This is the 28th game in the 100 game match between me and Tomi. With this win I was able to even out the score again and the score after this game was 14 - 14. My 6th move, exd4, was already a mistake. In the game continuation Tomi was able to get the center under his control and more space for his pieces than I was able to get. The line that is considered to be theory up to the move 8...Nd5 is not something you should go for when you control the black pieces.
That being said, I was given a chance to get back into the game when my opponent played 9.Qd3. The queen started to eye on h7, but it was not possible to generate a dangerous attack if I just defend properly. I should have replied with 9...d6, which would have opened a diagonal for my bishop, so that I could get it into play. The pawn on d6 might also weaken the control over the center that my opponent had. Instead I played the weak move 9...a6, which only briefly attacked the bishop at b5.
Tomi ignored the threat to the bishop completely and moved his knight to g5, and in doing so threatened a mate in one. It was not hard to see that my only decent move was 10...g6, so I played it. The game then continued with natural and good moves 11.Qh3 h5, but then my opponent made a horrible blunder 12.Bd3. This 12th move started a series of bad moves. I would have had a winning advantage or very close to it, had I just taken the pawn on d4 with my bishop. I did have time to do that since Tomi did not actually threaten anything with the move and my king was adequately protected.
I was overly passive and played 12...Kg7 in order to move my rook to h8 if required. It was then replied with another really bad move 13.Ne4, which ended the series of bad moves for the time being. A better idea would have been to play 13.Qg3. Tomi's 13th move should have been replied with 13...d6, so that I could finally get my light-squared bishop into play. In my foolishness I went for the material instead and took a free pawn from d4 with my bishop. It did give me the advantage, but not as strong than it would have been after 13...d6, which would have meant close to a winning advantage for me. A few moves later I went from a favorable position to a lost position when I moved my king to h6 on move 16.
Out of the three options that I had for the king, I went for the second worst move. Only moving the king to h7 was worse, because that would have resulted in a forced mate in two. I am not sure why I preferred the square h6 over g8, since on h6 the king is much more exposed to attacks than it would be at g8, at least for the time being anyway. Strong replies for Tomi would have been 17.Qh4, 17.Qg3 and 17.g4. Alas, Tomi chose none of those and developed a knight to c3 instead, which seems like a natural move to play in order to stop Bxb2. I had a chance to turn the tide in my favor with 17...Qe6, but for some reason I preferred to play 17...d6 in the game. 17...d6 may seem like a good idea at first, since it is a discovered attack on the queen and it may seem that Black wins a second pawn. However, the move could be destroyed with two replies 18.Qh4 and 18.Qg3, the latter move was chosen by my opponent. The next turning point in the game was seen when Tomi played 20.Qh4.
With his 20th move Tomi went from a winning position to being clearly worse. Unfortunately I did not find the best move 20...f5, but instead moved my king to g8 and I was in a losing position once again. It was replied by 21.Rae1, which was another bad move that could have given me another chance to play 21...f5 and maybe save the game. Tomi should have played 21.f4. I was not able to take advantage of the sloppy move and played 21...Qe6, after which my position went down the drain again. A lot of bad moves were seen also in the remainder of the game, but I am not going to go through them all. The final downhill for Tomi started with the move 37.a3.
The move played in the game allowed me to play 37...Nd3, which wins either the b-pawn or the e-pawn. Tomi preferred to save the isolated e-pawn with the move 38.Ke4, but it probably does not matter all that much which pawn is saved. Tomi could not get back in the game again, but he made things completely lost for him, when he played 41.Kc4, which lost a second pawn. The rest of the game was smooth sailing for me.
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