Chess960 SP342

Chess960 is the most featured chess variant in this blog and I doubt that it will change anytime soon. It has also been taking the center stage both in this blog and at my Youtube channel lately more than chess or 3 check. The way things are going at the moment I think it will continue to be like that for some time. When I accepted the Chess960 challenge that my opponent had created, I did not realise who the opponent was, I only looked that the times were good for me. After the board was shown and the score between me and my opponent was revealed, I noticed that I had played quickcastle twice before this game and lost both of them. I was quite confident at the start of the game that this would not be a third loss, because my recent results in my games have been very promising. Already after I saw the move 2.Bc4 played, a little grin started to manifest itself on my face. I happily replied with 2...Nb6. Then quickcastle retreated to b3 with the bishop. I continued by playing 3...Bc5 thinking that now it would be playable since Nb3 is not possible. However, I soon realised that the bishop on c5 could turn into a real problem. Mainly because it basically hindered my development. The move 4.c3 was the first indication to me that my third move was not a good one. The plan Nc2, followed by d4, made it impossible for me to play d6, because the bishop on c5 would be trapped because of it. I did not want to admit the mistake just yet and played my knight to g6 instead. Then quickcastle played the innocent looking 5.d3, which during the game I thought would threaten Bg5, but of course as long as my bishop can retreat to e7, moving the bishop to g5 is not really a problem.

However, I answered 5.d3 with 5...Qe7, intending to castle short. When I first saw the starting position, I thought that I would like to castle long, but because it came quite difficult to get the light-squared bishop into play, castling short seemed like the more obvious choice. I knew right away after I saw the move 6.Ng3 to be played that the knight would jump to f5 and harass my queen. I though that I can't really stop Nf5, so I might as well castle and that is exactly what I did. While Nf5 did harass my queen, the knight did not do all that much else on f5. I went to d8 with the queen and I could have gone for d5 next, but at the time I was in the impression that I could not play it. Somehow the fact that Qd8 actually enabled the move, did not even cross my mind until I had already retreated with the bishop. I only moved the bishop so that I could finally move the d-pawn and continue developing my pieces, most notably the bishop on c8. When I did end up playing d5 on move 9, it started a series of captures that ended horribly for my opponent. At first when quickcastle played 10.Nxe7+, I thought that I am going to lose a pawn. Quite soon afterwards I realised that the pawn on e5 can't be taken without dire consequences. I did, however, miss my first opportunity to play Bg4+ on move 11. It might have been actually a good thing though because my opponent did take on e5 with the queen and then Bg4+ seemed even better. Admittedly, had quickcastle just played 12.Qe2, I might have needed to settle for a game that was evenly fought at that point. 12.Qxe5 was the final blunder that lost the game for my opponent. I have added three mate in two, one mate in three and one mate in five puzzle today. As you can see, I have also divided the mate in two puzzles into 100 puzzle sections. The newest added puzzles are always found in the section where the puzzle number is the highest.

There is also a Youtube video of this game with my live commentary and that is something you can view below.