Italian Game | EPIC Battle from the Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit

#ItalianGame #Ponziani-SteinitzGambit 

Every now and then, you get an EPIC battle in a game of chess.  This was one such game in a Team Australia tournament!

I had the Black pieces got to play the Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit, against my opponent's attempted Fried Liver Attack (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 Nxe4).  White continued with their plan, which is instantly excellent for Black!  By move 6, I was completely winning with an evaluation of [-10] and by move 9, worse than [-20].

However, the position was tricky and three moves later, I made a massive blunder with an innocuous looking pawn move (12... c5) with a reversal of evaluation from around [-22] to [+6]!  I didn't realise I was losing initially, but it became obvious after my opponent's next moves.  Although I always seemed to be on the edge of checkmate and managed to avoid it with a few checks.

Finally on move 21, White blundered (21. Ke1) though again, it wasn't immediately obvious that it was such.  White should have attempted to force piece trades rather than hold onto material.  Amazingly, we were back to equality [0.00] and a few moves later, I managed to take advantage of the open f-file with a credible checkmate threat.  A theme of this game are the subtle errors that are massive blunders, and this occurred again for White on move 23 (23. Kg1) [-6.5].  If the king went to g2 rather than g1, it would have still been [0.00]!

At this point, was still up a whole piece, but with their knight and rook on the queen-side still yet to move, it was as if they were out of the game.  Careful attacking play allowed me to keep my advantage and after another 20 moves, I finally managed to convert to a winning position and White resigned.

EPIC and this was one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/daily/449037169