When I started playing clan games at Red Hot Pawn, my results in them were okay, but at some point I had a bad streak of games and I lost more than I won. I still have not rectified the situation, I still have more losses than wins, but the from the last five clan games I won 3, drew 1 and lost 1. From all of my clan games I have won 7, drawn 8 and lost 10. Winning games then has been a real problem for me. That being said, my winning percentage is still about 66 in all of my rated games that I have played at RHP. For a long time that was over 70%, but lately I have not really taken the games as seriously as I once did. The interest towards chess has been on the decline for some months now. For some time I preferred to play pretty much everything else than chess. I even completed few games, The Book of Unwritten Tales, The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles, The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 and Alan Wake's American Nightmare. In addition to these I started to play WoW again, played some Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone and completed the rest of the single player missions in Starcraft 2 that I had not previously done. I kind of want to try play on ladder at some point, but before that I need to get a lot better at the game.
The game below was played in a clan challenge between Wycombe Wanderers - The Chairboys and The White Hats. It was played on three boards and I played on board one for The White Hats. I ended up drawing both of my games against Smiffy. The clan challenge ended in victory for the Wycombe Wanderers - The Chairboys with a score of 3 - 1. The draws had no effect on the end result as only wins count. Our only win came from board 2.
While the game was not played perfectly up to move 19...b5, no major mistakes were made either. It is the position where Smiffy played the move 20.Nh2 that you can see in the next diagram. Moving the knight might have been a good idea, but the location where Smiffy placed the knight was not. From h2 the knight is heading to g4, but it is not really a good square for the knight. Maybe it was a better idea to either locate the knight to b4 or e3. From e3 the knight would be able to support the pawn advance from f2 to all the way to f5.
I replied to 20.Nh2 by playing 20...Qh4, which was good enough move to hold the advantage on my side. Then Smiffy played 21.Ng4, which could have cost my opponent the game, had I continued correctly. I should have played 21...h5 in order to win the pawn from d4. Had my opponent then continued with 22.Qxh5, I would have taken the pawn from e5 and my strong center pawns should decide the game. Instead I played the foolish 21...Nb6 and most of my advantage disappeared. Smiffy continued with the move 22.Rfd1 which was not actually ideal either, giving some of the advantage back to me. The next diagram position has been taken after my 23rd move Rfe8.
Smiffy played 24.Rc3, which is a bad idea that would have backfired, had I answered with the move 24...h5. At that point I should have a winning advantage. I was, however, again oblivious to my chance and moved my queen to e7 for some reason. Maybe I wanted to get my pawns rolling on the queenside. Smiffy then played 25.Rg3 threatening the move 26.Nh6+. A simple solution would have been to move my king to h8, but for some reason I wanted to make things more difficult for me and moved my rook to f4 instead. After that the game was played rather equally up to the move 27...R4f7. Then Smiffy blundered again with the move 28.Qg4. The next diagram shows the position after 27...R4f7.
I played the sloppy 28...a5, when a better idea would have been to play 28...Nd7, followed by 29...g6. My move was not horrible, I still remained on the better side of the board, but not as strong as 28...Nd7. My advantage started to fade away and I even ended up being worse for the last few moves played in the game, but draw was agreed upon after 38.Qxf7. I think my opponent offered the draw and I happily accepted since my position was quite uncomfortable.
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