Slow Swiss 3: Game #5

Final round of the Slow Swiss 3, 1600+ section! If you read my last blog, you'll remember I was paired against flannufmed for this game, and was on 2/4 going into this round. Winning would mean a plus result and a high finish in the tournament, so I was definitely motivated to win this game.

But the first piece of drama occurred when I logged into chess.com, just to check on my games, with around 40 minutes before the game started. Or so I thought! As it happens, DST (Daylight Savings Time) kicked in in the Americas 3 weeks before it did in Europe, something I was not aware of! So I was already 20 minutes late for the game!

I apologised to my opponent, and for the first 10 moves of the game had to balance playing my moves with taking a Skype call (since I wasn't expecting to play for another 40 minutes!) Anyway, here's what happened:

A very interesting game - just one blunder, a piece up, and suddenly Black is losing! Neither me nor my opponent really saw the strength of 15.Bf4 until it was on the board. I haven't included many lines in my analysis, but flannufmed and I spent some time looking at various lines, and it's worthwhile as one of the starkest illustrations of a weak dark colour complex I have ever come across in my games.

Anyway, this win meant I ended the tournament on 3/5, tying with 3 other players for 3rd place in a field of 14. A decent result, and I enjoyed all my games in this tournament! Next time I'll be returning to my games in the Slow Quad #29, with two rounds yet to blog in that tournament.

Thanks for reading!