The first game was played in the 2014 September Octet I 1700-1800 tournament at Red Hot Pawn. The tournament started September 10th, 2014. I was 2nd in the final standings and I was able to gather 31 points in 14 games. Win awarded 3 points and 1 point was given for a draw. This relatively short game featured 4 horrible moves, the first of which was played by me on move 14. I moved my knight to b4, which may not seem so bad at first, but then you see the move 15.a5 and notice the bad placement of pieces and realize that Black loses material by force. If the bishop moves to a7, then 16.Qa4 Qd6 17.Ne4 Bb5 18.Nxd6 Bxa4 19.Rxa4 Nc2 20.Nxb7 Nxe1 21.Nxe1. Other alternative moves are possible, but it would seem there is no way to save Black's position and prevent material loss.
In the game peterh played 15.Nd2 and I could breath more easily. The game continued evenly only for the duration of the moves 15...Bd3 16.Nf3 Bf5. Then peterh blundered with the move 17.Rc1, which did not help my opponent at all because it does not prevent the knight fork, it only changed the square from which it happened. Instead of the move 17.Rc1 that lost the game, peterh should have played 17.a5 or perhaps even 17.Bg5 in order to stay in the game.
Game number two. This is taken from the 2014 August Grand Seven Fourteen II tournament. This was my first and so far my only tournament victory at Red Hot Pawn. I won all my 20 games when I controlled the black pieces, when I controlled the white pieces, I won 17 games, drew 1 and lost 2 games. The key moment in the game came to the board quite early in the game. Apsol's 9th move, e5, was a blunder from which my opponent could not recover.
It enabled me to play 9...Bg4 in reply, which either wins a pawn or ruins the kingside pawn structure. In the game I was able to do both and therefore I gained a winning advantage. We continued the game quite long despite of my clearly winning advantage. When I was able to get 4 pawns ahead in material on move 28, my opponent resigned.
Game number three. This was my third game in a row against this same opponent. Interestingly all these three games were won by the player with the black pieces. After this game I had played 35 rapid games with a rating of 1700 or above, so I was still missing 15 games from the Arena International Master title. I was very optimistic at this point in time that I could easily get those required games without my rating dropping below the rating requirement. My confidence was boosted by the fact that my opponent seemed to play much too quickly considering that this was a 15 minute game. Not only in this game, but also in our previous encounters, probably for that reason we ended up playing four games against each other. Had the games taken their full duration, I might have not played beyond game two. In this game, for instance, Hermie used only 44 seconds for the full game while I used 1 minute and 14 seconds out of the 15 minutes... Despite of the fast pace, the twelve first moves were played rather well by both players.
It was the unfortunate bishop move on move 13 that lost Hermie Cagatin the game. Hermie moved the bishop to e3, allowing me to ruin the kingside pawn structure with 13...Nxf3+. After that the game quickly ended with the moves 14.gxf3 Bh3 and now 15.Bxa7 making my job of winning the game much easier because I had a forced mate, starting with the move 15...Qxg5+. My 15th move was also the last move played in the game.
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