Match 1: 2022 Australia Day Tournament final round – Smith Morra Gambit!
#SicilianDefense #SmithMorraGambit #2022AustraliaDayTournament
Somehow, I managed to make it to the third and final round of the Team Australia, 2022 Australia Day Tournament (Division 3) on chess.com! For non-Australians, Australia Day is January 26, so it’s been just over 8 months to get to the final round of five remaining contestants. This specific division were for Team Australia members rated up to 1150 ELO in daily matches at the beginning of the tournament.
I entered the final round with the lowest rating. The contestants:
- vitualis (the chess noob!) – 1158
- @gothedogs – 1159
- @KnightBeatsAll – 1186
- @edwardsl – 1229
- @flylikeaD6 – 1266
Each contestant plays the others twice – once as White and once as Black – so I have up to 8 matches in this round if nobody withdraws and abandons the tournament. I’m really excited that I’ll have a good chance of coming within the top three and getting a (virtual) medal!
I’m going to covering each of my matches, win or lose, in this round. The order of the videos and articles will be the order in which they finish.
Match 1 (https://www.chess.com/game/daily/426285971) was against @KnightBeatsAll where I had the white pieces. As usual, I lead with (1. e4) and my opponent responded with the excellent (1… c5), the Sicilian Defense. Earlier in rounds 1 and 2 of the tournament, I tended to play the Grand Prix Attack against the Sicilian Defense. However, I recently have been experimenting with the unsound Smith-Morra Gambit (2. d4), to pull Sicilian players out of their comfort zone!
My opponent accepts the gambit (2… cxd4), meaning that after the next couple of moves (3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3), we are likely to be both completely out of theory and battle begins! One of the early ideas from this line is that my light square bishop on c4 (6. Bc4) and then queen on b3 (7. Qb3) lines up a powerful early battery on Black’s weak f7 pawn. Stockfish gave an evaluation of [+1.40], but I play inaccurately I don’t convert this advantage. In these games with higher stakes, I tend to be torn by a certain tension – my usual style tends to be aggressive and attacking, and yet, I second-guess myself and feel pulled into play more conservatively.
The same thing happens again a few moves later. My opponent blunders their rook (9. b6) by pushing their b-pawn which now cannot escape an attack by my bishop (10. d5). However, my fear of losing material in the short term from my opponent’s counterattack resulted in a seemingly conservative move that was a straight up blunder as I then lose the opportunity to take was, in essence, free material!
The game now steers towards me attacking Black’s king-side position. This was somewhat complex and we both blundered in the manoeuvring. This was a relatively low accuracy game! However, my opponent had some more intrinsic dangers in their position – they had, early on, lost or moved their king-side pawns so was reliant on their pieces for king defence. Earlier moves had also seen both of their rooks move off the back rank, and as the aphorism goes, “it’s never too late, to hang back rank mate”! My opponent made a terminal blunder on move 25 (25… Qf6), moving their queen off the back rank to attack my pawn on b2. Their own back rank was now exposed – my queen takes their back rank (26. Qe8) with now an unavoidable checkmate in 2. My opponent resigns and I win my first match in the final round of the 2022 Australia Day Tournament!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/daily/426285971
