I am taking a look at my old over the board games this week, since there seemed to be enough never before covered opening variations to last for this week. Well, opening variations that have not seen the light of day in this blog that is. This game was played in a weekend tournament at Turku in April, 2009. The tournament consisted of four groups and I played in group D with 11 other players. The game below was played on round two and it was my first loss. I had won my first round game against a player who was rated 1643. On the next two rounds I was able to win my games again, but on the last round I suffered my second loss. With a score of 3 out of 5 I shared third place in the group, but due to tie-break I was 5th in the fianl standings of group D.
The first position of interest appeared after my opponent played 6...c6. These days I would almost always castle in that position without much thought, but in this game I chose for some reason to play 7.d5, which seems a bit premature since my king is still in its original square in the center. 7.d5 was a really bad idea and the first clear mistake of the game.
It was not the start of my downfall just yet though, because a few moves and some inaccuracies later we reached the position after 12.O-O. You can see that position below. My opponent replied with 12...Rae8 after which the position was even once again. 12...Nc5 was the best option to keep the advantage.
The next clear shift in the balance came in the position below after I had played 24.Bxc4. My opponent was slightly better in that position, but then he played 24...a4, which gave me a chance for a clear advantage. Unfortunately I did not play 25.Ba6, which meant that instead of being the one in a favorable position, I gave the favorable position to my opponent with the move 25.Ne2.
The game then went on without big mistakes until we reached the position below. It is taken after my 33rd move Nxc5. My opponent played 33...Qf8, which is a huge blunder according to Stockfish 7 64 POPCNT. The engine thinks that I am in a winning position after 33...Qf8. The correct move was 33...Qb6 and the position would have been even after that. Again I missed the strongest move, which in this case would have been 34.Ne6. The move I chose, 34.Be2 is good enough to a clear advantage, so I should have been doing quite well at this point in the game.
Two consecutive blunders changed the outcome of the game. In the position below I was on the clearly favorable side, but I went to grab the a-pawn with the knight instead of the possibly winning move 36.Ne6 and suddenly the position was more even again. Especially after my opponent played 36...Qh4. The other option to keep the equality was to play 36...Qa5.
The former option was probably better for practical reasons as it seems like the harder one to make a good move against. I was not able to find a good answer to 36...Qh4 and made the game losing move 37.Bf1. The only move that could have kept me in the game was 37.g3, all other moves were losing for me. I did play a few more moves, but had to accept my defeat after 42...Rxf7. I have added a mate in one puzzle 523, mate in two puzzles 742 & 743, a mate in three puzzle 667 and a mate in four puzzle 530 today.
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