Played against a NM last night (well, a 2100 NM, ldo) with black for my first rated OTB game in 5 years.
http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=101585
Brag: The chess club's current location is not depressing like the previous two locations
Beat: I lost
Variance: Last month's "Wednesday Knighters" featured GM Mauricio Flores. Should have signed up for that one!
My analysis is below. I'm not going to put it in spoilers but maybe it's best in case anyone actually wants to look at my game untainted by my whining:
2. ... cxb4 — So I've never played against this move. Well, I probably have in blitz but do not remember it. I know it's called the wing gambit. I know I have seen the part of the book discussing it, I did not remember the slightest thing about how to set up against it except it's supposed to be unsound.
3. ...d6 — I spent a lot of my clock in the opening. Too bad I didn't just play d5. I thought about it for quite a while but was worried about "sharp lines". I am putting that in quotes b/c I have no idea what they would be, just that it's an unsound gambit I don't remember anything about and assumed opening the center would = "sharp lines". In retrospect, d5 is a pretty clear move to make and there's nothing about it that leads to unnecessarily sharp anything.
7. ...g6 — So I play the accelerated dragon and after thinking too long I elected to go for this vs. e6 and Be7. Of course, this begs the question, "If you play Accelerated Dragon, why have you not played d7-d5?! Do you actually play the Dragon? Perhaps you just play both of them, just very poorly."
11. ...Nd7 — With the tactical shot of Nxd4 if white castles. Before this move it seemed worth preparing for
12. ...Nxd4 — So I spent another longish think here realizing I could not evaluate the resulting position very well. It seemed to me if black could mobilize his pieces or find a plan to lock the center and/or blunt white's attack, he'd have a big advantage. That is as far as I got. I had spent quite a while looking at this so just played it. I had 36 minutes (from original 70) at this point.
16. ...b6 — I looked briefly at Qa5 but was worried about devoting another 3 minutes or more on a move given my clock and didn't want to play this without being more confident white couldn't trap it and/or kick it around to a really bad place. Playing this move would likely have solved a lot of my cramped issues that I spent 4 minutes thinking about on the next move and then playing something bad
17. ...e6 — The beginning of the end imo. I was desperately trying to find a way to mobilize my pieces. I didn't think I could just hang out with small improvements. I felt white could seize the a1-h8 diagonal and go for a kingside attack which would be deadly if I waited. This move was inspired by a thought at the end of my 4 minutes of trying to find ways to make e7-e5 work that I could play Nf6 and then d5 instead. I'm not sure if I miscounted tempi or what but obv that doesn't work.
21. ...e5 — I really didn't like letting white play e5 here. I feel despite the two passed pawns black is positionally busted after that and will just slice and dice my rooks and pawns up to shreds. Unfortunately ...e5 was not an improvement on that evaluation and seems like a clear mistake. I feel black is clearly losing here. Not so much from losing the d pawn as from letting the knight and rook come alive in the center of the board. I had 25 mins at this point and felt I couldn't spend too much time thinking on moves, though.
23. ...Rad8 — I remember literally thinking "Hmm, what is the purpose of Qg3. Well I guess it's to pin the pawn against my king. If fxg6, fxg6 I can take Nf5 with my rook. Given his knight I was fine with that at this point. I didn't fully consider other tactical implications (although I doubt without 5+ minutes I would have been able to calculate out the actual line to the end). My plan with Rad8 was to play Nf6. But of course white didn't let me.
25. Bg5 — I completely missed that move, oops. Although, then I realized I could block with my knight and if Nf5 my g pawn wasn't pinned anymore. Yay! I thought I might kind of get out of the attack.
28. Qh4+ — Lol, ** **ing. This is what makes the entire line crushing rather than black being able to weasel his way out of it. My opponent did not see out to this move when he played 24. fxg6. So I at least took a bit of solace in that. Although maybe it would've been better if he had b/c then I'd just feel like I had no chance of beating him if he was seeing lines like that in just a couple of minutes OTB.
I'm sure I will be looking over this with my coach but all general thoughts/advice are welcome. I was fairly okay with the result after the game but this morning looking over things I was more down about my play and the loss.
Specifically, it's clear I had no idea how to proceed in that imbalanced position. I kept thinking I needed to play e5 or d5 or something and resolve the pawn situation in the center and/or gain space to get my rooks connected and king-side rook over to support the pawns. But maybe the way to go is to react to white's threats while slowly trying to take over the c-file, getting my pieces supporting my pawns and then pushing them. I don't know.
Last edited by The Yugoslavian; 05-07-2015 at 04:54 PM.