This was played in a team match called REMATCH and it was played between France-Deutschland Group and LullabyVisca on 103 boards. I played on board 34 for LullabyVisca and managed to win both of my games against boubalex. The match ended with a score of 63 - 143 in favor of LullabyVisca. The first position in the game that I want to take a closer look at is the one after my 19th move Qg6. Boubalex played 20.Qh4, possibly trying to avoid a queen trade, but it allowed me to play 20...Be4, which threatened both the pawn on d5 and mate on g2. There really was no way that my opponent could have defended against both threats, but boubalex's next move made things even worse for him or her. Boubalex blocked the queen's path to g2 with the dark-squared bishop by moving it to g5.
Moving the bishop to g3 was a much better way of blockading the path of the queen, because I would not have had a way to immediately threaten the bishop on the g-file with a pawn. Had I indeed played 21...f6, the rest of the game would have been much easier for me, but I probably thought that boubalex could just counterattack my bishop on e4 and I did not like the way it looked to me. In the game I just chose to win a pawn and played 21...Bxd5. It was answered with 22.Rad1, a move that would have allowed me to play 22...f6 once again with a winning advantage. The reason for that was that the bishop on g5 still could not move due to the mate on g2 and if 23.Rxd5 would be played then I would take on g5 with my f-pawn, threatening the queen on h4 with the pawn and at the same time Bxf2+. The combined threats would have meant an easy win for me. Alas, I played 22...Bb3 and missed the easy win. Even then, I should have been on the better side of the board after that. The next diagram shows the position after 27...Qf7. In the game boubalex played 28.f4, which was the final nail in the coffin.
After 28.f4 the game was completely lost for my opponent, to which I was able to find the strongest move 28...Bc4, but I was not able to continue the game in the most accurate way possible. For instance, to 29.Qg3 I replied with 29...Bxd3+, when 29...Re3 was obviously a better move. Boubalex finally resigned in a position where I would have won a second pawn and likely a third one as well.
Game number two. This game was played in the first round of the 2014 October Glacial Super Casual Banded I 1650+ tournament at Red Hot Pawn. As it so happens, the two other games I added today were played in the same tournament as the game below and the things I typed about this tournament are still unchanged, so I will not type all that much about it here. I played this game quite decently apart from two moves, 29.Qe1?? and 31.Qa5??, both of these moves could have ended up in my loss but the first one I survived because my opponent did not take advantage of my mistake. The second one was the final mistake of the game and I could not bounce back from it. My opponent did play well in this game and he has also played very well in this tournament because he has not lost a single game and leads the tournament and has the best chances to win the group aswell because his maximum possible score is higher than any other player's maximum possible score.
Even though my games have gone quite badly at Red Hot Pawn lately, my latest game from there did bring back some of my confidence back because I won a game against a player who was rated 2061. That win brought me back over 1800 once again. The fact that I managed to decrease my rating from 1900+ to less than 1800 in fifteen games, I started to be quite worried about my playing skills. I started to think that maybe I have not improved in chess at all that much in years. During the same time period I played two over the board blitz tournaments at the club and won both of them without losing a game. I have never been able to win two of those blitz tournaments in a row before, so that would either suggest that I have indeed improved my chess skills or the people who usually have played there have become worse over time. I would like to think that the first scenario is more likely.
Game number three. The game below was played in the first round of the 2014 October Long Haul Split I tournament. The tournament takes place at Red Hot Pawn, the place where I played my first correspondence games in 2004. With this win I overtook beatlemania (1740) in the standings and now I am leading the tournament by a difference of one point.
The top six games that reached the position after 6...Qxc6 and I was able to find from my reference database can be seen below.
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