When the cabinet falls over and over again

Hi! Welcome back to my blog! 

Almost a two weeks ago the Dutch cabinet, Rutte IV, fell. This means that the country will need to enter the process of rebuilding a cabinet which will hopefully be stable by having a new round of elections and the winning parties forming a majority (coalition). This is similar to chess, when you lose you try to come back better and draw or win. This phenomenon suits the topic of this blog perfectly. In this blog, I will be discussing my 5 games with standard setup against Kyu13. I have played two other games against him but these were in 3 Check and Crazyhouse. In all 5 games I will discuss in this blog I lost (the cabinet fell) and I have not yet succeeded to get a better result . Hopefully looking at my games with Kyu13 will help me improve.

Our first game with normal setup:

This was a bullet game we played during the TWE 75 Member Celebration Tournament. In this bullet game Kyu13 he started with e4. This is the most common opening for white and one I'm still figuring out how to respond to. During this game I responded with e6, the French Defence, which is the best response according to Stockfish. White answered e6 with d4, the normal variation of the French Defence. I played d5 which is the general theory I know in this position. here Kyu13 took my d-pawn so I took back with my e-pawn. White then offered its c-pawn which I took. White took back and I developed my knight next. We then both developed a knight on move 6. Kyu13 castled and I made my first inaccuracy, Bd3. The next move I made an even worse move, Be6. This is a blunder which allowed white to fork my knight and bishop.

On the next move I played a bad move again. After those 3 bad moves I got back into a sequence of good moves and white also played well. On move 24 I made an inaccuracy again because of the shortage of time which gave me stress so I didn't think much about my move. I made another inaccuracy with 0.3 seconds left on the clock, Kf4. After white made his move my time ran out and Kyu13 won on time.

Our second game with normal setup:

This game was an unrated game I played with Kyu13 through UCN. In this game we both had 3 minutes of team and I was black just like in the first game. Kyu13 started with e4 so I played c6 since my this point in time I had remembered why I stopped playing e6, the horrible advance variation. Therefore I chose to move on to the opening I learned after the French Defence, the Caro-Kann Defence. In this game we both brought our d-pawns to the centre and did some trading. We then continued to develop, bringing out our knights and exchanged a bit more.

Next Kyu13 brought out his bishop pinning my knight to my king. Here I played Bg4, an inaccuracy, as I didn't really know what was best. Now white traded his bishop for my knight and castled (inaccuracy). I then took Kyu13's knight and he took my bishop with his queen. I then played Bd3 planning a queen and bishop battery but this was actaully an inaccuracy. Next I was check and blocked with the bishop which was also not the best move. White made a mistake and I followed by castling which was the only great move in the game. In the moves after that I made some large blunders before my moves were better again. That was until Kyu13 mated me for the 2nd time. 

Our 3rd normal game:

This game was just a fun unrated game we played. I was white and Kyu13 was black. This game is probably the best game I've played against Kyu13 and I played with a higher chess.com predicted rating than Kyu. In the original game review my accuracy was also higher but when I redid it for this blog my accuracy was a good bit lower and also lower than Kyu13's.

In this game I started with d4 which is my favourite way to start. Black responded with the Indian Game so I played c4. Black then played e6 making it the Indian Game: East Indian Defence. I then developed my knight to c3 preparing for e4. Kyu13 then made the mistake of c6. I then played e3 thinking e4 would be a losing trade but it wouldn't have been as I did see the move before. Black then responded with the best move, d5, meaning I could no longer to e4 as easily. Next I took his pawn on d5 to start the trades. Of course he took back after which I played Bd3.

Black developed his knight to c6 and I developed my knight to f3. Kyu13 then pinned my knight to my king so I chose to castle and thereby unpin my knight. This caused black to take my knight but he should have castled instead. I took back and black castled. I played Re1 to prepare for e4 again and here black played Bd7. Next I developed my bishop while also attacking black's rook on f8 and black moved his rook to avoid the attack. I played Ng5 with my eyes on the h7 square but I should have played Rb1 aiming my rook at the b7 pawn. Here black played h6 which kicked my knight. Kyu13 played a6, I attacked his b-pawn and he moved it to b5.

Then I made a mega blunder, taking Kyu's b-pawn, giving Kyu a +2 material advantage after he took back. I then saw that my bishop was being attacked so I moved it and black played Ne4 so I played Bf4 to retreat my bishop from the danger. Kyu then forked my rook and queen so I saved queen ready to take back my rook after black took it. Kyu pushed his b-pawn so I offered a knight trade with the idea of then taking the b-pawn with my queen. Black saw this idea and protected the pawn with his queen after the knight trade. I tried to protect my a-pawn with Qb2  and Kyu retreated his queen. I moved my queen to e2, black played Qg5, I brought my queen to protect my f and g-pawns and Kyu offered a queen trade. Next I avoided the queen trade which was actually a worse move than accepting it.

