Yeah, it may have not been spectacular, but a win's still a win (as well as a pawn being a pawn) and you played that game well.
Opening aggression leads to a winning endgame
Sort:
AnthonyCG wrote:
6.Nc3 is better. 6.f3 is a bit too comittal and you'll have to waste tempo to play f4 which gives White a nice space advantage. It's not a blunder though.
8.Be2 is fine. It doesn't hurt you at all.
Castling kingside was better imo. You play f4 and still get good play. Putting your king on the queenside just gives Black a target to play against whereas on the kingside he's tucked away and Black will have to find another plan.
Black must castle kingside regardless since the queenside isn't safe and with f4 and e5 possible he doesn't want to be in the center either.
Good game though. After Black lost that pawn it looks like it was all over.
Thanks for the comments. I'll try to address them one at a time.
I can see what you mean about O-O, but at that point in time, I was really looking at an attack on the black king, rather than slower play on the queenside. Also, at the time I did believe I was winning the race, and to really play for those aims, I felt that I needed to castle on the queenside. (Besides, to be fair, even if the decision later blows up in your face, those games often turn out spectacular
) As for Be2, I also questioned it from a technical perspective simply because, let's face it, it is not as aggressive or active as some of the moves out there. As I said, it has its positive points, backing up a possible G4 push, but it also runs the risk of being, depending on how the game develops, somewhat slow.
Personally, I'm not sure how I would qualify f3. I agree, it's not a blunder, but I'm not sure how its actually looked upon in theory. A large part of the move lies in the psychological factor: I've played it before and it provides a clear plan of continuation. Also from a more objective perspective, it does hold a lot of positives, including its prophylactic affect on the knight (I know I've mainly seen this setup used against the Dragon but I figured that the themes, especially in opposite sided castled positions, are somewhat transferable.)
As for the game being over after the win of a pawn, I can assure you that it was not quite as easy as it might have looked watching it unfold (especially with the time controls baring down). Black did have some counterplay for the piece, especially early on in that endgame, and it took a lot of time, patience, careful play and effort, to convert the pawn into a win. In my annotations I tried to convey this reality as best I could. Endgames may look to be easy and straightforward, especially when your just watching it play out after the fact, but I've always found that that stage is the most difficult part of the game, as even the slightest misstep could prove fatal.
This is probably one of my better games in a long time. Playing the Sicilian, in 5/3 time controls, I launch an early attack, and net a pawn for my efforts. The rest of the game involves converting that pawn into a win. Let me know what you think. Like all my more strategically oriented games, this is annotated in detail.