The theoretical move order for this variation is 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 Nc6. If we would have followed the theoretical move order, I think I would not have played 3...Nc6. I definetely would not play that after the old post I came across yesterday. The post I am referring to was published April 2nd, 2012 titled "Rajlich: Busting the King's Gambit, this time for sure". It can be found at the Chessbase website. In that post Vasik Rajlich claimed that the King's Gambit had been solved. According to that extensive project he did, the best move against 3.Bc4 is 3...Nf6 and White should lose with best play. The project was inspired by Bobby Fischer's claims that he had refuted the King's Gambit. Interestingly enough it seems that Fischer was right about 3...d6 being the best answer to 3.Nf3. What is also interesting about this project is that the only move after 2...exf4 that keeps White in the game is 3.Be2 and with best play it is a draw. In practical play human players can still make bad moves, so it is not like you could get a guaranteed win in the lines that should be winning from this early on.
The game below was played in a second division, group 4 match between AS and SalSK 2 in 2010. I played on board 4 for SalSK 2 in this match. I was not unfortunately the only one who lost on our team, we also lost on boards 1 and 3. On board 2 we drew and the only win we got from our board 5 player. This meant that the final score was 3 - 1 in favor of AS. While this game started in a promising way for me, the longer the game went, the more the game started to gravitate in favor of my opponent. The position below is taken after my 7th move g5. My opponent played 8.Nc3, after which I should be clearly better. The best option for White to stay in the game is to play 8.d5 here.
I remained only clearly better until in the position below my opponent blundered and played 12.Bd3. Had I played 12...Nxd5, I might have been in a position that is close to winning, but alas I played 12...Re8 and I remained only clearly better.
The game went on being either clearly favorable or winning at times for me, up to the move 35.Kh2, but then the game started to slowly become favorable for my opponent. In the position below I played 35...Rf1, which gave my opponent a golden opportunity to punish me from my mistake and play 36.Bg4+. It would have resulted in a position where I need to sacrifice my bishop and even though I would only have a pawn for the bishop, I should have enough counterplay to compensate for the material. Especially since I would be likely to get a second pawn for the bishop from a2.
My opponent did not go for that plan and the position remained roughly even, with both players making some inaccuarete moves until we reached the position below. On move 40 my opponent moved his rook from e2 to d2. This was one of the turning points of the game. I played 40...Rc1, which at long last gave my opponent the advantage. I should have played 40...h5 in order to maintain equality of the position. Maybe also 40...b5 was a move to consider instead of the move played in the game.
Blunders did not end there of course. I was still hanging on in the game in the position below, I was only slightly worse at the time. With the move 44...Rb1 my position went down the drain, now it was my opponent who had the winning position. The correct move for me was 44...fxg2. While the move that my opponent chose was not the most accurate, he should still be winning after 45.Bd7+.
Even though I drifted into a position that seemed completely lost, for some reason I continued the struggle. Perhaps because this was a team match, I continued the game longer than I normally would. The fact that I did not give up, might have frustrated my opponent enough so that he made a mistake that allowed me to get into a position that was drawish. I should be completely lost in the position below, but one blunder can change that. My adversary played 61.Ke6, which with correct play is only good enough for a draw. 61.h4 was the best move for White. Stockfish thinks that White should be up by 24+ pawns after 61.h4. An advantage that should be enough for everyone to convert into a win.
The final mistake of the game came in the position below after my opponent had played 71.h6. The only move that could have drawn the game for me was 71...a2. For some reason I thought that move order is not important in this position and I played the horrible blunder 71...c4 before playing a2, but that was a judgement error that cost me the game.
71...a2 was much better because it forces 72.Bf6 and then I could have played 72...c4. I was so close to a draw, but still so far away. I did offer my best resistance in the game continuation, but it was in the end futile and I needed to resign after 81.Bxc3 as my pawns were forcefully removed from the board. I have added mate in one puzzles 524 & 525, a mate in two puzzle 745, a mate in three puzzle 670 and a mate in four puzzle 533 today.
So far my statistics are: 2 games with the black pieces, 1 win (50%), 1 loss (50%).
No comments:
Post a Comment