Chess960 SP347

I have wanted to add reference games to my chess960 games for some time now, but it seems I occasionally forget to do that. For this game I chose to put in the notation a game between the two engines Stockfish 200815 64-bit (3503) and Critter 1.6a 64-bit (3292). Among all the chess960 games that the engines had played, this followed the game the most, which is not saying a lot as you can see. There were a few choices of engine games after 1.g3, so I chose the one that had the highest rated engines playing. I basically do the reference games check for my chess960 games by searching a position from my reference database and the game that follows most the game I played, will be selected. In case there are multiple games, I will choose the one that has the highest rated players. Because that reference database only includes games played by engines, there will be only engine games shown in these notations as reference games. If I had a large database of chess960 games that were played by humans, then I would use that instead. Then again I could combine the two together and make an even bigger database.

Actually I did not even intend to play a game when I logged in to lichess, but when I saw that a 2100 rated player was looking for an opponent with time controls I could play with, I had to accept that challenge and test myself against a higher rated player. Based on the way the game went, I was happy that I accepted the challenge. The first move that made me consider the position a bit more was 4...Bb5. It had a surprisingly paralysing effect to my position. It made moving the e-pawn impossible for me for a few moves. Not only that but it made the development of my queen a bit more problematic, which in turn made sure that I was not castling anytime soon. Because I thought it was a good idea to put the bishop to the b-file, I replied with 5.Bb4. It was answered by baykus with the move 5...c6, the point of which is to get the queen out of the back rank and prepare castling short. I then played my knight to e5, so that my bishop would eye on e4. I did not want to play Qd2 immediately because it would likely be replied with Ne4. In this way I had at least made it a little bit less convenient to place the knight to e4 after Qd2. Both players then continued on with their plans to castle.

Next I wanted to move my rook so that the e-pawn could finally move, preferably to e4. This was not, however, the most crucial thing to do and I would have been better off, had I placed my knight to c5 instead of 9.Rfe1. The game continuation lead to the trade of knights, which I was okay with especially because baykus took back on c4 with the bishop. I thought during the game that taking back with the pawn would have been more annoying move for me to face, because the knight would have needed to retreat into a bad square. Then on move 12 I made a questionable decision by moving my queen to c3. The reason why I played my queen there was that it prevented my opponent of creating doubled pawns for me and had baykus played Ne4, I would have just taken the knight with my bishop. Then baykus would have needed to play Bxb3 because the move dxe4 would have lost a piece. In the game continuation both players made small mistakes until it came time for my opponent to play his or her 16th move. It was the worst move of the game up to that point. I replied with the move 17.f3, which is an okay move, but pushing the f-pawn two squares forward would have been a better alternative. My opponent replied with 17...Ne5, after which I was not really happy with my position. I did not want to play 18.f4 in response, because I did not want to allow the knight to retreat back to g4. Obviously I had misjudged the position and the knight on g4 would not have been as dangerous as I thought it would be. Due to that I played the weird looking 18.Nd4 in order to protect f3 and attack the rook on f5. Had the knight not attacked the rook, then obviously Nd4 would have been out of the question due to c5, forking my knight and my bishop.

With my 20th move I went more astray and played f4, a little bit too late. I was again too worried about the safety of my king that I was even willing to sacrifice some material because of it. The moves that followed my blunder were quite interesting and surprising to me. Well, at least the reply to 21.Bxd4 I was very surprised to see. I was very happy that my opponent decided to move the rook instead of the knight. It made it much easier for me to get back into the game. Had my opponent moved the knight, I would have been in some serious trouble. Due to my opponent's 21st move I went from being clearly worse to being clearly better. I continued to be on the better side of the board until I played 36.Rxe8 in a position where both of our times were starting to be very low. I did get another chance to fight for the win when baykus played 37...Rb2. At first I was able to play towards the advantage, but then after the blunder 40...Rc2, I played in desperation 41.Re2 because I was worried about the move a4, since I could not take it with my pawn because if I did, then I would lose my bishop on c4. I did not see the position clearly in time trouble and therefore did not see that 41.Rf1 is strong enough move to win the game. I did get a very good chance to win the game a few moves later when baykus played 44...a4. Unfortunately I did not see the winning plan this time either and instead I was too worried about the a-pawn and the position of my bishop. I could have also lost this game because of the horrible blunder 46.Rb2. Luckily for me, baykus did not see the winning idea and the game continued evenly until the end. After I had played 49.Kf2, I decided to offer a draw and my opponent who had less time than I did, accepted the offer. I have added mate in two puzzles 712 & 713, mate in three puzzle number 644 and mate in four puzzles 512 & 513 today.

The live commentary for this game can be heard in the video below.