Nothing spectacular here. I went through a '10 computer losses in 15 minutes' phase because I was hungry and dropped my rating down below 1300 for the first time in awhile, almost down below 1200. Food prevailed and I got most of it back, then found a higher-rated human opponent.
I won, and I liked this win. It was nothing spectacular: he made a small counting error on a complicated exchange and went down a pawn, and I was able to nurse that pawn to victory.
Fritz is taking forever, but it's amazing. You can get it to tell you in words what it's trying to say, it'll give you simple English like "XXX must be considered" or "White gets more space" or "xxx is the best way to fight back," along with full opening analysis and references to master games with the same opening, and suggested alternative lines.
[Event "ICC"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2009.09.24"]
[White "Atzur"]
[Black "KyleMayhugh"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1541"]
[BlackElo "1337"]
[ECO "C70"]
[Opening "Ruy Lopez"]
[Variation "Classical defense deferred"]
[TimeControl "1800+10"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Bc5 5. c3 Nf6
6. Bc2 d6
I'm no expert or anything, but I feel like I have a decent grasp on my defense against the Ruy Lopez, mostly thanks to some ICC videos I'd watched.
7. h3 Be6
Fritz strongly recommends d5 here, and I was thinking about it, but I was wary of playing my break move before my pieces were developed.
8. d4 exd4 9. cxd4 Bb4+
I have no doubt that even a couple of weeks ago I would have missed what was happening here. Drive the bishop away, then play d5 and fork my pieces. 10. Bd2 Bxd2+
I did some real careful math on the possible ensuing exchanges, and I came up with Ne4 after e5 breaking up his bishop pair, and more importantly giving me a key tempo when he had to move his knight after dxe4, allowing me to take on d4 with either the queen or the knight, probably the queen.
11. Qxd2 d5 12. e5 Ne4 13. Bxe4 dxe4 14. Ng5 Qxd4
Which to take first, the queen or the knight? I decided to play the forcing move first and not let him wriggle away.
15. Nxe6 Qxd2+
16. Nxd2 fxe6 17. Nxe4 Nxe5
So here we are, having followed the exchange line I envisioned 19! ply ago and come out exactly where I thought we would. I'm amazed at what can happen if you think your exchanges out carefully, and quite proud of myself. If I could do this more frequently, I'd be a much better player. This needs to become a regular occurence, not a moment to cheer.
The opponent know's what he's doing and does a very good job of trying to make that pawn irrelevant, but it's a relatively simple position from here, which makes it easier on me.
18. O-O-O Ke7
I'd rather not castle and push my king too far from the center where he needs to be for the coming endgame, especially since opponent opportunistically castled queenside and grabbed the key file.
19. Rhe1 Rhd8 20. Rxd8 Rxd8
Here was a bit of serendipity. I hadn't planned on this, but I suspected he'd been planning to use the discovered attack on the knight when he moved his knight in a challenging manner. I was being careful not to put myself in a situation where he could win material from that tactic.
But without really planning it, the threat of Nd3+ kept that at bay and ended up forcing the exchanges I wanted anyway.
21. Nc5 Nd3+ 22. Nxd3 Rxd3 23. Kc2 Rd5
Now my priorities are two-fold, and it's something I've learned recently:
Second priority would be to get the rooks off the board in an exchange. That would have been first priority in the past, but now the first priority I know has to be to prevent him from getting a passed pawn that's out of reach of my pieces. Too often I've found myself exchanging off the last pieces and up a pawn or two, only to realize he's got a passed pawn that I can't catch.
24. Re2 c5 25. Kc3 b5
26. a3 Kd6
I've got the middle nice and clogged.
27. f4 Rd4 28. g3 a5 29. Re5 b4+
Very strong move gets his rook into the game.
30. axb4 axb4+
31. Kb3 Rd3+ 32. Kc4 Rxg3 33. Rxc5 Rxh3 34. Kxb4 Rh4 35. Rc4 Kd5
I thought pretty hard about this sequence, because the potential to mess it up was huge. My first inclination was to play e5, which would have lost the game immediately to fxe5+.
Moving my king closer to his rook and king felt scary, but I checked as close as I could and couldn't see any attacks generated from it, so I trusted myself.
36. Kb5 e5
37. Rc5+ Ke6 38. Rxe5+ Kf6
Temporarily giving up the pawn, but his king is too far away to support the f-pawn and it will fall.
39. Re4 Kf5 40. Re7 Rg4
41. Re5+ Kxf4
Doing some hardcore counting squares and moves in my head here. The decisive factor should be that his king is in the way of his pawn, and when he moves it out of the way, that should let me wing pawn get there first.
42. Re8 Rg5+ 43. Kc6 h5 44. Rh8 Kg4 45. b4 h4
46. b5 Rg6+ 47. Kb7 Rh6
If he plays Kc5 instead of Kb7 here, Fritz thinks he may have fought back and won with the more-advanced passed pawn.
48. Rxh6 gxh6 49. Kc7 h3 50. b6 h2
51. b7 h1=Q
Math and the extra pawn I've been nursing all game prevails. Fritz didn't give me a single question-mark all game, which is very cool.
52. b8=Q Qh2+
0-1
White resigns.
In other news, I watched a video on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and am trying to work it into my repetoire, but so far no human has cooperated. I know it's not sound at the highest levels, but it might be fun to have something to give players at my level a hard time.
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