The Cat With Nine Lives
For today's post, I've shared a recent blitz game I played, where I used one of my nine lives to win a game where I got outplayed up and down the board. My annotations ended up being quite brief, so I've included them in full.
1) In the position after 14...f4, Black is threatening 15...f5! and the idea behind 15.Rfd1 or 15.Rad1 is to stop ...f5 - e.g. 15.Rfd1 f5? 16.exf5! Bxd5 17.f6! Rxf6 18.Bxh7 Kf8 19.Rxd5. That's why you see Black meet these rook moves with ...Kh8, to prepare the ...f5 break.
2) I played the middlegame far too quietly - it's important to be quite direct in these positions, before White plays a4, pressures the a6-pawn and stabilizes the queenside and center. A good example is 15...Kh8? followed by 16...Ra7?, which reflected the fact I hadn't studied these positions in a long time.
3) I completely missed 20...Bb3!, which I would normally see immediately, because I was too fixated on my opponent's threats, and forgot to look for whether I could make a stronger threat.
See you tomorrow with a new post!
