Final Day At Tata Steel Chess - I Won My Tournament!

Hi all! Time to post a blog on the adventures that I'll have at TATA steel chess. I'll be playing the amateur ten camp - ten days and 9 rounds of intense chess right next to the pro players. This will be day one of my blog and I will stream the analysis of my games every day. So sit back, relax and enjoy the content!

Make sure to follow me on my twitch channel where I will live stream the analysis of my games and tell you all the on site chess gossips! https://www.twitch.tv/bikfoot

• Part one: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-one-at-tata-steel-chess-not-off-to-a-great-start
• Part two: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-two-at-tata-steel-chess-the-best-defense-is-good-offense 
• Part three: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-three-at-tata-steel-chess-bishops-rule
• Part four: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-four-at-tata-steel-chess-why-didnt-i-just-take-the-draw-offer
• Part five: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-five-at-tata-steel-chess-my-opponent-played-what
• Part six: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-six-at-tata-steel-chess-i-had-to-fight-really-hard-to-draw-this
• Part seven: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-seven-at-tata-steel-chess-twenty-minutes-too-late
• Part eight: https://www.chess.com/blog/Bikfoot/day-eight-at-tata-steel-chess-facing-the-the-undefeated-tournament-leader

I won my tournament! Wooohooo. Yeah sorry *ahum,* spoilers *ahum*. But yeah I'm really pumped and excited that I won this tournament, especially after a loss in the first round. Now, as usual, I'll take a moment to take us back to the day where I woke up, and kicked butt. Let's begin!

I've been staying at Hotel Sane Maret for the past 12 days and this was my final day there. I woke up, grabbed some breakfast, took a shower and packed my things before heading to the press room of TATA Steel chess. After an hour or so, the game started in the final round. I HAD to win to clinch first place or draw and get extremely lucky. My opponent today was Jan Nagel, who is actually a very influential figure in The Netherlands since he holds a seat in the Dutch Parliament. WIth a rating of 1817 he's definitely no pushover and I play with the black pieces, let's view how the game went!

The (final) game

I had a very, very strong feeling my opponent prepared against me, so after only 3(?!) moves I was already out of prep and so was he. This was the position just a few moves in:

Position after 5. Qf3. Not one I've seen before!

Alright, I'm here looking for a win. So I'm definitely not trading queens this early! In this position I moved my Queen back to d8 and resumed development. I was actually quite happy with the fact that White places hist Queen on f3 since that was a very natural square for his knight instead. A few moves later we reached to following position:

Position after 11. Ne2

I'm going to be honest with you, I really wanted to spice things up. But how did I do that? After a few moments of thought, I decided to play 11... Qb6 to start the attack on the queenside and on specifically, the b2 pawn:

Finally, some imbalances in the position. Something I love to play with, let's make it chaotic! A few moves passed and I'm slowly put surely applying pressure on the queenside. A few moves later we reached the following position, can you secure black's advantage here?

A position I can work with! Hooray! In this position I really started to put my efforts on winning the c3 pawn and slowly applying pressure there. I few moves later I gobbled up the pawn on c3 and the pawn on b4 would fall next:

Position after 32. Rd3

White is completely boxed in and all I had to do in this position was win the b4 pawn, trade off all the pieces and march my king to the center of the board to win the game. That was the plan, let's see if I could make that work! 

Position after 37. d6

Sorry for all the diagrams today, there's just so much I want to discuss! In this position, black can play 37... Re2+ and black has to play the rook back to d2. If he uses his knight I'll exchange the pawn on d6 and play Bc3, which exchanges all the pieces on the board thus securing my victory. My only question is, would a bishop vs knight endgame be winning here for black? After a long though, I did decide to exchange rooks and go for the ending. Let's see how that played out!

And there you have it, I beat my opponent and I won my game AND the tournament! As a prize I got 65 euros worth of books that I could collect. I decided to get two big books, these were about the Kings Indian Defence and the Hippopotamus Defence. Exciting stuff!

You already saw it in the title put let me place it here just for good measures: the final standings:

The final position, I won my tournament!

I also would like to give a HUGE thanks to KevinCWong, TheOneAndOnlyMadQueen, JollyGreen7, Nikolastojsin and all my other twitch subscribers/viewers who donated so I could participate in this tournament! And I also want to thank YOU the reader of course! I hope you enjoyed these blogs, please comment on them if you did and if you'd like to see more of it!

As always, the full game can be found below. Thanks for being here on this journey with me