This was played on round one of the tournament called Matin päivän turnaus that was held at Espoo between February 25th and February 27th 2005. This was I guess the first time in my chess playing days that I was the highest rated player of the group. It is a place I do not really like because then I usually create too much pressure for myself because I think I have to win every game. When the pressure gets too much to handle, I crumble and can't perform at my usual level anymore. I think I have learned over the years to not put too much pressure on myself and keep my head calm when I play. The first move that the engine does not really like is 7...d5 and it certainly has downsides, but I am likely to play it in the future as well because I feel quite comfortable playing the positions after that.
The reason why 7...d5 is a questionable move is that one should not open the e-file while your own king is in the center and the king of the opponent is safely castled on the kingside. If White plays well, then Black is in some trouble. My opponent in this game, Heikki Luoma, played the correct reply 8.exd5. Had he played 8.e5, I would have been happy because the center remains closed and I would be able to take the game under control with the bishop landing on g4 and try to attack the central pawns. In the game I continued with the obvious 8...Nxd5 and most of the time I have faced the move 9.Re1+, but I have faced the move 9.Ne5 that my opponent played in this game a few times too if my memory serves me right. The moves 9.Re1+ and 9.Bg5 were much better than what Heikki played in the game. Those two moves would have kept my opponent on the clearly better side of the board. The move 9.Ne5 was not as strong and brought the position into balance once again. I took another bad path when I played 11...g6 and allowed my opponent to take the knight on d5 with a check.
I was ahead in development, but behind in material and my position did not look at all good. My king was out in the open, while my opponent's king was safe. The game evened out quickly, however, the game continued with the moves 12.Qxd5+ Be6 and then Heikki traded queens, which is usually a good thing to do when one is ahead in material, but not in this position. The only way to keep the advantage was to play 13.Qf3+. After the queen trade I had enough pressure on the isolated pawn on d4, so that I was able to win it and get material equal once again. Even though the material evened out, I had worse pawn structure, but because I had the more active pieces, the game continued evenly up to the move 32.Kc3.
The game continued with the moves 32...g5 33.Nd4 Bb5 34.Nf3+ Kf4 35.Nd2 Bc6. The game did not continue clearly in favor of my opponent all that long, already with his 36th move f3 Heikki threw the advantage away. The move my opponent should have played was 36.g3+. Heikki did get two more chances for a clear advantage, first of which saw the light of day when I played 45...Bb5.
The correct move in reply would have been 46.Nc5, but my opponent went for the move 46.Ne5. I then made my final mistake of the game and moved my bishop to f1. 47.a4 was my opponent's last chance for a clear advantage, but luckily for me, Heikki moved the knight to f7 and that the game ended in a draw after his 48th move.
Game number two. The game below was played on the second round of a rapid chess tournament that was played at Salo on May 10th, 2008. There is no need to keep a score sheet during these over the board rapid chess tournaments, but I have done so occasionally and this game might be the only time I did so during this tournament. I mainly did it because my opponent was a much higher rated player than me and maybe I could learn something from this game. Actually he still is much higher rated player than me... I played my favorite line in the Spanish, so at least I sort of knew what kind of positions I want to get out of the opening. I was able keep things quite even for the first 13 moves, apart from the moves 7...d5 8.exd5 Nxd5, but then I made the game losing blunder on move 14.
My opponent used his chance to get a winning advantage after 14...Kd8 and the game ended in a few moves to my resignation.
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