"Generally I don’t like to lose and I don’t like to blog after a loss. This worked fine when a loss was the exception. Recently that has changed so I guess I’d better say a few words about..."
I have played five club games since my last entry but have been in pretty poor form and had bad results, which certainly making posting about them less fun.
Game 1/5: Clifton D vs Patchway
In this game I played the black side of a Nimzo-Indian defence. I came out of the opening with simple equality but struggled to find a plan to work towards any advantage. In the position below I played 22...e5 with the idea of bringing my rook to the 2nd rank.
My opponent replied with 23.Nc6 where I had been anticipating 23.Nf3, and I don't think I had seriously considered that the knight might advance like that. The position became increasingly awkward for me after my opponent doubled rooks on the c file and also began to prove the weakness of my a4 pawn. Facing various threats real and illusionary I eventually defused the position in an inferior way - thinking that I was giving up 1 pawn and would have reasonable chances to fight for a draw but actually giving up 2 pawns. After my opponent then approached a position where they could force complete simplification to a king and pawn ending I resigned.
Game 2/5: Clifton D vs Hanham B:
In game two I played 1.e4 as white and my opponent replied with a sicilian. I don't really know much e4 theory but still think that it's a good idea to be playing it as it leads to more interesting and dynamic positions than 1.c4 or 1.Nf3 - although I'm thinking I may experiment with 1.d4 at some point, perhaps the London system. My opponent fiancettoed their bishop on g7 and I became unduly concerned about the potential strength of this piece. In the position below I played 11.Ne5 with the idea of bringing my bishop to f6 after dxe5, and so to trade bishops.
This was a complete over reaction as my pawn would prove very weak on f6. After the bishops came off and it was clear that I couldn't hold the pawn I gained some counterplay in getting my rook to the 7th rank but couldn't win material or make progress. In the position below I was at a loss trying to find a good move.
27.Nd4 felt like the right move, but I was concerned that to anchor it there I would eventually need to play a move like Rd1, which would mean giving up control of the c file. Instead I played 27.R1c5, with the idea of bringing my bishop across to d3. Even as I played this I knew that it was practically inviting my opponent to advance their pawn but my mindset was that I would just have to 'deal with it'.
After 30...Bf5 we had reached the position above, and white is in trouble. The correct continuation is 31.Rxd7, while I played the horrible 31.R2c6 (...Nd2+! 0-1). In retrospect 31.Rxd7 shouldn't be such a hard move to find, I think psychological factors (such as that it is giving up my grasp on the 7th rank, one of my very few strengths in this position) meant that I didn't consider it seriously enough. It is also a fact that I hadn't realised that black was threatening checkmate in the way that he did...
Game 3/5: Clifton D vs Keynsham B
I had played against Keynsham before, on that occasion winning as board 5 for the Clifton C team vs their A team. This time I was board 2 vs their D team, playing the black side of a caro-kann. I seem to get unduly strong results with this opening and today was not going to be an exception. I decided to play the 4...Bf5 line, which is more principaled than 4...Nf6 (which I had used in my earlier game). In the middlegame I accepted a 'cripped pawn' stucture that I felt would be strong and give me good activity down the half open b file. In the position below my opponent had just played 21.Rfd1 and their position is threatening to come to life.
21...c4! Perhaps this move is too simple and obvious to really deserve an exclamation mark, but after this it is only black that can play for a win. In the position below I finally achieved the position I had been working towards.
28...Rb3, and white has no way to defend against the threat of Rxa3/Rxc3. My opponent played 29.Re5 and the position became complex although I always held some advantage with my a pawn advancing down the board. Find the winning move in the position below.
Hopefully you saw 36...Rh1! Unfortunately I didn't, although I should have as I have seen that tactic before, and I instead played 36...Ke7 thinking that I held more of a modest advantage largely due to my opponents king being trapped on his second rank. Luckily for me my opponent didn't share this view and after 37.Ke3 (along with a draw offer) I won with 37...Re1+.
Game 4/5: Clifton D vs South Bristol B
I came into this match expecting our team to struggle due to the strength of our opponents who chessit had suggested were all in the 150's (our team are more like 110-145 strength), and also as we were a player down meaning we would default a game. I was playing as board two vs David N., who at 154 was the strongest opponent I had met over the board in a rated game. I had the white pieces and played 1.e4.
By the time we had reached the position above (after 14...Nb6) it was becoming clear that I was at a disadvantage. Play continued 15.Bxe6 ...Rxe6 16.Rd1 ...Rfe8. Realising that my d pawn would not hold in the long run I gave it away with 17.d5, and the hope of reaching a simplified endgame where I had some positional pressure to make up for my lost pawn and so could fight for a draw.
