Chess960 SP497

The chess960 filled week is coming to its end, though I still have to publish the last video of the week after this post, but other than that I am getting very close of preparing things for next week again. Especially this week the videos I have shared to YouTube have been of games that I have shared the previous day in this blog, which is in some ways a problem. To me, it is obviously convenient to share the games in this way, but if someone who follows both this blog and my YouTube channel, things can get a bit repetitive. While I think both ways are exploring the game in different ways, I might need to do something a bit different for next week and in the future.

While I played this game, I did not really like the way I started the game, but today when I added the reference game into the notation, I saw that the game followed a game between two strong engines up to my move 3.Ngf3, which made me think that maybe the start of the game was okay after all. That being said, the problem I have with the move 2.d3 is that it blocks the natural development square of my e-knight. I actually kind of liked the way that my opponent developed his or her pieces. Especially the bishop pair that my opponent had seemed more dangerous than their counterparts. Well, my light-squared bishop was my problem bishop and maybe the dark-squared bishop for my opponent was maybe a big pawn. However, the dark-squared bishop had at least the potential of being a strong piece in case that the c-pawn advances and the bishop would then target f2. It never became a reality and I was actually the one to play c4 blocking the a7-g1 diagonal for the bishop after which it became just a big pawn. Small inaccuracies by my opponent, 10...h6 and 11...Qd7 allowed me to gain a small advantage. The position after 12.Rd1 is seen in the diagram below.

Here danishdog's position started to fall apart. My opponent played the move 12...Bc6, which is a really bad move. After the reply 13.Ne5 I should be winning according to Stockfish. I did complicate things by playing 16.Qc3 in the position below. After I had moved the queen to c3, it did not seem like a good place for it and there indeed is some problems with it. The queen can be easily driven away from c3, for instance. I should be clearly better even after the queen move because my pieces are better developed and the bishop on b6 is a really bad piece.

My opponent did go for the right idea at first by moving the knight to e4 on move 16 and harassed my queen. The queen went to d3 and after that 17...N8f6 was played. At that moment I thought that I had to go to b1 with the bishop in order to give the square c2 for my queen after my opponent plays Rd8. I was wrong, it seems and I could have actually taken the rook with my queen and with precise play I would have a winning advantage. In the game I followed my plan and played the queen to c2, giving away most of my advantage. Of course, I was not aware of that during the game. Some inaccuracies later we reached the position below. It is taken after my 22nd move h3.

For me the game became really easy because my opponent blundered with 23...Rh6. It was a desperate move in the time trouble my opponent was in. Well, danishdog had a bit over a minute left on the clock when he or she played that move. I had a bit over 3 minutes left on my clock at that time. I think my opponent wanted me to take on g4 with my h-pawn, but instead I took on e4 with the queen and had easily winning position in front of me. I think hxg4 would have been good enough for a win too, but 23.Qxe4 was the simpler way to go. I have added mate in two puzzles 738 - 741 and mate in four puzzle 527 today.

The game above can also viewed in the video below.