easter Island vs Kartik City. The match consists of 16 boards and I am playing on board 2 for Kartik City. The current score in the match is 11 - 17 in favor of Kartik City, so we have secured the win already, which is good because I am playing really badly like this game shows. The game below started with 1.Ng3, which may not be the first move that I would think of, but certainly a playable move. Actually the more I look at it, the more I like it. I would have probably gone for 1.e4, followed up with Ne3, but in that case the knight is restricting the possibilities where the dark-squared bishop can go to. 1.Ng3 allows e4 and maybe f4 to be played so that both bishops can be developed into the game quite easily without restricting their movement all that much. I replied by playing 1...e5 with the idea of Ne6 later on. I have used a similar idea in my previous chess960 games where in the starting position there are knights on the f-file. 1...b5 might also be an interesting idea, opening the long diagonal for the queen, which would take aim on the undefended pawn on g2. Lusi47 noticed a pawn on e5 that was undefended and applied immediate pressure to it with 2.b3. I then defended the pawn with 2...d6, but the better option would have been 2...f6. Moving the f-pawn would have done two things, defended the pawn on e5 and opened up a diagonal for the bishop. The move I played in the game only defends the pawn. I should really a pay attention to multipurpose moves and play them instead the simpler moves that only do one thing.

My opponent continued with 3.e3, which I think might be a bit passive. I thought that the purpose of playing the knight to g3 was to get the bishops better into play, I guess I was wrong. I would have preferred 3.e4, but e3 might prepare d4 or f4. I played 3...Ne6 in order to defend g7 and control the d4 and f4 squares. That being said, 4.f4 would have not only been possible, but also the move that lusi47 should have played. Instead lusi47 went for the more tame 4.f3. Then my plan was to play h6, Bh7 and castle. While I completed my plan, lusi47 continued to play rather passively in my opinion as my opponent did even avoid moving the pawns more than one square forward from their starting squares. The first and only time that lusi47 pushed a pawn two squares forward, it turned out to be a bad decision. The move 8.c4 would have given me a small advantage, had I played b5 in reply. I did get a small advantage a little bit later, but only after 22.Nd6 did my advantage get to a more clearer one. I was clearly better until I self-destructed first with 30...c5, which turned the tables and my opponent was clearly better. I had completely missed the idea 31.cxd5 Rxd5 32.Rxd5 Qxd5 Ne7+ winning. I saw that after lusi47 had played 31.cxd5. To which I played the move that lost the game Kf8. I could not believe how badly I had played the last two moves and had to resign after 32.dxe6. I have played a bit too fast in my correspondence games lately, so these incredibly stupid moves of mine have increased a bit. However, I did manage to be in a situation where it was not my move in any of my games couple of days ago, which has not happen since 2014... I have added two mate in two, one mate in three and two mate in four puzzles. The puzzles I added today I did in a different way than before, now you can actually play out the variation on the board if you find the best moves that is.

Even though I did type about yesterday that I would be using the older version from the editor, I think I will use the newer one in these new posts. When I do the reposting of games, then I will most likely prefer the old one, especially when I repost multiple games in a row. Also I got a reply from ChessBase support that they had made another update, which fixed the problems I had with ChessBase 12. Now I can use it like I have done before, which is a relief to me because I can do things more easily once again.