Chess960 SP159

It was quite hard to get a game of chess960 against another human today and one in a starting position that I had not played before. Finally I had to accept this casual challenge against Anonymous. There is never a real way to know who these unregistered players are and how strong they are. Based on the way that this particular Anonymous played, my opponent is probably either around my rating or maybe a bit stronger. The way this game started reminded me of a game I had previously played. I can't remember the exact game, but I am quite certain that the position after 5.g3 I had seen before. Well, the pawn structure and where the bishops originate from in this starting position seemed familiar to me, other pieces on the back rank probably were in a different order though. I should avoid getting into these kind of pawn structures where they lead to closed games as I am not that good in them. My need to open things up and make it easier for me to play may sometimes lead me into trouble like it did in this game when I played 13...Bxe5. Now this move seemed good to me because not only is fxe5 forced, I could continue with f4 myself and open things up that way. I also had the idea of playing Nd7 and maybe further weaken my opponent's pawn structure. Things did not go the way I had planned them though and my pieces started to run out of squares to go to.

Therefore it was rather surprising to see Anonymous play 17.Nxd7 because that freed more squares to my disposal. My opponent should have retreated with the knight to d3 and kept more pieces on the baord, making it harder for me to play decent moves. After that exchange it was easier for me to develop a plan. However, after the move 21.b4, I started to go for the wrong plan. I played 21...g5 with the idea of following it up with f4. Move that I actually never played because I got distracted with the play on the queenside and played 22...Qd7 with the crazy idea of playing c6 and opening the file in front of my king... It seemed like a good idea at the time. 21...g5 might have been the start for my troubles, but with 23...c6 my position really went down the drain and I should have been in a losing position after that. While Anonymous might have not responded with the most accurate move, my opponent was still clearly in the driver's seat. I made things even worse for me a few moves later when I played 27...Kd7. The idea behind that move was to get my king as far away from the queenside as possible because I thought that my king would be safer on the kingside. Luckily for me, Anonymous missed the strongest continuation once again, giving me new chances to possibly hold the game, but even in the game continuation I am on the worse side of the board. I could have been close to equality, had I taken my chance and played either 31...Rxa7 or 31...dxc4 in reply to the inaccuracy 31.Rea1. The game continuation lead me towards a path of defeat, which I followed for awhile, but then my opponent blundered and played 35.Rxa8 and that put me for the first time during this game properly in the driver's seat. My opponent even offered me an easy win by playing 37.Qf6+, but due to time pressure and some unexplainable reason I could not see that I can take the queen with my knight. I instead walked into a mate in one, which my opponent did not see... Whoops. In the final position I am actually losing again. The only thing that saved me was time, my opponent's clock ran out of it. I have added one mate in two, one mate in four and one mate in five puzzle today.

The game above may also be viewed with my live commentary in the video below.