Day 18: All Work and No Play
Some weeks are a bit crazier than others. This one has not allowed much weeknight chess.
I played a single game of Rapid. I told myself before the game that it would be only 1 game, win or lose... I won, but it was kind of loss. I ended the game in a losing position but winning on the clock. That being said, the analysis was informative.
This is definitely an instructive position. I have a positional advantage out of the opening due to my opponent spending some early moves on the a Queen-side pawn storm. The thing to notice is that the Black bishop on b7 is undefended. The best move here makes so much sense, but I didnt play it.
Qf3! It adds a second layer of protection to the Knight on e5 that was only protected once, but more importantly, it threatens Nxf6 on the next move, which means that my opponent is pretty much forced into trading their only developed pieces, leaving me with a big lead in development and an open center with their King still in the middle and unable to immediately castle.
I proceeded to play a horrible set of moves after that and was stuck defending a terrible position. What I needed to do was set up defensively and complete development.
Eventually, I managed to get the Queen's off the board, which helped a lot to even the game out. At that point though, I was down 2 minutes on the clock and figured that I was pretty much done for.
My opponent then spent most of their remaining time on this position. Seeing that my opponent only had 7 seconds left, I decided to just sacrifice and simplify to force a situation that would require a lot of moves. It worked and I won on time.
I am sitting at 1091. Hopefully I will have some more time over the next couple of days to play!
