Game Summary: Bever Fever is upon me! It's dazzling looks toss me for a loop but I am able to regain my footing as the game tips back and forth from positional to tactical.
Sickness spreads fast. Any avian bird flu victim can testify to that. And right now there is a fever starting to spread. And if you ask any teenage girl, the fever is real. Now it does not matter whether you suffer from Bieber Fever, Beaver Fever(my personal ailment), or Bever Fever, at the end of the day it is a sickness that no amount of cowbell can cure.
In this game I face off against the Beverwijk Variation of the Berlin Defense, or at least that is what the game explorer calls it. Personally I like the name as it is a fun name to say. But I have seen this line a bit lately. All the same, as in most games my opening theory is about expansive as a 5 year olds knowledge of social dynamics in the workplace.
And so the game goes...
And so here we enter the Beverwijk Variation of the Berlin Wall defense against this Ruy Lopez...Dear god that is a lot of jargon. For white here it is all about pushing for d4. You can prep with c3 and then d4 or the one I just learned Nxe5. Nxe5 allows Nxe5 leading into a fork with d4 or Nxe4. Either one of these games lead into an all out battle on the d file with rook queens and everything else. I like it and will try it next time. But for me I chose h3. A foolish move. I really wanted to keep the action in the middle and should have just forced it with Nxe5.
Here I felt that he was getting greedy. He was trying hard to put pressure on my bishop and I felt like if he wanted queen side play so much lets keep my bishop staring down his king side for good measure. Though my rook and f pawn were in danger but they were in any real danger he would have taken it by now. Come to find out in the Bever Fever, the dark square bishop putting pressure on that diagonal is a common theme and even after the d4 push the bishop is retreated to b6 to maintain the pressure.
Here I looked at this position a while. Pushing my pawn or leaving the tension would only allow him to close off the game and turn it into a positional war. With Light square bishops off the board and all my pawns on dark squares this would be a horrible option. So instead I press the attack and open the lines to continue to put pressure on his king side.
Here I could have retreated but if i did I ran in to his knight attacking mine having to back up my knight with both my queen and a pawn if not the bishop and then his queen is right into the mix and we are once again in a positional war and my threats are all gone. I didn't even consider Bxf6 and kind of glad I did not as it would not be all that grand. So I said to hell with the bishop lets get some open files in this game already cause that's the only cure for my fever!
And so the game went. When looking over this game I found A LOT of ways for black to come roaring back and attack my defenseless king especially once his queen got free had I played differently. I think next time I will do Nxe5 and see how that goes. This now leaves me 81 points to go.
Lessons Learned:
1. Nxe5 or c3 to prep for a d4 push is best.
2. The Bever keeps its pressure on the a7-d1 diagonal.
3. My typing gets worse the longer I blog.
4. According to the picture I found, The Bieber Opening goes, "1.e3 c5 2. Ne2 Nc6 3. d3 Nf6 4. Nd2". Or maybe that is The Four Knights: Bieber Variation.
5. Beverwijk gets spell checked to Beefcake? lol