Day 33 and 34: Miscalculation
Very limited chess so far this weekend. Only managed a single Rapid game. Like pretty much every game at my level, it did offer up a few things to learn!
I had the Black pieces and my opponent opened with e3. This isn't a move that I have a lot of experience with. I should have responded with d5 and tried to go into my Queen's Gambit Declined repertoire, but I kind of froze and played c6 instead.
My opponent was clearly going for a Catalan-like setup with a fianchettoed Bishop on g2. A few moves into the opening, we had this position:
The engine has a slight edge for Black here, though there is a lot of play in the position. My light-squared Bishop is not going to be active any time soon, but I do have a reasonable view of the center. I decided that my plan (note: I am trying to have middlegame plans!) was to try grab some space with g5, get the Knight developed and swing the rook over to the open c-file.
I started with g5 and my opponent fianchettoed their other Bishop, which made my think that bringing the Knight to d7 was a good idea. So, that happened and then my opponent pushed e4.
This is basically just a free pawn. I took on Kxe4 and my opponent decided to trade off their Bishop for my Knight, which I was happy to oblige. After that, they decided to make an aggressive Knight jump that only helped my rip open the pawns in front of their King. A few moves later, we reached this position:
Black has a dominant position here, but my opponent thought they had a nice tactical sequence. They decided to sacrifice their Rook on g7, thinking that after recapture by the Black King, they could play d5 with the discovered check and then bring the Queen over to force a checkmate.
Unfortunately, they missed that there were a couple of defenses. I played the less ideal defense of moving the King back to g8 and then covering the Queen check with my Queen. The better move would have been to simply play f6 because it is defended by the Knight on d7 and them allows my King to access h8.
In any case, I was now a Rook up and after trading off the Queens, my opponent resigned a few moves later.
