Nova Daily - 18 March 2025
Hi!
When writing my analyses yesterday I made the same old mistake again of pressing outside the gameviewer and losing two hours worth of work. This made me so annoyed that I decided to leave it for the day and do something else instead. I finished entering my thoughts only today, shortly before starting up my game.
I was confronted with a Trompowsky opening. That's useful because I don't face it that often. Yet it's important to have something against it if you're playing 1.d4 Nf6. I played the Trompowsky with white only once and got swept off the board because I castled kingside too quickly. I should've known better, but there we are.
With black I have some okay results against the Trompowsky, but I haven't studied it that thoroughly yet. I know that a new monograph on the Tromp has seen the light of day recently, but I don't think I'll pick it up in the foreseeable future. I have to set priorities and I need to work on my own repertoire before anything else.
The game started looking a fair lot like a Yugoslav Attack when my opponent castled queenside and tossed his kingside pawns ahead. Because of this I tried to create complications on the other sides of the board. I got a more or less secure knight on d4. It cost me a few pawns to stall white's attack just long enough. Eventually my opponent was too greedy and took a pawn too many. This allowed me to practically force the draw. Not my ideal result, but I had three reasons to be okay with it:
- I was glad to finish the game quickly. I may have such a short game every once in a while, even if just for a breather;
- I was a bit clueless throughout most of the game, so I can study it in greater depth now that I've had to face it;
- My opponent did have over 150 rating points more than I did. Not for long, hopefully, but we'll see.
My thoughts:
Sometimes a free draw is a welcome change, and I count today as such a day.
I'll add the analysis tomorrow.
