Chess.com 2023, 2nd round, S01E09 - time for regrets
29th of March (contnd.)
I also have a semblance of a plan in the white game:
Get the pawn to h4, bishop to h3, march the king to f4, rook to d6, and get the pawn. Of course, black won’t be sitting on their hands waiting for all that to happen, but at least I know my options.
Table at the end of the day:
Saveliy continues timing out. I still feel like I can hold the draw against Ifan and get my two wins (timeouts or not) against saveliy. This still means that I need my 1.5 points against Pruett, and I don’t see them for now. The white game is very difficult to convert, and in the black things are getting sharp, but not in my favour.
30th of March
No changes in the table from last night. The number of active players dropped to 3164, so 3 more groups have closed. Saveliy continues making moves, so I have yet another case of someone who times out against competition, but not against me.
I see a nice trick here with e5 and Qh5, but he may just play Be7. Either way, the white-squared bishop needs to get into the game, so I’ll go with that. Maybe that’ll finish this slow game earlier.
The draw in the ifan game is not in the bag as I thought:
White’s idea is – go with the king to a8 and threaten Rf7, Rxa7. If I go h4, go all the way back with the king and get the pawn. My counter-idea is: go Kg5 as soon as the rook goes away from f5, and the white king is far enough.
Another white idea is Kc4-d5-e6. This plan is nastier. In this case, I’ll need to keep the king on g6, and move the bishop between c5-b4. As soon as the rook lets me, go Kg5.
The main points are: (a) I must not play h4 while the king is not on g5, and (b) I must not let the white king into f6.
BTW, I had a look at the player’s profile: https://www.chess.com/member/ifanrj , and he is not as easy as the rating shows. Top daily is 2000, and top blitz is a whopping 2436. I’m surprised he let me win the first game so easily. Also explains the squeeze I’m under right now.
Pruett offered a draw in my white game, which I’ll obviously not take. As a silent comeback, I offered him a draw in the black game. Speaking of that:
White played Bf3, which is even more worrying than Rg1 and g5 that I was looking at. The idea is to prepare e4 and f5. The knight can also use e2 to swing itself to the king side. Bf3 also can take on b7 in some variations.
On the flip side, it makes the d3 square tempting for black, especially for a knight. So, my candidate moves are:
- Be7 – to reroute the bishop to f6 and make g5 more difficult. It also allows Nc5, with the threat of Nd3. The downside is that it allows d2-d3.
- Bd6 – to make e3-e4 more difficult, and for the same Nc5-d3 idea.
- Bd3 - to get the white-squared bishop outside of the potential prison being built through e4-f5 chain, and prevent the d3 advance. The downside is that it pushes the white rook to where it wants to go.
Be7 looks good. Bd6 is inferior, since I can’t really take on f4 in case of e3-e4, and the bishop gets in the way of the d-file in some of the lines above. Bd3 is too ambitious, and I’d rather save that square for the knight.
Ok, a few things happened now – all of them annoying. Saveliy timed out in a few more games, including the leader – but not in mine. In my black game against pruett (the one I just played Be7 in), the draw was accepted, _and_ it turned out I was leading by –0.4 in the eval. This was the game I was supposed to win!
Now, the situation is desperate. Assuming I win both games against saveliy – which I’ll do with great pleasure and sadistic intent – I now need to win my white game against pruett, which increasingly looks like an impossibly tall order. It weirdly enough does not matter if I draw or lose against rfan, as I need to win the pruett game anyway. The only exception to that is that if by some freak chance rfan loses, but I truly don’t see that happening. Hope dies last, but I feel like my draw offer earlier today was the biggest mistake of the tournament.
Freeze moment! If I could point to one, just one, moment where I royally screwed up - it's this one. The biggest mistake of the tournament didn't even involve a chess move, but a draw proposal. Very frustrating.
Taking the unfortunate draw proposal aside, this game was played at a high level. It was just gone from this world too soon.
In that decisive game, black just played Re8 with the clear intent of cutting my king off his destination on f4.
I have two thoughts here: (a) I’ll play this game really slow in real life so that I’ll have clarity in my results in the 3 remaining games, and (b) I’ll also play it slow in chess terms, as I can gradually build up my position with low risk.
So, what ideas do I have:
- Play b3-c4 to control the d5 square limiting the black bishop. I might want to get the rook to d6 first so that black won’t have c6-c5 tempos.
- Activate the king in a smarter way. Perhaps after b3-c4, get the king to c3, rook to e3, and then navigate the king via d3-e2-f3 to f4.
It is a very slow plan of course, but that’s exactly the idea. The question is what options black has.
- f5-f4 could be played if the rook is not controlling the 4th So, I’ll scratch the Rd6 idea for now.
- The above mentioned c5, followed by b6 to neutralize the queenside.
The main point is that c5 does not quite work for black in the current position:
Black can protect h6 in a few ways, but that gives me enough time to secure d5.
b3 is the move. Going back to principle (a), I’ll play it later tonight.
Continued here: https://www.chess.com/blog/romank66/chess-com-2023-2nd-round-s01e10-the-ides-of-march