It seems I am still finding new opening variations to cover in this blog from my games, but it obviously is quite rare these days. According to my current statistics, this is the opening variation number 509 that has been published in the blog. The game below was played on the first round of a tournament called EXPECT NO MERCY - NAZARETH TOUR!!! I played in group 7 on this first round and I was able to win my group by half a point difference to a player called csabiu (1673), whom I faced in my last game of round one. Because only the winner or winners of each group advance on to the next round, the last game from this round was very important as it determined which one of us was able to advance to the second round. The group consisted of five players, but because the fifth participant of the group closed his or her account before even finishing one game properly, it felt like there was only three actual opponents in the group. My opponent in the game below, marcverkinderen, finished fourth in the group with 3 points. Those 3 points came from 3 wins that marcverkinderen was able to get. I won 6, drew 1 and lost 1. These tournaments also keep track of the biggest upset in the tournament and it links to the game where that happened. It links to my only loss on round one... I lost a game against a player who was rated 1407 at the time and I was rated 1816. I basically made one horrible blunder in that game and decided to resign the game when I saw what my opponent played is response to that blunder.
I have to admit that the way the game below started seemed quite strange to me, but it seems that this opening is playable for both sides. The game was actually quite well played by both players until my opponent played 12.Nh2 that is. It would have been a better idea to play 12.d4, for example and try to generate some play in that way. After the move played in the game, 12.Nh2, marcverkinderen was not able to get back into the game, so this was the start for all the problems that my opponent faced. Because it seemed that my opponent was not interested in taking the initiave, I thought that I should take it and played 12...f5. Marcverkinderen replied with 13.d4, but now that move is a mistake, a move earlier it would have been still a good move to play. Unfortunately for me and luckily for my opponent, I did not take full advantage of that bad move, but instead played the inaccurate 13...exd4. I probably thought that if I take on e4, then my opponent takes on e5 twice and the material would be even. I did not see that after 13...fxe4 14.dxe5 I could play d5 and not take that pawn at all. In that case the material would also be even, but the pawn on e5 might get weak and I would have some interesting pawns on the center, while also being able to get my dark-squared bishop to c5 in order to generate more pressure towards f2. That continuation would have made my light-squared bishop look like a big pawn on c6, but it could get a better square later on. I probably played 13...exd4 due to a greedier option, had my opponent replied with 14.Bxd4, then I would have won a pawn on e4, with 14...fxe4. Obviously marcverkinderen did not go for that line, but instead played the correct capture 14.exf5. I did remain on the slightly better side of things in the game continuation. My opponent went further towards a loss with the normal looking 15.Bxd4. The problem pieces for marcverkinderen were the knights on h2 and d2. Had my opponent played 15.Ndf3, then one of his knights would been better placed and the knight would have also stopped blocking the queen on the d-file. Marcverkinderen could have maybe taken on d4 on the following turn, unless I would have found the line that you see in the notation, where I would have first taken on f3 and followed it up by playing c5 in order to protect the pawn on d4. The game losing move came when my opponent played 19.Ng4, after that the game ended quite quickly in my favor. I have added two mate in two, two mate in three and one mate in four puzzle today. Until Monday, my fellow chess and chess960 enthusiasts!
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