Desperado in the King's Gambit

I played two hard-fought matches against two high-rated players. Both games are in the King's Gambit Accepted. The first game is in the traditional King's Knight Gambit, where I chose to play the Explorer's most chosen moves up to move 9.Qd3.

The game ended in a draw with a desperado. A desperado piece is a piece that seems determined to give itself up, for instance, to bring about a stalemate. In my first Desperado blog, I have featured the music video of Linda Ronstadt. Here, you might want to listen to Antonio Banderas in his movie theme song Desperado while reading this short blog.

The explorer's main line continues with 10.Bd5. However, I did not understand the idea behind the Bd5 and played the more obvious 10.e5?!. Interestingly, the chess.com computer analysis gave it a ?!. I believe it means that it is a dubious move which may turn out to be bad. In fact, the move was not good at all which made me struggle all throughout the game.

I grabbed the opportunity to draw in move 33.Rxb2?! with the idea that after simplification, black will end up with the wrong colored bishop and a rook pawn in the endgame which is basically a draw.The analysis however pointed out that I can force a draw with a perpetual check starting with 33.Qd4+ but that was too complicated for me to see. 

The simplification however was not easy. I wanted to trade my rook with his two pawns but I think he was able to sense what I had in mind, and so he played carefully not giving me a chance to make the exchanges. Eventually, the game came down to my last rook moves in a not so gallant desperado fashion, but YES!!!, he took my rook with his king, and I got a draw by stalemate.

In another game, it is again a hard-fought draw against mag106, our second game in the final round of the Abhi Raj Group Tourney. My first game with mag106 was also a draw - an excellent game played in Schliemann/Jaenisch Gambit. This time I have the white pieces and I played my default opening moves 1.e4 2.f4 and the game goes into the King's Gambit Accepted. I followed the Games Explorer main moves in trying not to make an opening mistake.

After gambiting my knight in the Muzio, my opponent had a hard time developing his pieces. Yet, he played a solid defence while I blundered a move in the attack according to the chess.com analysis. Although, the blunder was not so obvious from my stand point.  I should have played my own opening moves in such a tactical game. My unfamiliarity with the chosen line resulted to some blunders and inaccuracies like in the first game.

However, i consider this is as an excellent game despite the mistakes and the outcome. See both games below.