TCC-40 Round 4

In my game against Marius, I was once again in a position to go over 2200.   This was the second chance in the past couple of weeks and once again I choked.  The move 8...dxc is really lame.  I should just develop and get on with the game.  I thought the move 12...Nd5 would be o.k. but I should have looked at how undeveloped I was. 12...Rc8 was a reasonable combative alternative.  Marius lands with a major piece on c7 and I wasn't able to extract it and castle. I traded Queens and then found that my intended Bd6 is strongly met by Rxb7! winning a piece.  I went into a 40 minute think and could not find a way to effectively defend.  I did manage to jettison a pawn and get my Rooks connected but by then my time was low and I was missing obvious tactics.

Dominick plays the relatively obscure 4...Bb7.  In my database 4...a6 was played in 23K games!  The move 4...Bb7 was played just 28 times!  The silicon hates the move and Komodo pounds out the line 5.Nc3 e6 6.e4 d6?! 7.dxe6 fxe6 with a nice positional edge for White. Dominck's 7...Nbd7 was a bit bad because James is able to inflict a weakness on e6.  The move 13...Nf8 had to hurt and Dominick, like me, was never able to recover.

The King-Ball game was a snorefest and both players were peacefully inclined.  Perhaps White should have considered bringing his knight to the kingside.  He did have the better bishop. 

Paschal plays the London.  Fellinger's 8...c4 seems to release the tension in the center but Komodo has no problem with it.  His 11...Bxg3 opens the h-file and looks scary but again Komodo has no problem with it!  It was the pawn capture 12...dxe4 that the silicon didn't like. Continuing on the queenside with 12...b4 was more in keeping with the 8...c4 idea. Paschal's 16.Nd6 has some flair but with a cool head Fellinger could have defended with 16...Ne7 and the position is level. Instead he allows Paschal's attack and after the trade of queens and some pawn mopping, Paschal tops it off with a nice tactic forcing Fellinger to resign.