Rollercoaster
Here's a third encounter with an Opponent who has previously appeared on this blog - and for the third time, Opponent had white and played the London System.
On previous occasions I have followed the approach outlined in my last post, and allowed White to play just the way that he wants to. This time I felt that doing the same thing again would be pushing my luck rather, and decided instead to avoid ... d5 for a while - so as at least to make him think a bit before going ahead with his autopilot plan (a white Ne5 being less attractive in such positions). This didn't turn out too well - I played the opening weakly and spent the next couple of hours hoping to find some way to wriggle out.
As we approached the final few minutes - the game was being played to a blitz finish - things began to change.
/)
Here I played 34. ... Rd1+ 35. Kf2 Ne4+, winning an exchange. I think that the position is still level, but the momentum was with me and I began to believe that I might even win the game.
Alas, we both stopped recording moves at this point (as we're allowed to do when in the last 5 minutes) so I can't give exact details, but the scramble did indeed go well - until with only a few seconds left each, we reached a position something like this (black to play):
/)
Obviously almost anything wins (... Qh1+ mates at once). Obviously I wouldn't bother with a diagram if I'd played almost anything. Obviously I played ... Qxf3?? stalemate. Oh dear.
I'm pretty sure that I've never been three queens and a rook up before; I wouldn't have guessed that it would happen in a drawn game. It's cold comfort to think that for most of the evening I'd have been delighted to escape with a half point.
I expect that Opponent's teammate was trying to make me feel better - probably! - when he told me "Yeah, I've done that too... but not since I was twelve". (He's somewhat older than that now.) It didn't really help.
On previous occasions I have followed the approach outlined in my last post, and allowed White to play just the way that he wants to. This time I felt that doing the same thing again would be pushing my luck rather, and decided instead to avoid ... d5 for a while - so as at least to make him think a bit before going ahead with his autopilot plan (a white Ne5 being less attractive in such positions). This didn't turn out too well - I played the opening weakly and spent the next couple of hours hoping to find some way to wriggle out.
As we approached the final few minutes - the game was being played to a blitz finish - things began to change.
Here I played 34. ... Rd1+ 35. Kf2 Ne4+, winning an exchange. I think that the position is still level, but the momentum was with me and I began to believe that I might even win the game.
Alas, we both stopped recording moves at this point (as we're allowed to do when in the last 5 minutes) so I can't give exact details, but the scramble did indeed go well - until with only a few seconds left each, we reached a position something like this (black to play):
Obviously almost anything wins (... Qh1+ mates at once). Obviously I wouldn't bother with a diagram if I'd played almost anything. Obviously I played ... Qxf3?? stalemate. Oh dear.
I'm pretty sure that I've never been three queens and a rook up before; I wouldn't have guessed that it would happen in a drawn game. It's cold comfort to think that for most of the evening I'd have been delighted to escape with a half point.
I expect that Opponent's teammate was trying to make me feel better - probably! - when he told me "Yeah, I've done that too... but not since I was twelve". (He's somewhat older than that now.) It didn't really help.
Comments