This game was played in the "paweljaniak's mini-tournament I". I was 2nd in the final standings with 8.5 points. My opponent in this game, zanoni, finished 6th and was able to gather 2.5 points in 12 games. There were 7 players in total in this mini-tournament. Zanoni's 4th move was a blunder that could have cost my opponent the game. I am not sure what I thought during this game because I replied to the move 4...a6 by moving my bishop to e2. Had I played the correct move 5.Bxc6, I could have continued towards an easy game.
Due to my sloppy move the game continued to be fought evenly. I did get another chance to take the clear advantage in the position below when zanoni played 10...Ne5. The moves 10...g6 and 10...Be7 were better alternatives for my opponent. I did not find the strongest move, but the move 11.Qg3 is enough to get a clear advantage. 11.f4 seems to be the move the engine likes the best. Then zanoni played the horrible move 11...h6 and my opponent was in serious trouble.
I should have played f4 again, but I let my opponent off the hook a bit with the move 12.Bf4. So instead of playing the move that could have been the reason why I win, I played a move that lost most of my advantage. The game looked to be going well for me until we reached the position you can see below. While I knew that I can't win a piece with 17.f5 because of the intermediate move 17...Ne5, I could not think of a better move, so I played 17.f5. What I did not realise at the time is that 17.e5 would have blocked the e5 square from the knight and really threatened the move f5 on the next move. It would have also threatened to win a pawn on d6, so it would have been my best choice of all the moves.
With my 17th move all my advantage disappeared. I continued to try and find good moves and I started to get back on the favorable side of the board a few moves later when zanoni made two consecutive mistakes, first 21...Bxf4 in the position below and then 22...f6 in reply to 22.Qxf4. After the first move I should have a small advantage and after the second move I should have a clear advantage, or at least quite close to one. The only move that could have kept my advantage was 23.Qd2, which I did not play because I thought I can create an attack towards the king by lifting the rook to f4 and getting it to the h-file.
It was not the right idea and my opponent was able to defend quite easily. A few moves later I was able to win a pawn, but at that point my rook at h4 was out of play and my opponent had full compensation for the pawn. Actually, quite quickly after I had won the pawn, my position started to fall apart. In the position below I played 29.Rxd8, which was, all things considered, a bad move. It gives up the control of the d-file for my opponent, something that I would not normally do. However, at the time I thought that I had nothing better. The only better move seems to be 29.Rd3.
I had a small disadvantage for the following moves 29...Rxd8 30.Qe3 Bxa2. Then on my 31st move played g4 in desperation, in order to give room for my king and threaten Nxa2. The immediate Nxa2 was, of course, out of the question. I did get one final chance to hold the game when my opponent played 43...Bh5 in the position below. Actually, maybe already a move earlier 42...Qxg4 took some of the pressure off and I might have survived with accurate play.
That being said when I replied with the move 44.Qb7, it was all over for me. In order to rescue the game, I would have needed to play 44.Qc3 and continue accurately after that. I did continue my struggle, but when I faced a forced mate, I resigned after the move 49...Qd2+.
No comments:
Post a Comment