Analysis - The 2020 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship - Round 2
Hello all,
Welcome to my blog post about the 2020 Daily Chess Championship's round 2! This tournament has been a very fun and exciting experience for me and I have very much enjoyed my games, especially those in round 2 of the tournament!
Round 2 of the tournament began on March 9, 2020 and I was faced with some tough competition, where I found that immediately I would have a challenge ahead of me. I've made it a goal to analyze all of my games here in the tournament, and so I have done that. I am not going to share all of the games though, but rather the ones that I found particularly interesting with meaningful annotations and analyzed variations shown in the diagrams. In this blog, I am posting 8 games which include 3 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws. They are posted in the order that they were completed.
The first game was a very interesting game in the Tarrasch which turned out to be a largely positional battle but still with a lot of tactical opportunities. The game was very close throughout its entirety, but became tactical at the end of it where I gained an advantage. However, I was not able to calculate the win for myself and the game ended with a draw. Positional moves, sacrificing, ideas and plans, perpetual checks, possible passed pawn endgames were all themes in this game!
The second game I have posted here was played against a chess master where I got the draw! My opening play was not the greatest and left me fighting to equalize the whole game, but eventually I did and started with plans of my own! The endgame to this game was extremely instructive as I was fighting for the draw and had to calculate a lot for every single move. Some of these calculations went very deep and so I have shown some of my own calculations in the game diagram and some that I did with the computer when analyzing. It was hard to try and hold the draw but in the end I got it! This was certainly a hard fought draw against a tough opponent:
This next game was against the same opponent. In this game, I thought I was doing fine off of the opening, but wasn't able to improve my position enough. Still, I was doing fine until the game became tactical. Here, my position became bad very fast and I was nearly lost, but I was able to make a comeback into an endgame where I was down 2 pawns, but it was an opposite coloured bishop endgame. I still had drawing chances, and although when analyzing it afterwards, the computer evaluations were fluctuating a lot but saying white was better, in some variations it was not getting that win for white, so perhaps maybe at some point the endgame was drawn. I fought hard in the endgame but ended up missing a tactic as I tried to defend everything which was very difficult:
Next, we have another game vs a very strong opponent. In this game, I played the Benko Gambit half accepted whereas I normally play it fully accepted, taking both the a and the b pawns. My opening play was ok, but it was the middlegame where my opponent upped the pressure on my queenside. I tried to go for a kingside attack but my opponent's pieces were too good. I didn't have too many plans and tried to draw an endgame where I was worse, but I got outplayed. This game was one of the examples of a game where I got outplayed, but there were still some interesting opportunities the game offered that would have maybe provided me with some better chances of a win or draw, but overall still quite an interesting game:
Finally my first win of this blog! I was playing against the Budapest defense which I recently had gotten some good results against, so I thought this game was going to get very interesting. And it would have it I had played c7 as you will see in the game! It was an opposite side castling game where both sides rushed each other with pawns and there were multiple chances for tactical continuations that were not played. I felt I had the better game when my opponent made a couple of blunders and lost. But especially interesting in this game are a couple of the variations that didn't end up being played but that I saw with the computer afterwards that offer some interesting ways to win the game for white:
This game against a strong opponent, I lost, and it was another game where I entered a worse endgame hoping to draw. My position became slightly worse after I incorrectly tried to defend one of my opponent's attacks, trying to not go down an exchange, and then when my opponent offered me a pawn, I didn't take it when I should have because I thought that my queen might get trapped. perhaps this was psychological, since my opponent was very strong. I still had a potential draw in the endgame but I didn't play that correctly, and I missed a tactical sacrifice which lead to my opponent getting connected passed pawns. Somehow, my opponent decided to let me promote a pawn too, and so I thought I may have drawing chances with a perpetual check or stalemate, but it turns out I didn't have much and I ended up losing:
This game below was a very complex game that was played very inaccurately by both sides. The game was also extremely long and had both positional and tactical ideas in it, which made for a lot of interesting variations and ideas. Unfortunately, my opponent ended up timing out the game near the end of it but it was quite an interesting game to play. I felt I needed to spend a lot of time on this game to avoid making mistakes, although due to the nature of the position, there was an abundance of those in the game! It was a very unique game too and interesting to play:
Finally, I have this game, the game I submitted for the best game prize. This game was probably the most positional game out of the ones I played in this tournament, and although the opening was not played perfectly, it led to an amazing middlegame and endgame for me as my opponent was tied to the defense and I slowly improved each one of my pieces including my king. When I had improved them enough, I went for the breakthrough sacrifice, and then placed my rook and bishop in places to block white's king and knight from coming to the defense. After I did that, I was able to promote a pawn and win the game!
And there are the 8 most interesting games from round 2 of the 2020 Daily Chess Championship! This was certainly a very interesting tournament with extremely interesting games, and I am very happy with the result and with the fact that I learned some interesting things from analyzing my games in the tournament and writing about them. Ideally I would have wanted to be advancing to round 3, but the competition was very strong and the battle very tough for the top spot in the group. But I congratulate my two group winners for their excellent play and wish them all the best for the next round of the tournament!
