I have started to divide the Chess960 games not only with starting position, but also with the reasonable opening moves played in them. The game I am sharing with you now has not been shared in this blog before. This game was played in the club match called KNOCKOUT 960 Final: Total 960 vs OCD. This was played on 20 boards and I played on board 9 for Obsessive Chess Disorder!! The final score of the match was 30 - 10 in favor of Total 960. Our opponents did have players who had their accounts closed due to cheating, but even though these four players won all of their games, we would have still lost the match even if the score would have been corrected so that the cheaters would have lost all of their games. In addition to this loss, I won my other game against sschmieta.
The game remained to be evenly played up to the move 6.f3, which is why I would extent the possible theoretical moves to that point in the game. The game started to go wrong for my opponent with the move 6...Qg5. The diagram below shows a position where my opponent played his 6th move. That being said, it only gave me a small advantage. I replied with the move 7.Qd2 and then my opponent made another mistake, which combined with the mistake on the previous move, added to my clear advantage. A better move for sschmieta was 7...h5. In the game sschmieta played 7...O-O-O. The game continued with the moves 8.O-O-O g6 and then I played 9.Ned5, which threw away most of my advantage. Better moves for me were 9.Kb1 and 9.Ncd5.
Moving my knight from e3 to d5 allowed sschmieta to trade queens and that was exactly what my opponent did. I took back with my rook and then my opponent made another mistake 10...f5 in the diagram position below. The game continued with the moves 11.Bxc5 Nxc5 and then I played a sloppy move 12.a3 and the clear advantage I briefly had, disappeared. In order to keep my clear advantage, I should have played 12.exf5.
After that the game continued without big problems for either side until I played 25.Nxa2. The diagram below shows the position in which I played my 25th move. The correct reply for sschmieta would have been 25...Na5, the only move that would have given my opponent a clear advantage. The move that my opponent played 25...Kc8 was only good enough for an even position, provided that I answer with an accurate move like 26.b3. I played 26.Nh3 in order to stop the h-pawn's advancement and maybe get my rook more options to which it can go.
Sschmieta should have taken my knight and after I take back with my rook, move the remaining knight to a5. The knight would start its journey towards the e3 square via c4. Luckily for me, sschmieta did not take advantage of my error and played the passive 26...Nf7 instead. The next mistake was played by me on move 29. The next diagram shows the situation at the board when I played the horrible 29.Nd3?? It would have been important for me to prevent the pawn on a5 from advancing and keep the knights from c6 and d6 from penetrating on my side of the board. Had my opponent played 29...a4 and therefore created both weak squares and weak pawns for me, sschmieta would have been close to a winning position.
Sschmieta did not find the right idea at first and played the move 29...b6?? It allowed me to play 30.a4 and stop my opponent from playing it. However, I did not see the danger and played 30.Kb2 instead. My opponent did not miss his chance second time in a row and took the clear advantage with the move 30...a4. I then blundered and played 31.Rdd1 and I was in a losing position. I would have been in serious trouble even if I had played my best chance 31.Nhf2, but at least I would have avoided being completely lost. A few moves later I got my last chance for fighting for a draw. In the next diagram position I should have played 35.Ng4 and I might have been able to hold a draw with accurate play.
In the remainder of the game sschmieta played accurately enough and did not give me any more chances to get a draw. Since my last post I have updated the chess engine analysis in the posts C07 French Defense: Tarrasch Variation. Chistyakov Defense, C41 Philidor Defense, C41 Philidor Defense: Larsen Variation and C50 Italian Game: Hungarian Defense.
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