Tournament Update #3: My First Zugzwang
Recap: I entered the 55th Chess.com Quick Knockouts (1200-1399) tournament and accidentally entered the Macrinus 20 Chess 960 tournament.
* Believe it or not, I won my first seven games in Chess 960 and will advance to the second round. I'm in deep trouble in the 8th and final first round game, having sacrificed a knight in an effort to win quickly. Now I'm really scrambling, hoping for an opponent blunder. He seems unwilling to comply.
* I'm proud to say I swept all 10 of my first round Quick Knockouts games, winning my group and moving on to the second round.
The 10th game was the most interesting, in that I had a rook and pawn vs. bishop advantage and traded the rook for the bishop in order to create a zugzwang.
I decided on the tactic two moves prior to this position, and was surprised to discover afterward that Stockfish deemed the rook-bishop trade and Kh3 as equally best moves. The engine usually looks down on giving up much of an advantage.
Once he captured the rook, the idea is to get my king to d4 right after he plays Ke6. Since he doesn't want to move his king from that spot, he plays g6 and I play h4, completing the zugzwang and leaving this position.
His only choices now are to surrender the g pawn or move his king away. If he tries to protect the g pawn, I advance my king and c pawn. He instead tried to split the difference and played Ke7, but I replied with Ke5, establishing opposition. Pretty much forced to choose a side, he went with Kd7. I played Kf6 and he played Kc6. He resigned after I took the g pawn.
I sweated it out the entire time because I was convinced I had missed some escaping move and had foolishly given up my rook. But it turned out reducing options made it easier to spot the winning combination of moves.
The second rounds in both tournaments may take a long time to begin, so I'll concentrate on trying to maintain my rating in 30-minute rapid, which has certainly been an up-and-down affair.
In the meantime, stay tuned here for the weird and wacky in chess news.
