The time has come to take a look at another game. This one comes from the Notts Congress of April 2008, and was played in the first round.
The game is highly flawed, but remains one of my favourites of the 2007/08 chess season. It is flawed because of my totally botched opening play, and also my totally unwarranted excursion into tactics towards the end - especially in view of the fact that I had a very promising plan that didn’t involve anything like the same level of risk. One of the things I will be looking at when analysing this game, is just how wrong things could have gone for me had my opponent not been phased by my sudden tactical shot. It is one of my favourite games for two reasons. First, despite being flawed it was very exciting to play. Second, even though I misplayed the French Defence, the opening showed its resilience under the fire of a typical hacking attack; at least this was the case in practice at the board, whether it stands up to scrutiny, well, we shall see!
First (that is, in this article) I’ll just report the moves of the game, with only a few brief comments. In future articles I’ll come back to interesting moments in the game and look at what might have happened.
I was playing black and I played my usual French Defence. The game began:
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 a6 (see first diagram).
I don’t know why I played 3…a6 because I know almost nothing about it. I’ve been looking at the rather unusual 3…Nc6 in the classical french, which I tried to get back into next move. However, I suddenly thought for some reason that my opponent would have to move his e-pawn on closing the centre, and giving me a favourable version of the French Advance variation - favourable because after …c5 my opponent wouldn’t be able to support his centre with c2-c3. As far as I know 3…a6 is playable, but I’ve no idea how to follow it up. The game continued:
4.a3 Nc6
I was trying to get back into the …Nc6 system, thinking my opponent’s 4.a3 wouldn’t make any difference. However it makes a lot of difference as I quickly realised, because it denies black the b4 square for the dark squared bishop.
The game went on:
5.Be3 Nf6 6.e5 Ne4 7.Bd3 f5 (see second diagram)
Now it can be seen why white’s move 4.a3 isn’t as innocuous as it might have first looked. Black’s natural approach to following up is to put the dark squared bishop on b4 pressurising the white knight on c3. This is now obviously not possible and black must pay a price for mixing systems. That said, it does look like black has a reasonably solid position. Note that if white were to play h2-h4 black would be forced to take on c3 because then the c3 knight could move away threatening to win the black knight on e4 with f2-f3. However, while the black knight on e4 can either take the white c3 knight or escape (from f2-f3) via g4 (heading back to f7) it can stay on e4 - an obviously good square for it.
8.Nge2 Be7 9.0-0 0-0 10.f3 Nxc3 (see third diagram).
Possibly I should have played 10…Ng5. If I remember correctly though, I just assumed white would take back with the other knight. Here I learned a lesson I must remember in future if I get into a position like this one!
11.bxc3
Naturally white takes back with the pawn. Now I have to reckon with c3-c4 at some point.
11…Bg5
trying to exchange off the dark squared bishops to gain some breathing space in the position)
12.f4
Eh? Surely this leaves white’s dark squared bishop genuinely bad?
12…Be7 13.Rf3
surely 13.c4 is much stronger? This is something to look into in follow-up articles
13…Bd7 14.Rh3 b5 15.Nc1 g6 16.g4 Na5 17.Qf3 c6 (see fourth diagram).
The move 17…c6 isn’t a move I really wanted to play! I really wanted to use my c-pawn to play the thematic break …c7-c5 in one move. However white is now threatening to take on f5, and without 17…c6 I would have been forced to take back with the g-pawn, because the natural recapture with the e-pawn would leave the d5 pawn hanging to white’s queen.
18.Ne2 Nc4 19.Bxc4 bxc4 20.Kh1 Rf7 21.gxf5 exf5 22.Bf2 Be6 23.Bg3 Qf8 24.a4 g5 (see fifth diagram).
Now the palpitations start! This is the sudden tactical shot I mentioned in the introduction to this article, and it seemed to phase my opponent completely. One thing I need to discover in my forthcoming analysis is whether white can just move the queen away - that is, after …g5-g4 does white loose the rook or not? When I played 24…g5 I thought the white rook would be trapped and lost in this line; however, this was cast into doubt when looking at the game afterwards with friends at the tournament. Anyway, as I say, this is something to look into. The game concluded as follows:
25.fxg5 f4 26.g6 hxg6 27.Bxf4 Bxh3 28.Rg1 Bf5 29.Ng3 Bxc2 30.Qg2 Bd3 31.Be3 Bh4 32.e6 Rf3 33.e7 Qf7 34.Re1 Bxg3 35.hxg3 Rf1+ 0-1
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