Black played g5 and I attacked his queen which led to a trade giving black a larger material advantage. Now black attacked my weak pawn on f3 so I protected it with my rook. Since I was no longer protecting my a-pawn, black took the pawn. I then played Be5 and Kyu played b2 so of course took the pawn. Next black took my last remaining pawn and I made some random moves. Then black checked me, I played Ke1 and now it was just a matter of time until black either mated me with a pawn or my time ran out.

Our 4th normal game:

This game was again unrated and here Kyu13 was white. As usual Kyu played e4 and I replied with c6 again. White played d4 and we traded. After that Kyu attacked my d-pawn so I defended it with e6 and we both developed our knights before the trade on d5. Next we both prepared for castling with good moves (Be2 and Bb4). White castled immediately afterwards while I first traded on c3. Then we both brought our rooks to the e-file.

Kyu played Ba3, a mistake, and I attacked his knight on f3. This led to the natural trade on f3 after white played h3. Now white's rook was facing my rook so we traded after which we also traded queens. Now Kyu played Kf1 and I played Ne4 which was a mistake even after Kyu traded his bishop for my knight. Next we traded rooks which was a miss for Kyu. Then started pushing some pawns and made the blunder of b4 when I should have played f6. This was a downtrade and I didn't know what to do so I just pushed my remaining pawns, did a trade and tried to save at least one of my pawns but Kyu made this hard and eventually he promoted his f-pawn. The attack on my king began and there was no way I could prevent checkmate which happened on move 51.

Our 5th normal game:

This is probably my worst game out of the five of them and I think it was the quickest too. Here I was white and Kyu was black. The game started with d4 followed by Nf6, the Indian Defence. I played my normal line c4 and Kyu played e6 which is book. I developed my knight to c3 with e4 in mind and again I forgot I could play this the next move and played e3 (please tell my brain to pay more attention to this lol). Black played d5 so we traded pawns and I played Bd3. This was followed my Bb4 so I played Bd2 to free my knight. Black castled and I played e4 now instead of earlier when I should have instead played a3. After the trade on c3, black took my e-pawn and I had to ratreat my bishop. Next Kyu played Nc6 and I played Qe2 with the idea of taking the pawn on e4 but I should have played Bg5. We then traded on e5 and I took black's pawn on e4 (a mistake). Kyu took my bishop and there was pressure on my bishop on d2 so I took the knight. Black aimed his rook at my king and I played Qc2 to defend my bishop. Black then checked me and I had a 50/50 chance of playing the right move and guess what ... I played the move that made it M1. Followed by Re1#.

A present brought to you by Kyu13:

There's a sixth game in this blog. Remember I said it would be about my 5 first games with Kyu13 with normal set up, well after I started writing I played Kyu again...

This was the sixth unrated game I played Kyu in after he had posted a note in his club looking for a game. In the previous five games Kyu had won as you would expect and the same almost happened in this game. Kyu was white and I was black so the game started with the exchange variation of the Caro-Kann like in most previous games in which Kyu was white. Again Kyu played c4 and this time I took it because this seemed to be a better line based of the games earlier on the day. White took back on the c4 square and I played the best move Nf6. Kyu also developed one of his knights and I played e6 to open up my dark square bishop.

Next we both developed our other bishop and Kyu made an inaccuracy, Qa4. I also made an inaccuracy, Bb4, and should instead have played Bd6 which would have made the position drawn but Kyu now had the advantage. Next white played Bb5 which allowed me to play Bd7 which saved my other bishop and my knight. Then white took my knight and I took his knight, a great move. We both took back, Kyu retreated his queen and we both castled.

I continued with Re8 and Kyu attacked my remaining knight. Next I aimed by bishop at white's rook but it would have been better to connect my rooks with Qd5. White moved his rook and I played h6 so white took my knight. I took back with my queen. Kyu attacked my bishop and I blundered Bd7 when Bc6 was the best move. White then missed the chance to take my b-pawn so I had a chance to fix my mistake and yet I blundered again.

Now white was up a bishop. I then moved my queen to attack the knight which retreated and I protected my b-pawn more. Nc6 forked my queen and my rook so I brought my queen to take back my rook when the time came a move later. White played c4 and I copied the idea of moving pawns so I played a6. White played d5, we exchanged pawns and after that we exchanged rooks. I played b5 and white played Qe3 which led to a queen exchange.

Next I started to run my king to white's backrank with the hope this could bring me a stalemate or give me the chance to mate Kyu. When I got to f7 it was time to run the pawns which I successfully ran up and Kyu took my pawn on h4 (unlucky premove) which gave up his chances. Gxf7+, Kh1 and f1=Q#, my first win from Kyu13. Yay!

So in my first five games with Kyu13 we played good games and Kyu won all of them as you would expect based on our ratings. The cabinet fell over and over until the most recent game we played where I finally won. This shows that looking at my prior games with Kyu helped me . Thanks to Kyu13 for playing these games with me and thanks to you for reading! 

See you at my next blog!