This is from the first round of the 2014 October Split II tournament that was held at Red Hot Pawn. The group 1 in which I played, had three winners, NN Cheap, aukermdr and me. All three players were able to get 56 points. That meant that there were three players that advanced to the second round from my group. The second round was played between four players and NN Cheap, 2185, ended up winning the whole tournament. I was third in the final standings of the group. The game below shows just one example of the imbalanced games that were played in this tournament. The first blunder of the game was seen when my opponent played 17.Nd5.
I replied correctly by trading the knights, which resulted in doubled pawns for my opponent. However, after the move 18.exd5, I made a slightly inaccurate move 18...Nf5, which let my opponent off the hook a bit. My best move according to Stockfish 8 64 POPCNT was 18...a5 at depth 31. However, it is not really clear to me why the move a5 is good in the position. Maybe the idea is to get the a-file open or preferably semi-open in order to get the rook from a8 into play. I think White should not then take on a5 because it would leave the a-pawn isolated and weak, the pawn would be a target for me to pressure. The next turning point came in the game when snjortp played 23.cxb5.
I replied with the obvious 23...axb5, so that I could start attacking the backward pawn on a3. Snjortp's 23rd move also made the doubled d-pawns isolated, so it clearly weakened my opponent's pawn structure. I also had a backward pawn at c7, but it was not as weak as the pawn on a3, since I could easily defend it. Then my opponent made another horrible move, 24.Qb3, after which I should have a winning advantage. The queen was placed to a much more passive square where it only protects pawns, but it also stops me from moving my c-pawn because it would be replied with dxc6+ and I would lose a queen for free. Next I played 24...Rf6, which was a reasonable move, but a much better idea would have been to play f4 and open a path for my queen to go to h3, while also maybe weakening the pawn cover in front of the enemy king. I was given another chance to play f4 when my opponent chose to play 25.Rfd1 and that time I finally decided to move my pawn to f4. After that it should be quite clear which side is dominating in the position. While I did not find the most accurate moves during the last few moves, I did see the mate in one that my opponent went to, when he or she played 29.Ne2.
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