Relaxing too soon

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On Monday, I reached this position (with black, to play):



Of course I want to play ... d5, and if this is possible then black should be just fine, perhaps even better. So I calculated the game continuation as far as 16. ... d5 17. exd5 Rd8 18. Qc2 Rxd5 19. Rxd5 Bxd5 20. Bc5 Nd6 21. Qd3 Qe6, and decided that this looked OK - and that I must therefore be doing well.

Unfortunately this is a case of stopping one move too soon, as white has a winning shot: 22. Bh3!

If that was all there was to it I'd have been disappointed, of course - it's not good to miss tactics. Still, these things will happen at a distance of a dozen ply or so. What annoys me much more is that I still didn't spot the danger after 21. Qd3.



So happy was I to have made my break, and so confident that my position was good, that I sleepwalked into 21. ... Qe6? without noticing even then that this was losing. If I had been more aware, I would have at least looked for something better - and it turns out that after almost any other plausible move, black has enough tactical shots to wriggle out unharmed. (I don't want to burden this post with variations, but some of the lines are quite amusing. If you're feeling keen it's probably worth firing up either brain or engine to take a look).

So, it's a game with a nice clean lesson about staying alert, and always checking for tactics? Well, yes, but... you see, another factor in playing 21. ... Qe6 was that I have been flirting with time trouble in recent games - so in this game I was making a deliberate effort to play the 'obvious' moves quickly. Turns out that it's not always obvious which moves are the obvious ones. It's a difficult game.

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