The first game in this post was played in the first round of a correspondence chess tournament called AUTO-OPEN-3305 and it was held at the Queen Alice Internet Chess Club. I managed to hang on in the game against my stronger opponent up to the move 14.Bb3, but then I played 14...fxe5? The move was too attractive for me not to play it. Unfortunately my thinking process was faulty because the queen does not have to move from f3, like I had thought. Evandrobit could have replied with 15.Nxd5 and I would have been in serious trouble, instead my opponent played 15.Bxd5+, which gave me a chance to hold on. The position below is taken after the move 14.Bb3.
I then played the most accurate reply 15...Nxd5 and the game continued to be played evenly until I took a wrong path on move 31 and played Rf6. I tried to prevent the pawn advance from f4 to f5. It was not clear to me how I could improve my position or how to keep my chances for a draw alive. It is still not completely clear to me how my opponent can improve her or his position. Stockfish 8 64 POPCNT likes moves like 32.b3 and 32.Re4+ as replies to 31...Rf6. Both of those moves would have given Evandrobit a clear advantage according to the chess engine. Evandrobit played 32.b4 in the game, which makes the position even again.
When we reached the position which can be seen in the next diagram, I started to threw the game away with the move 34...a5. While my opponent did not find the strongest move against 34...a5, Evandrobit got a chance to rectify the situation with his or her next move because I made a second horrible move in a row.
Evandrobit chose to play 35.Kd5, which is good enough move to take the advantage, but 35.b5 was a stronger option. I then played 35...Rf6 and I was in a completely lost position. I did resist the temptation of resigning the game until it came time to play my 44th move. At that point even I had to admit that I have no chance of holding the game and my loss was certain.
Game two. This one features a game I played over nine years ago and as you might see my play has not improved all that much since those days, my rating is over 600 points higher at GameKnot these days though. I think this is one of my first games there which also explains the low rating. The first really horrible decision I made in the game was when I played 8...Bg4 in the diagram position below. Not sure why I preferred to place my bishop to g4 before I castled, but it was a really bad idea.
Apocalypseknight replied with the strongest and most natural move 9.exd5, opening the center when my king is still there had to be a good idea. I then took the pawn from d5 with my knight, which was probably my best chance, but I was close if not already in a losing position thanks to my disastrous 8th move. This could have been a short and embarrassing loss for me, had my opponent taken full advantage of my blunder. The point at which things started to look brighter for me came very soon because apocalypseknight played 10.Nxd5 next and I was actually close to drawing the game again. After the knight had been exchanged on d5, I had only one problem in my position, I had not castled yet. The game continued evenly until it came time for apocalypseknight to play his or her 13th move. The position in which that move was played can be seen in the next living diagram.
Apocalypseknight played in the game 13.Qd2, which is not actually the worst move in the position and the game should still be fought relatively even. This was, however, the starting point for the troubles for my opponent. I replied with the obvious 13...Bxf3 because I always grab material if I see no reason not to do that. The game continued with the moves 14.gxf3 Qxf3 and then my opponent made things even worse for her or him with the move 15.Re3. While my 16th move was not the best move, I still stayed on the better side of the board. The game deciding blunder of the game was seen when apocalypseknight played 18.dxc5 in a position that can be seen in the diagram below.
I did not play in the most accurate way possible for the remainder of the game, I missed faster mates, but at last I was able to checkmate my opponent on move 33.
Game number three. This is from the second round of a tournament that was held at Tampere a bit over thirteen years ago. At this point of the tournament everything seemed to go my way again, I mean it was not a perfect start for the tournament, but at least my rating was getting a bit higher in the first two rounds. Even the next round game was still a small plus to my rating, but then a major disaster struck in the last two rounds and this become one of my worst tournaments up to this point in time.
While this was not played perfectly by both sides up to the move 25.h4, no clear mistake was played by either player until I made my 25th move f6. The move 25...f6 was designed to help control the square e5, but it also allowed the reply 26.h5, which meant troubling times for me. I answered to the move 26.h5 by moving my knight from g6 to e5. My opponent should have then continued with 27.h6, but instead he moved his knight to h4, which was a worse alternative. It still maintained some of the advantage he had, but it was at that moment more likely that the game ended in a draw.
The game continued to be played relatively evenly until I messed up again with my 34th move Neg6. I am not sure why I thought that moving the knight to g6 from e5 was a good idea, it is moving the piece backwards and takes away the g6 square from my king. My opponent was able to find the strongest reply 35.Nf5+ and he was, at least for the moment, on the clearly better side of the board.
It did not last long, only a few moves later Kimmo played 39.Rd8 and most of his advantage disappeared. I then played the apparently sloppy move 39...Ne5, which made my position clearly worse again. I should have played 39...h5. It was a move that I probably did not even think about during the game. I usually do not like to push my pawns up the board, unless I can see a clear reason to do so, and to me moving the pawn from h7 to h5 only makes it weaker. Then my opponent played 40.Rd6, which was another move that threw away the advantage. A stronger move for Kimmo was 40.Rb8 and I would have remained on the clearly worse side of the board.
The game seemed to continue towards a peaceful draw until my opponent played 47.Nd2. It was the first time during the game I got a chance to grab the advantage. I was able to do exactly that. I continued with the correct idea 47...Nd5+ and the game continued with the moves 48.Kd3 Nf4+ 49.Kc4 Nxg2. After my 49th move I already had a material advantage and perhaps on my way to victory. My opponent even played 50.b4, which should have been the blunder that decided the game. However, I did not find the strongest reply 50...Ne3+, but instead played 50...cxb4, which was the second best move. Things should have still looked bright for me, and for a couple of moves that was indeed the case.
The move that made the game fizzle out towards a draw again and for the final time was played by me on my 52nd move. I started to push my h-pawn forward and trusted it was enough to win the game or perhaps I thought, incorrectly that the pawn on b6 is lost and my only chance to save the game was to queen the h-pawn.
Whatever the case may be, the move 52...h5 is only good enough for a small advantage and the correct result of the game should be draw. We did continue playing up to the move 66...Kf5, but we had to agree to a draw in a position in which the material is even and neither side has realistic chances to win the game.
Game number four. This was played on the fourth round of the weekend tournament that was held at Espoo in February 2008. After this win I had gathered 3.5 points in 4 games, so I was doing really well in the tournament. Especially when considering the fact that all my opponents were higher rated than me. The first round opponent was rated 1698, second round opponent 1713, third round opponent 1626 and this fourth round opponent 1638. The last round win was also against a higher rated player, that time the rating of my opponent was 1740. All this added up to one of my best tournament performances up to date. In the game below, my opponent self-destructs quite quickly as the losing move already comes with the move 10.h3, but I already had a small advantage at that point, so the game started to go a bit wrong for my opponent a bit earlier than that.
It is always nice to finish the game with a tactical blow, something which I am not able to do all that often, but the move 26...Rxd4 is something that makes me grin a bit.
So far I have played all 5 games with the Black pieces and my statistics in them are: 5 games, 3 wins (60%), 1 draw (20%) and 1 loss (20%).
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