2016 Liberty Bell Open, Day 3: Nxf7

Going into the last day, I had 3.5/5, which was still on pace for prizes if I could make the last two rounds count. As I said earlier, I only made it to 5, but I was pleased with the games, especially the second, in spite of the implications.

For the morning game, I caught a little break with a second consecutive White against a guy from NYC who hit master at his peak in 2013. Objectively this didn't matter as I would have Black for the last round but I liked starting on my own terms at the start. Or maybe I was afraid of getting Black for both rounds.

Unfortunately, this confidence led to an oversight and subsequent opening error while thinking speculative pawn sacs. However, my opponent missed it, leaving me with a slow but static advantage of the bishop pair and queenside majority. He said he had little to try and thus played very quickly the rest of the game.

Not the cleanest start but judging the rest of the game, I finally felt I could play solidly again, and I retained my chances in the standings.

I had a relatively good opening in the last game but we traded a few inaccuracies later, despite spending a lot of time on them (he missed a few chances for a crushing kingside attack). Later he got a great knight sac but didn't finish it properly. However despite the low time we played pretty accurately into an ending with Q+5P vs. R+B+N+2P which I managed to hold.

By far my favorite game of the tournament. I was rather surprised how accurately we played with so little time, compared to our 20-30 minute thinks earlier in the game.