It was a good game. I have so much to learn from the games I play at the club. I feel like I've actually improved and I may have confirmed this when I played Milan last week and he told me that he found it "difficult" after winning. Mind you, he's 700+ rating points ahead of me at the moment.
- Phil
Hi all,
Firstly, apologies for the lack of regular updates to the series since my last installment some months ago. Studies, buying a house and preparing for / participating in several club chess tournaments have taken their toll on the writing. Now that my chess season is over for the year, hopefully I can catch up with a few quick-fire articles.
There is a fine line between winning and losing chess games. Grandmaster Andrew Soltis summed up this dilemma best in the beginning of his book “Chess Mistakes – How to Detect and Avoid Them” with the following observations:
“We like to think the game is a battle between good moves and better moves. When we win, we tell ourselves – and anyone who will listen – that the critical difference was our fine maneuvering, our positional cunning, or our tactical ingenuity….The Masters know better. They know that a well-played game is not an error-free game…And the fact is that most games, even at the grandmaster level, are constant struggles…”
And if that struggle is difficult for the titled players, it is eternal for amateur minds like mine. I experienced this firsthand during some of my 2012 tournament games by getting out of jail from some lost positions, two of note I will detail below from the key positions mid-way during the relevant games.
The first game was from my first use of the English Opening. After a quite start and some strategic maneuvers, I traded a bishop for 3 pawns, and the below position shows the state of play as we moved into the endgame. The 3 linked pawn islands for white are dangerous, but black has a nasty dark square bishop and a passed pawn at c3. It was always going to be a dramatic finish, but made more so by my ham-fisted approach.
The start position of the second game was a result of a Sicillian Defence (Accelerated Dragon) attacked early through the Rossolimo Variation (3.Bb5). I created a lot of dark squared weakness in my own defensive line and was prevented from castling but stole a pawn and a lead in material. This wasn’t to last, though, and my lazy defence queenside resulted in a mini-positional collapse, and Phil won the pawn back with interest as you will see…
My thanks and commiserations go to my noble opponents Bernard Gibson and Philip Vels, who all but took the point in these contests and are far better player than their rating indicates.
Next: No Plan, No Clue, No Point