My adventures in the variations of the Sicilian continue with this post, but the game I will share tomorrow will feature a variation of the French. This game was played in the atadros's mini-tournament V. The mini-tournament was played between December 10th, 2015 and October 3rd, 2016 at GameKnot. 11 players took part in it and I was 9th in the final standings, having only managed to get 2 wins and 7 draws out of 20 games. My opponent in the game below, towa, was 3rd in the final standings with 15.5 points.
My 23rd move, Bd3, was the first really horrible move that was seen in the game. Giving up the bishop pair is not a good decision in that position, the engine even thinks it to be lost for me after 23.Bd3 on depth 30. My move allowed my opponent not only get one of my bishops, but also it freed the square e5, so that when I later on played g6, towa was able to place his or hers bishop to f6 where become a strong piece eyeing all the way to b2. The game continued 23...Nxd3 24.Rxd3 a4 25.g6 Bf6 and towa should be on the path to victory. I have to note though that 24...a4 was a bit sloppy and I might have had a better chance to hold on for a draw than if towa had played 24...f6. In the game I should have then played maybe 25.Kb1, but even then I would have been in some serious trouble.
The move 25.g6 was appealing to me since it seems to be a good way to open lines in front of the enemy king, but unfortunately it also improves the scope of the dark-squared bishop that my opponent has. It was something I could not afford and it was my opponent that had much better placed pieces and more ready to attack than I was. Up to the move 31.Qxc3 I was completely lost, but then towa decided to capture the queen with the rook and because of that mistake my opponent lost some of the advantage and was not winning anymore. I found the strongest reply 32.Kb1 and I was only clearly worse at the time.
Slowly but surely my opponent let the advantage slip away completely and after towa's 37th move f3, the position was roughly equal again. I even had an extra pawn, but the pawn on f2 was a very strong distraction for me. I tried my best to blockade the pawn while at the same time advance with my own pawn at the queenside. Up to the move 42...Ke4 I was able to prevent my opponent from doing anything dangerous, but then I collapsed and played 43.Bb6. The reason why I placed my bishop to b6 was that I thought that I can't leave it to the square where it was because of the move 43...Rxe3 and I would lose my knight and a bishop for the rook and I also thought that I had to keep my bishop on the a7-g1 diagonal. The latter part was probably true in order to prevent Rg1, but I was wrong to think that I can't leave my bishop to e3.
After my terrible bishop move I had no counterplay and the remainder of the game could have gone easily in towa's favor, had my opponent just played 43...Nc5, which would have blocked the bishop and made sure that I lose some material. An example line is shown in the game notation on how the game could have continued after 43...Nc5. In the game towa played 43...Kxd5, which allowed me to get a drawish position on the board. I played 44.a4, which is good enough, but also 44.Ne3+ would have given me a draw with precise play. To 44.a4 towa played the obvious try 44...Kc4, which prevents the advance of the pawns for the time being. I then made two catastrophic moves in a row 45.Be3 and 46.b6. Both moves are so bad that they could have lost me the game, but because towa replied the first move with d5, I survived the first, but not the second blunder. Towa played 46...d4 and the game was easy to win for my opponent at that point. I prolonged the game a few more moves, but when I faced a forced mate, I resigned after 51...Kb3.
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