Thankfully the game continuation went largely as I had hoped (although my opponent could have set a greater challenge with axb6 rather than cxb6), and with 24.Rfd1 I offered a draw. My opponent declined and we eventually reached a simplified position with his knight and 6 pawns vs my knight and 5 pawns. By this point we were the last game and had the pressure of little time remaining, in addition to there being 8 spectators standing around watching, which made things very tense. I defended reasonably well (although later analysis showed that my opponent missed one non-obvious variation that would likely have won for him) and finally on move 52 with just a few minutes remaining on our clocks my opponent offered a draw in a position where he had no advantage, which I accepted. He had actually tried to play an illegal move the turn before (moving the king onto the e4 square where it was in check) but he had been suffering from a severe cold throughout. The end position is shown below.
Game 5/5: Clifton vs Downsend ('knock-out league')
I was quite positive coming into this game as I felt I was in good form having recently managed some decent wins on ICC, as well as the above draw vs a 154. Our opponents turned up a player short making things difficult for them due to the default loss, although with the way that the match-ups worked it was our board 1 player who didn't get a game which certainly wasn't optimal!
I played the opening and early middlegame quite well, and although by the time we had reached the position below (move 23) I was not ahead in material I had gained the bishop pair, and my opponents position was passive and uncomfortable.
There is an unfortunate theme to this game however (which is probably true for many of them), which is me missing fairly simple tactics, and also consistently overestimating my position ('I'm supposed to win'). The first tactic, as you may have noticed already, is in the position above. White wins material with 24.Nxg6! (...fxg6 25.Bxf6). I looked for a tactic in this position as I sensed there was the potential for one, but I didn't look seriously and I missed it (specifically, I missed that Bxf6 also came with the threat of Bxd8).
My second missed tactical opportuntiy came in the position below after 27...Bd6.
The simple 28.Bc1 would leave white a pawn up, and it shouldn't be a hard move to see. What's the point of reaching strategically advantageous positions if you then miss the winning tactics the position gives rise to?
With 36...fxe5 we reached the above position, and my opponent offered me a draw a couple of turns later. By this point there was a big psychological disconnect between me and the position, and in retrospect I was definately mis-evaluating things. My mindset was basically something like "bishops are better than knights when there are pawns on both sides of the board", and "I'm supposed to win this game". I also felt that I could play on without risk of loss in that position, which was probably true at this point but a very dangerous approach. In reality the bishop has no targets and the knight is somewhat stronger. White cannot readily target the isolated e pawn and certainly shouldn't expect good winning chances. I lost my sense of danger, and by the time we had simplified further on move 46 (the position below) I should definately have realised that there was no way to play for a win. My opponent would almost certainly have agreed a draw, and even if he hadn't I would have been playing with a greater sense of danger.
I fairly carelessly brought my king back to e4, only to find that 49...Nd5 (the position below) leaves white having to fight for the draw.
This threw me off balance psychologically (or rather, I had actually been way off balance psychologically for much of the endgame in terms of evaluation, and this just shocked me into the reality of the situation), though I realised that a draw shouldn't be that difficult to achieve - just trade the f pawn for the e pawn (after Nxb4), and then sac the bishop for the b pawn.
My thoughts were "blacks next move is ...Nxb4" and "I need to get my bishop to a good position to cover the advance of blacks b pawn". Can you see where this is heading? 50.Be8?? (with a draw offer!), 50...Nf6+ and resigns. I think four things account for that blunder;
i. Being off balance due to my evaluation of the position shifting suddenly from an unwarranted "I'm supposed to win this" (a carry over from the middlegame, and possibly my opponents rating) to "now my position is worse!"
ii. I was sure blacks next move was ...Nxb4
iii. The knight check is on a square moving away from my king and weak pawn, which I hadn't even considered
iv. I was offering a draw with my move. The move that a player makes when offering a draw is often weak.
A pretty horrible loss, especially considering the well played opening and middlegame. I have to learn from this - to look for tactics more carefully and avoid letting myself almost willfully misevaluate a position for so long.
I'm definately stronger at strategy than tactics, which has been clear from my recent ICC games as much as from my club games. I had thought that having done thousands of problems on Chess Tactics Server would have solved this, and it has certainly helped... but the tactical problems on CTS are dramatic (winning a piece or forcing mate typically) and perhaps don't have enough in common with the more mundane tactics of a real chess game (e.g. winning a pawn). I've also found that I struggle with seeing some forced 2-3 move mates when the proceeding moves are relatively non-obvious (the automated 'loadgames' on ICC) which shows my ability to calculate and recognise certain patterns can be pretty poor. I need to find a set of more mundane tacical exercises to practice, and to play games with a greater awareness of tactics (and less awareness of it just being a matter of 'finding the win' against a lower rated opponent).
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