23 March, 2010

Monthly Standard March ( Round 3 )

Not much to say about this game.

It was decided by two blunders by Black, and by move 15 was over, Black being a Rook and knight down, but he played on.

It was a simple threat of mate that lost him his Queen two moves later, and he then spent 40 minutes thinking of the remaining moves (20 on the last two ).

Ah, well.....

Not a lot to say about it, but it hardly challenged me, and I guess he must have had a very off day !

Interesting points around moves 7 - 10.

[Black has played 6..Be7]

At what point do you exchange the c6 knight ? I think I was almost too late on move 9, but not sure what sort of guidelines there are for it. ( See Anonymous comment).

Still 1,5 points so far in the tournament so it can't be bad !

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's always nice to get a win, even if it is from an opponent playing off form. In response to your question, Nxc6 would almost certainly have been better on move 7, when after 7...Bxc6 White has the little idea 8. Qh5! forcing 8...g6 when after 9. Qf3, Black's ideal development with Nf6 allows Bh6. Also White retains the possibility of castling queenside followed by an attack with h4 h5 etc.
Also a more positional plan would have been to play a move like Nde2 rather than Nxc6 since given that White has more space he should generally avoid trades. In the game Black could have equalized most likely with the plan of 11...Re8 followed by moves like h6 to prevent a Bg5 pin, Bf8 (at this point the pressure on e4 would most likely force f3) and then b6 and Bb7. Meanwhile it is difficult for White to do anything meaningful on the kingside since his pieces are stepping on top of each other. (the rook wants to be on f1 to support f4, but e4 needs to be guarded by either the e1-rook or the f3 pawn. If White tries a central plan with Nd5, most likely a trade on d5 followed by exchanging the rooks on e-file will equalize. Luckily Nh5 was played and you didn't have to deal with this...

Signalman said...

Thanks. An informative and interesting reply.

As you say, always good to get a win, regardless of how it comes.

No hard-and-fast rules, but your comment "given that White has more space he should generally avoid trades" seems to be a good guideline.

I like the idea of Nde2, but that's probably because I'm not the best attacker. As a corollary to that, I probably should play more active moves like Qh5, as it will probably improve my play.

Thanks for commenting !