Yesterday I played in the last round of the Swiss tournament going on in my club.
I was pretty high in standings, so got a master. I played with him about a year and
a half ago. He was White, played English opening and strangled me in 30 moves,
finally I was in complete zugzwang and resigned.
It was a different game now. I lost in 40 moves but put up a good fight before
blundering under pressure on move 32. Here you can see the game.
I was White and it was Sicilian, Moscow variation – 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bb5 .
He played 3. … Nc6, I never had it before, usually it was Bd7. I transformed it into Rossolimo variation by Bxc6. He started to press me on the queenside, then played f5. It was played twice before against me with no positional ground, I won both games. Here it was sound. Soon he moved all his kingside pawns, I got counter-play in the
center. I won a pawn, he got attack, Fritz considered it equal. Then feeling strong pressure I thought about relieving it by sacrificing exchange for the pawn in the center (Fritz absolutely didn’t like this idea, giving -2.70 evalution after 5 moves). By the way, Fritz didn’t see any reason to panic and evaluated the continuation without sac as equal – -0.30. But I am not Fritz …
After spending quite some time, I decided to give that sac up and instead, quickly played general defending move by the queen. Time was pressing, we had about 30 minutes left and it was intense middlegame. He moved g3 right away and to my horror I realized that my knight has nowhere to move. After losing the knight the position started to deteriorate. He sacrificed the bishop on g4, I couldn’t take it because of check on “h” and mate on diagonal a7-g1. Then he sacked the bishop again on h3 and it was over.
I still feel upset, the result wasn’t surprise for me, of course, but maybe I could do better. Anyway, the tournament was good, I got 4.5/8 and ~2100 performance rating
which hopefully will raise my rating over 1800.
October 30, 2009 at 2:32 pm
You will probably pass my rating, and if I move to Colorado, then you will probably be the one making Expert. I will have to play in higher tournament section and beat these Masters and Experts, that’s probably the only realistic route for me. Nice for you that you found this club.
Onto the game. Nh2 looks plausible, as does …f5, then f3 was a really good find.
How I evaluate this after some thought: As White, I would try Nd2 right away, instead of Nh2, then c3 and d4 like you played (I was thinking that, too), but with N still on f3, you have one more control of d4, so that is even better. You can play exf, no wait, this plan doesn’t work because your rook is on b1. exf..Bxf, and now you can’t play c3 because of BxR, so b3 was probably better than Rb1, but you played a different plan, anyhow, and it worked out well for you I thought.
His …f5 played right into your f3, nice on you.
Black should also be playing for the center. IMHO, Instead of …f5, Black should try ..d5 and ..c4, even if that means playing …f6. Black can trade off pawns and get a more fluid game.
I thought his …g5 sorta sucked because he is not making a bid for the center.
Why on earth is he giving up a pawn? Shoot, I cannot believe this guy.
I understand the time-pressure leading to a bad move part, especially as you had made so many good moves with your time. I did not see the knight getting trapped either, but Nf1 was an automatic move for me.
Much worse than not noticing that your queen move had blocked this square is that you didn’t realize that the one piece you had that was doing absolutely nothing for your position was the N on h2. It was worse than useless there, since you don’t want it to challenge a pawn push anyhow.
The rule in time-pressure is ‘take a look’ at the position and try to see/sense how you are defending everything, and then try to find your most useless piece and find a way to improve it. You were looking to make a move, which is how I lost my last game. At least you were thinking of how to improve your defense, though, as I wasn’t even doing that in my game. hehe. That Nf1 move was on the table for quite a while, I guess you were simply reticent to remove a piece from your kingside.
Yeah, bring the knight out and play that Rc2, like Fritz says, to save the pawn and give your knight a further possible developing square on d2.
You played that game with a lot of creativity and imagination, probably more than I would have discovered, just a glitch on defense.
October 30, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Nh2 was kind of temporary, then it stuck there covering the king and g4 square. I agree, it was bad knight. I think he didn’t take c6 pawn because of the pin, but it’s nothing – Bxc6, Qc2, Rc8. He didn’t want anything in the center – all his plan was to attack on the kingside, the same way GM Bareev did, except I didn’t have any counter-play with Bareev. Funny that he was walking/talking a lot in the beginning, even sleeping a bit (looks like he didn’t have enough sleep, same as me), but after that d5 operation in the center I really got his attention
.
There are a few good things about that game:
1) masters are human too
2) somebody strong put to test my Bb5
I feel that I progressed, but it will take some time to stabilize in “A”, I think.
You should definitely try to play with masters and experts, you have nothing to lose. I was really calm, just got nervous a bit because of the time and kingside, so that lapse happened.
I think, it enforces your progress a lot, you kind of try to reach that high bar. They also play decent openings.
October 30, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Yeah, he was definitely going for the big kingside shennanigan attack. When a person is tired, they probably want to play even more coy because it’s harder for them to calculate a branching position from a wild open center.
I know when I start talking a lot before a game, that is usually indicative that I am beginning to lose my ‘game focus’.
When I was playing my round 2 game against the 1900 player last week, I decided that I would blitz as much as made sense, but that I was firmly willing to lose on time. I had less than 2.5 minutes left when I suddenly achieved a winning advantage, and actually thought quite a bit about offering a draw, but figured I would get razzed on my blog for it. hehe.
I think you learn more about an opponent by seeing more moves, so if you are willing to lose on time then at least you will see more moves while the game still hangs in the balance.
