The game below was played on the third round of a tournament that was played at Helsinki in 2008. On the first two rounds I had lost both of my games, so getting this win was a nice change to the way things had gone so far. On the fourth round I lost again, but it was against a player who was rated 2024 at the time, so back then it was an acceptable loss. On the last three rounds I was able to avoid losing a single game, so the tournament ended on a positive note for me.
Back when this game was played, I did not really know that much of opening theory, but the variation I played in this game I had known for about four years before I played this game. Not exactly theory, but a system that was taught to me by a National Master. Basically up to the move 11...O-O, I was in a comfortable situation where the ideas of this system I played from memory. This way of playing might not be completely sound for Black, but I think it can be played against players rated lower than 2000. It is possible that one could struggle even against those players in this line, but against most players it may still be playable because the opponent would need to find a narrow path to the advantage. In this game my opponent stepped off that path when he played 10.Bxc6+.
After my opponent's 10th move the game was played evenly again for awhile. The move 12.Qc2 was one that I had not seen before, so this was probably the first time during this game that I actually used my time to think about the next move I was going to play. I was very confident about my chances to win the game after I saw the move 14.Rxe6. In fact that was the losing move of the game.
Well, probably already after 11.Ng5 already I was thinking that I am going to get a good result from this game. It is also very satisfying to play a move like 17...Qxf2 with the knowledge that I am going to win the game. The game ended in checkmate on move 18 when I played 18...Re1#.
Game number two. The game was played on the second round of the Open Finnish Championship tournament that was played at Naantali in 2008. On the first round I lost a game against a player who was rated 1982. I guess the first two rounds went okay for me because I was clearly lower rated than my opponents, but the next three rounds were really horrible as I lost on every round. My first win and actually the only win of the tournament came from my round 6 game. On rounds seven and nine I was able to get two more draws, so I finished the tournament with 2.5 points out of the possible 9. This has been maybe the worst tournament that I have ever played because I dropped my rating 101 points.
I was quite confident about my chances after my opponent played 10.Ng5, but I was even happier after Lyly took on e6, because I knew that it was good for me. After the blunder 13.Qg4, I should have already had a winning advantage, I even replied with the strongest move 13...Qf6.
All seemed to go very well for me, but then I chose the wrong plan on move 18 and I threw away the win. I played 18...Nb4 with the idea of going for the rook on the corner, which is almost never a good idea, especially in a position like this.
The position slowly drifted towards a draw and I had to accept that I had messed up yet another win after 39.Nf7+ when the draw was agreed upon.
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