Daily 2023: Round 2 - Highest rated wins ever!

This was an odd round.  I played both some bad games and two very good ones.  This round coincided with me playing very poorly in Rapid (dropped a 100 points: 1900 -> 1800) so all-in-all I think it was a great (last) round!

Let's talk about the good games . These two are my highest rated wins ever.  I won both games against an NM with a Blitz rating above 2600!

The White game was my better game, but the Black game was more tactical, including me sacrificing my rook twice! (which is not usually in my psychological makeup).  I'll do the White game first and save the fun tactics for last.

In the White game, I played my usual Jobava London setup. My opponent went for an early c5.  This is a fun variation where I play e4 to open the center quickly. The computer says it's zero's all around but the Silicon Gods can't really relate to carbon-based computers.

I felt a bit worse after the opening.  I mixed up the line here and took the bishop after a6 when I should have played Ba4 because there's no b4 coming (en passant!).  This let my opponent beat me in development by recapturing the knight and, after some trades, capturing on c5 with the bishop.

I made my first real mistake with c3.  My idea was to defend against any nonsense now that the c-file was half-open, but I should have used the tempo offered to me by Bf4, followed by 0-0-0.  Then, I would own the d-file and be much better setup.  What I missed here was Qb6.  Doubling the pressure on my bishop while hitting the b-pawn.  Thankfully, my opponent didn't play that and castled instead.  I'm still worse because of my slowness here, but it's not as bad.

Rd1 threatened to win a knight.  I was hoping to get a trade of the dark square bishops here where I think my queen is better placed after the exchange.  The computer says that would have equalized.  Unfortunately, my opponent did not want that and moved the knight winning a tempo off my queen.

Thankfully, my opponent wasted the tempo with Nd5.  It forces my bishop to take so they get the better recapture, but it's fine because my queen is now well-positioned on f6.  It's all very draw-ish looking at this point, but I started to get the sense that I was no longer actively worse.

After trading the rooks and playing h3 to ward off backrank issues, my opponent played h5 which was I think the mistake that let me start to get the upper hand.  It allowed Qb7! hitting the a6 pawn and giving me some life.  My opponent should have gone Qd1 and then captured their own pawns along the second rank, but instead they played Qe8.  This is when I started to believe it was possibly a win.  Ne4 was the second mistake.  There's some better move to play here according to the computer, but I was just excited because I saw I could force a queen trade.  So I'm a pawn up in a knight and pawns endgame which, I'm told, is almost as good as being a pawn up in a pawn endgame.  I probably (certainly) would have blundered this in rapid/blitz, but I was very careful in this endgame because I knew this was a win somehow.  When my opponent blundered letting me win the b-pawn, I had three passed pawns and it was over.

The Black game has more tactics!  The endgame was especially chaotic, but I think I was the only one who was ever better at that point.  I can't believe I actually decided to play Rxe3, and then when my opponent didn't take the rook, I insisted with Rxg3!!  I saw it worked, I couldn't see how it wouldn't work, but I am not the kind of player who, psychologically, likes to sac like that.  So that was a confidence boost. The Silicon Gods said both moves were "brilliant".  Good little Gods.

The eval bounced from me winning to a draw frequently in the end game.  I have to work on queen endgames.  I always miss things here.  But at last I saw a way to trade queens and just took it.  I thought it was a win at that point, but I was wrong.  After Rf7, Kg8, I thought it was over if my opponent took on f6 because I could play Rf8 and trade rooks and be a pawn up in a pawn endgame, I was closer to their pawn and I could distract their King with my passer.  It did end up being a win, but, unbelievably, it is not a win!  My opponent played Kf3 to move towards my passed h pawn, this is a win for black, like I thought, but the insane Kg2 (!!) draws - it was the only move that draws.  Opponent would then have to make a fairly long series of only king moves, but shockingly, the King is back on the right tempo to draw the game.  Thankfully, was not playing a Silicon God, and managed to win!

I played some bad games in the round (and my opponents some real good ones), but I really enjoyed these two wins so thought I'd write them up.  Hope someone finds them interesting!

Zach