I just got back my 1800 rating on FICS. I first reached 1860 on FICS 2 years ago. The difference is that back then I would play a lot of 15 15 or 15 20 games. Now I always ask for 15 5, just so that I don’t lose by being blitzed.
Anyhow, my last game I beat an 1875 at 15 0. He didn’t play well, but near the end I was able to beat him on the clock even though I had gone into time-pressure much sooner than he had. This is the difference between my game now and then. This habit of mine has improved. Habits = rating points since a chess rating is largely a measure of performance more so than just ability.
I think the fact that he was a Master, combined with his choice for king-side attack paid off because it got you respecting him more than if you thought he was someone at your rating.
If you have strong habits, methinks you should be able to maintain an A level rating without too much trouble.
October 30, 2009 at 4:32 pm
BTW, I think you were just winning in this game. I never would have thought of Rc3, and then Rd3, that was incredible idea. I would be surprised if he wasn’t surprised by the strength of this idea as well.
My hunch is that you were emotionally spent after coming up with these creative plans all game long. They say it’s hard to make the mental adjustment from defense to offense, but I think it’s really an emotional adjustment.
I even like to blitz out of these positions a little because it does a mindjob on my opponent. Here I just spent all that exorbitant time on playing carefully, waiting all week to play, driving a long distance, and now I am showing that I don’t give a darn about this game by suddenly speeding it up. It’s a psychological blow for them and empowerment for you. Note, I don’t say play crazy attack since a mindless attack never works, but rather blitzing out solid moves, using intuition a lot and backing it up with a little bit of calculation for both sides. Also, I spend more time on my opponent’s position than on my own, which is a double blow for them.
Strong players have on the extremely rare occasion used this method on me before as well. It’s a performance, not just a truth test in front of a chess lie-detector. There is a lot of room for truth in chess or none of us would be able to come up with the crazy ideas that we often do.
October 31, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Rolling pawns don’t be upset,once those kingside pawns started to march,it was going to be difficult.
If you played players of this strength more often you would not be so nervous.
Giving your oppononet a 500 point rating advantage,made it a tough game.
You say you where high in the table,he saw that how nervous was he?
In England when a football team gets promoted into the priemer league,they often come up against the “it is harder to stay their than get their”.
As the competition is much much harder,than the league before.
When you play these people let your chess skills do the talking not your nerves.
It’s easy for me to say this as i am not in your league,and proberly never will.
October 31, 2009 at 11:37 pm
linuxguy – I played faster then him and was ahead on time until spent it on the few moves around move 30. The thing is I didn’t see how I can properly defend, that’s why I gave the pawn back, thought about that stupid sac too much and finally made a mistake. Fritz gives an excellent line:
29. Rc2 Rh7 30. Qe1 Rb8 31. Nf1 g4 32. Bh4 Ng8 33. Nd2 g3 34. Bxe7 Nxe7
which keeps the “d” pawn, activates bad knight, exchanges useless bishop and doesn’t involve taking on g4 – the only thing I did, but missed g3 thinking about gxh3, which is OK for me.
chessx – you are right about marching pawns, I had a right plan to counter-attack in the center, but failed to defend properly. He was too relaxed until some point, too confident. I wasn’t nervous, but I agree when you play more with higher rated it helps psychologically too, but only if you can somewhat resist, the games I played 1-2 years ago with experts and masters were one way and not teaching anything, just painful losses.
You never know in which league you will be, 2 years ago my first rating was ~1400.
November 1, 2009 at 1:47 am
I don’t know if the auto-updater works on my blog anymore (or maybe it’s just my PC), but played another tournament today.
“It’s easy for me to say this as i am not in your league,and proberly never will.”
ChessX, I believe you have been playing for decades as have I. If you can’t believe it can be done, check my rating history, it was about a 300+ point jump at one point, and a 200+ point jump many years before that. Don’t sell yourself short, that is a lot of playing experience you have that you are dealing with.
Now when I win I realize that I have been starting to put things together, what to do when, and it is often simply too much experience for my opponents to deal with. Alas, if I played at shorter time-controls, I fear the gift would leave my hands.
“The thing is I didn’t see how I can properly defend, that’s why I gave the pawn back”
Rollingpawns, it was a blindspot of yours. I could sense it when I went through your game. When I lost my third round game against Joe last time, I realized that properly anticipating that pawn push, obvious as it was, was a blind spot for me. Analyzing that game I made that same mistake a couple of times. So you are right about the ‘flashcard’ concept, but I don’t do that, but I do understand that it’s a blind spot that had/has to be acknowledged.
Better players have fewer blindspots, IMHO. I have far fewer of them than I once did. It all comes back to habits.
Yes, I like how Fritz defended there in that line you give RP, impressive. That’s the thing though, I think us amateurs tend to be so impressed/wowed by an attack that we fail to be equally impressed by defense.
I saw this video of a Master showing off his win against a Grandmaster (online game 15/0). I don’t think he meant to, but he sort of sped by some key defensive points. The GM lost because he tried an attack when his development was disjointed, not all developed. But what amazed me even more than the proverbial ‘awe-inspiring win’, was that the GM found every last defensive resource/chance that was left in the position. Against lesser competition, the game would have been over a few moves sooner.
November 2, 2009 at 12:22 pm
linuxguy – blindspot is a good word, I like it.
As well I can say it about switching from one flank to another and making move without simple checking for threats.
November 12, 2009 at 4:18 pm
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