Nova Daily - 8 January 2025

Hi!

A very spectacular game today. I got a massive space advantage from the opening. Then I decided to sacrifice a piece for a lot of attacking compensation, and it ended up working. I'm very curious if the piece sacrifice was correct, because I don't often sacrifice material based on speculation.

I'll present the game first, and some of my ideas in the complications, and fill in the rest of my blog later.

My Aftermath Analysis:

What can I take away from this game:

1. When the opponent curls up like a porcupine, annexing territory in the centre can be effected by d3-d4.

2. Rounding off my promising position was clumsy. This started with my opponent playing 19...Qe7. It took some time for me to mentally recover from this, and in its wake I played several inaccurate moves, most notoriously 21.Nh5?. I could play more games of guess-the-move when following games live.

3. In some ways I played a good game. I was alert to the 12...f5 threat, for example.