You don't know what you're doing...

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... but, with any luck, neither does your opponent. And that can be a lot of fun!

So it proved in this game, where I stumbled my way into some typically wild Najdorf theory and blundered around like the amateur that I am.

At the end of the evening the strong players in the room gathered round and convinced us that black probably should have lost several times over. In this position, they all wanted to play 11. Nd5



and things do indeed get rather hairy here. But on checking the database afterwards, it seems that a few brave grandmasters are still occasionally willing to enter into this line; so it should surely be playable at my level.

After that there were rather a lot of errors. 15. ... Kf8 is a clear mistake, and white misses a nice shot at move 19:



Here 19. Bg6! seems to win on the spot: after 19. ... fxg6 20. Qxg6 black can't cover both e6 and g7 and goes down quickly; while either 19 ... Raf8 or 19. ... Rhf8 loses to 20. Qh4+.

After that the computers consider roughly every other move in this game to be a serious mistake, but we somehow managed to get to the time control with the position approximately level. And here, with the match tied at 2-2 and only this game remaining, we adjourned.

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