Blogs

NEU Chess League Round 1 Analysis

gimpyfish
| 0
My college chess club is playing a 4 or 5 round swiss over the semester. Due to some IMO bad pairings, I was paired with this girl - who was probably in top 4 strongest players in the club. I'm probably the 5th or 6th strongest.
The time controls for this game are 30|0, so pretty short in the scheme of long time controls.
I was expected to lose this. I played one game against this girl before we were assigned to be chess league opponents, and I noticed that she calculated further than I did, but she took a lot more time to make moves.  The game we had played prior to this one lasted about 90 minutes (it wasn't timed), with her taking around ~60, and me taking around 30.
I've always struggled against 1. e4 when playing black. I used the chess.com opening tool and found that I really liked an early Qb6. I employed that in this game, and liked the results. Even so, I might consider switching from a sicilian to a caro kann. 
Below is a pretty interesting game. I've so far refrained from using computer analysis on this game thus far, becuase I'd like to work and see if I can point out my inaccuracies myself.
What are your thoughts on the game? Anything you guys would like to add?