Shifting Gears
In my World League game with the Black pieces against Holland, I sacrificed a pawn to build up a kingside attack. When it came time to sacrifice again to break open White’s kingside position, it became clear that White could parry my attack in all lines. I settled on “switching gears,” a mature tactic that involved undoubling my rooks. What happened next proved to be unsettling.
I’ve searched long and hard for motifs to help me improve. Cold objectivity is the hardest to come by, as a pulse of subjectivity often intervenes. That is what happened here. I looked twice – the wrong kind of looking twice. I had settled on defending a pawn down. Then I looked again at a dubious pawn push, blowing the light cover on my king but the fireworks led to a queen trade and equality.
Alakazaam I was right back to where I started pressing my attack! What happened to the iron willed and stoic …Re8. The only reason I kept thinking was that I was debating …Rf8 or e8 when my thoughts wandered from grey defense to luminous attack.
But at the end of this hallway my opponent found a nice move, switched off the lights, and said good night! Or goedenacht! in this case. It stands to reason that one should really get into their hot air balloon and take a good bird’s eye view of the playing field before committing to an attack! I even calculated that it only led to equality, and felt like I could be missing something.
I spent a lot of time calculating 32. Qxd6 when it all looks pretty equal. I missed the blow with the rook! Look twice
I’ll end with some good news. With the White pieces I happily had the opportunity to convert a pawn up ending. There was some wrangling to achieve trading off queens, but this task was accomplished. So, I ended up splitting the points with my Dutch opponent on Board 28.
I took a break this season against overmatched Scotland, otherwise here is a table of my World League results for Team Canada in 2025 with links to the games:
| Rd. | Opponent | Board | White | Black |
| 1 | Romania | 32 | Draw | Draw |
| 3 | Bulgaria | 39 | Win! | Win! |
| 4 | Srbija | 35 | In progress | Loss |
| 5 | Holland | 28 | Win | Loss |
| 6 | Spain | 27 | In progress | In progress |
| 7 | USA | 52 | In progress | In progress |
| 8 | Slovakia | 47 | In progress | In progress |
Last up is England in September. Our odds of staying up are good as we fielded a strong line-up against Slovakia, although there is a very tippy match against Romania and just looking at the results makes me seasick.
Postscript: I should like to be playing in the Upper Peninsula Open this weekend, but alas here I am writing this blog instead. It’s not quite the same…
