TeamLeague T4545 - T47 R1 : Scotch Bishops

A Scotch game : Four Knights variation, I'm White.

I won.

Why  ?

1) My opponent made at least 3 consecutive, weak moves with his bishops early in the game, losing time and giving up his dark-squared bishop anyway.
2) After his bishop was lost most of his immediate threats were gone
3) f4 is a great move to make at any stage of the game
4) I did some lucky preparation on the exact variation before the match
5) I had some good ideas from Nigel Davies and Tony Miles.
6) I'm a Grand Master in disguise.

Well, not all of those are true :)

Here's the game...

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Team 4545 League (T45 Round 1)

First game of the T45 cycle, and I am lucky enough to be drawn as White against an opponent within 50 points of me, so I was hoping for a relatively balanced game.

Checking my opponents games, I noticed that he usually played the Petroff against e4, which didn't excite me, but I thought that it would be possible to switch into something more to my liking if I played 3.Nc3.

This is exactly what happened, and after d4, I end up in a Scotch Four Knights so gaining quite a lot of time as he stuck to the mainline for 11 moves : very useful !

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Monthly Standard ( April ) : Round 3

Last week wasn't the best week ( chess-wise ) for me.

So, I wasn't really positive, nor probably in the mood, for a standard game, but having checked that Anand held an easy draw playing for 4 hours or more, I thought I could manage a meagre 2 !

In the end just 90-minutes and one move was all it took...could have been a cup-final !

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ICC Monthly Tournament ( February 2010 ) Round 3 )

Another Scotch..no, that's not to you, barman, but I managed to play another Scotch Opening in the tournament, and despite the same result as my first from two weeks ago, this is much closer. True,  a loss on time, but I felt that I played well for most of the game.
Time-wise, I managed it much better, see-sawing with my opponent until the last moves when one over-long think allowed him to gain the advantage in time, and ultimately, the match....

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Re-starting chess

Two Internet chess games from ICC..one win, one loss, but both enjoyable....!