This was played in a team match called Open Challenge ♕♖ChEsS MaTeS♕♖. It is played between ♕♖ChEsS MaTeS♕♖ and Philippine Critical Movers on 26 boards. I played on board 4 for ♕♖ChEsS MaTeS♕♖ and my score was one win and one loss. This game I won on time, but the position was already a forced win for me, so there was no doubt about the winner anymore. There were a lot of timeouts in this match, the winner has been decided 24 times on time, so nearly half of the games, which is too high percentage on timeouts in my opinion. And the match is not even over yet, so who knows what will happen on the remaining games. The winner of the match has already been decided and it will be ♕♖ChEsS MaTeS♕♖ as soon as the remaining games end, the score at the moment is 32 - 18.
The first position of interest is the one seen below. In that position pauljohn2013 played 16...c5. Before I had only a small advantage, but after I was clearly to be favored in the position. Pauljohn2013 should have played either 16...f6 or 16...g6.
Some of my advantage was lost in the position below. I played 20.Nf4, planning to maneuver the knight to a better attacking position and maybe increase the pressure on the pawn on d6. I should have played either 20.h4 or 20.Qe2. The idea behind 20.h4 is to weaken the pawn structure in front of my opponent's king. 20.Qe2 has a different approach. It is designed to give the knight opportunity to maneuver to f5 via e3. At that point the knight would be ideally placed. It would threaten the d-pawn and increase the pressure towards g7. It would also threaten a fork on h6.
The next blunder was played by me in the position below. I played 23.f3 in order to protect the pawn on e4. The problem with the move is that I can't really defend the pawn and my queen and rook are no longer protecting each other. The reason why the pawn is lost would have become clear had my opponent played 23...f5. Instead of the move 23.f3 I should played either 23.h3 or 23.Qd3.
For some reason pauljohn2013 did not play the move 23...f5 and I was saved for the time being. My opponent played 23...Ne5 and the game continued rather evenly after that for some time. The next critical moment of the game came when we reached the position below. Pauljohn2013 played 32...Ra1+, this move started to get my opponent in trouble again, but it was his next move 33...Rb1 that could have been the losing move of the game or quite close to it. Instead of finding the strongest move or even one of the decent replies, I threw my advantage away with the move 34.f5.
34.Rd5 seems to be the strongest move that Stockfish 8 64 POPCNT can find, but it also thinks that 34.b4 should be good enough for a winning advantage. I continued my struggle to find good moves and I made things even harder for me when, in the position below, I played 41.Rh4. A few moves before I could have played for the win, but after I played my 41st move, it was difficult task for me to even get a draw. I was clearly worse and it seemed that I have messed up another game.
Then pauljohn2013 moved his rook to a2 instead of b1 and I could have been close to draw again, had I played 42.Nd3. I moved my knight to g4 instead, thinking that I can still make something out of my attack. It was a bad decision and pauljohn2013 replied with the correct move 42...Nf7. I answered with the move 43.Qd3 and then I was already in a lost position. I did not resign, I fought against the odds and I got my reward in the position below. Pauljohn2013 has the winning advantage in that position, but with one horrible move, 50...g6, the tables turned and it was me who was winning again.
The best move would have been 50...Re1 for my opponent. While I did not find the crushing move 51.Nxf6+, I found the second best move 51.fxg6 and I was on the better side of the board after that. My advantage was very short-lived because to my opponent's next move, 51...hxg6, I replied with 52.Nf4. I still should have played Nxf6+ as it was the only way for me to keep the advantage. The game could have been played evenly after my 52nd move, but pauljohn2013 made a huge blunder 52...f5, which turned out to be the losing move.
No comments:
Post a Comment