Playing against Berlin Defence

Berlin Defence characterised by:

1. e4 e52. Nf3 Nc63. Bb5 Nf6
has a reputation of a solid & a drawish opening. In recenlt concluded chess championship match at Sochi it was played in Game # 2, 7, 9 & 11.
While this opening is common at GM level- its seldom played at sub 1400 rated games. Luckily, during Anand vs Carlsen match- I got some nuance to play Berlin defence which I put to some good use against an opponent today (25/12/2014).

Footnotes: (1) If at move #4- If white castles 0-0 then 4....Nxe4 5. d4 Nd6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. e5 Nf5 8. Qxd8 Kxd8 (taking off the queen's)- leading to very drawish game.

(2) I played at move #4:Nc3 is second most popular move after castling.

I think 5...bxc6 was a mistake for him.  The ordinary move is ...dxc6, because that leads to Nxe5 Nxe4 Nxe4 Qd4 and Black gets the material back.

"Queen cannot be moved since it will lead to mate in two" - It's actually not mate in 2 since you don't have to recapture, but it IS very bad, so you're better off taking the 2 rooks for the queen, like you did.

Strictly speaking, you were winning when you took the draw (you could have moved your king to h1 instead of f1 to avoid the threat of Qxh2) but I can understand why you took it.

Berlin defence seem to be the favorite opening of this season. I played another very interesting game against Berlin & managed to overcome my opponent towards the end game.

Berlin perhaps can be a great choice when seeking a draw as this opening does not provide many tactical opportunities & can lead to a dull game.

I wanted to see which engine was stronger. So I ran it on Analysis.deep-chess.de.

They seemed to like the Berlin.

7.Qe2 Qxc2

Really? Did you notice that the e4 Queen is pinned, or not?

Of course this harly matters: Black is already better.

4.Bxc6 is too hasty, and 5.Nxe5 is already a mistake, passing the advantage to Black.

Thanks for the observations. I completely overlooked that black's queen was pinned.

It seldom occurs where one gets to play a 500+ rated opponent. I today played in a 10|0 mins (Open) tournament & got a chance to play a 2000+ rated player.

The Opening was Berlin. Though I tried to play energetically- I was rattled by the speed my opponent was whipping out move after move & committed a blunder.

Since, it was a short game. I did not bother to put the annotations.

Perhaps you resigned a tad early?  16.Ke2 Nxb2 17.Rab1 traps the knight which means you don't lose a whole piece.  (Of course, the knight is going to take a pawn with it on its way out, leaving you down 2 pawns and your opponent has the bishop pair.  So maybe you'd resign anyway.  I don't think I would though, especially in a blitz game.)

Thanks for suggesting an interesting continuation. But when playing a very high rated player even losing a pawn can mean end of the game. Also the game was of very open nature where bishops would had dominated the knights.