Chess.com 2023, 2nd round, S01E02 - first wins
20th of March
The latest table. We’ve got another “real” result. Priba just gave away his bishop. I was right to choose him as another early target. Otherwise, I’m being punished for my slower pace of play with fewer timeouts. Hopefully temporarily.
IfranRJ is the next game I’m trying to convert:
I’ll keep with the strategy of keeping black’s king in the center and the bishops active.
He played Rg7 later on, which looks very passive. I like Nh4:
After Black plays Ne7, I notice even a better option:
This should give me 3 pieces for a rook ending.
In the meantime, I’m getting my first proper win. White played all the way until mate in this game. Very quick analysis of the game shows at least one embarrassing mistake on my part, but overall, I had a winning position for most of the game. Will analyze more in the evening.
There is also another timeout in the table, so I’m mildly hopeful for another present:
I’ve got a present in another game. White just played b4. I can’t figure out what is his plan after Qc4:
I should get at least a pawn out of this.
The IfranRJ white game finished a bit quicker than expected. So, second proper point in one day! Another game to analyze in the evening. Very quick engine pass rates me at 95.1% accuracy, so that’s better than the other game.
Going back to this game:
My calculations are below. Unless I’m missing something rudimentary, Qa4 is the way to go.
This is my next game to focus on now that I’ve gathered a couple of points.
I planned Qa5, but Qc4 seems a bit more precise based on lines above.
The lines are far from precise, but the engine agrees on Qc4. Overall, black is a solid pawn up, but the position has some life in it.
I’m regretting a bit allowing the pile up on f2 to happen. b4 still seems the better option: otherwise, a5 or Nd5 will appear on the board, and I’ll get a bigger problem.
Got another timeout:
I should get the second timeout, and get up to 8 points in an hour.
My analysis of today’s first win. It’s not as bad as I thought earlier today. There was only one regrettable miss, but otherwise my goal as always was to win, not win in the most mathematically precise way.
This game has a very unfamiliar opening:
I’m aiming for this as the target opening position:
Looks equal to me, and likely a long game overall. For the next few days, I just want to avoid spoiling anything, and make sure I won’t have too many distractions when this starts heating up.
Another game that suddenly became interesting is this one:
Trying to calculate any reason Nxd4 won’t net me a pawn, and don’t see it. In the worst case (or best, depending how one looks at it), I might get even more than that.
Last task for today: analysis of my other win.
That's very decent, though on a short game with forced variations, it doesn't really tell a lot.
The deceptive ease of the win planted the seeds of future troubles. I did not comment much above, since my decision points during the game (12. d6, 19. Bh6) covered the essence of it, and the conversion did not require a lot of effort. Bishop pair is my favourite advantage to play with, and that made it so much easier in the last few moves.
Continued here: https://www.chess.com/blog/romank66/chess-com-2023-2nd-round-s01e03-a-storm-is-brewing