Round two of the Nova Scotia Open was on Saturday morning, the first of two games for that day. I was happy with my win from yesterday, and my opponent in round two was rated 1431, about 100 points higher than my round 1 opponent, and less than 100 points lower than me. It could be anyone’s game!
The opening was pretty normal up to now. An exchange Caro-Kann, with maybe a bit of a quiet setup by white. However, it was a line I didn’t have prepared, and I wasn’t sure which idea for black was correct.
It turns out that probably playing …Nf6 and …Bd6 to get developed actively was probably the way to go.
However, I decided to get a bit aggressive, which wasn’t really the right way to go.
It doesn’t really help my development, and I’m actually not threatening to win a pawn because my own b-pawn is weak and can probably be won by white after I take theirs.
Now I was thinking about lines where I play …Bc3, forcing the rook to move, and winning the pawn on d4. However, I was seeing a lot of danger, with the x-ray on my queen, and an x-ray on my unprotected light-squared bishop.
It turns out …Bc3 still would have worked here, but I thought that I needed to prepare for it. Mainly because of this line:
Because of this, I decided that I needed to play …Nf6 first in order to protect the light-squared bishop and prepare that line. Which, it turns out, actually doesn’t protect that bishop very much because of the x-ray from the white queen. But in the end, I missed a very powerful move from white.
This move messes up any chances I had of winning the d-pawn, because now …Bc3 can be met with Rc1, forcing me to capture right away (or retreat), and then the c5 push is very powerful, winning material for white.
It turns out, that simply playing …Bc3 on move 9 as I originally planned, preventing the c4 push, and then playing …Nf6 would have been the way to go. I missed this because I felt like I needed the …Nf6 prep move, but didn’t realize that I could play it after moving the bishop, and I didn’t see the c-pawn push and how powerful it was.
Instead, after the c-pawn push, I knew that positionally I was in trouble, and felt over-extended. I decided to consolidate, castle, and defend.
Now I’m not fond of my position as I felt like I wasted time attacking and retreating, but at least I don’t feel like I’m significantly worse.
Next, my opponent captured my knight on c6 with the bishop. I remember having a hard time deciding whether to recapture with the pawn or the queen. Recapturing with the queen means that I keep my b-pawn which can potentially try to break up white’s center later. However, then white can bring the knight in with a tempo:
So I decided to take with the pawn instead. I didn’t like how this meant I couldn’t easily try to chip away at white’s pawns, and that I had a backward pawn that could be a target, but actually closing the position didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
I totally missed a tactic here, which could have won me a pawn. I moved my knight to d7 to try to remove white’s powerful knight, but white’s d-pawn was overloaded, guarding both the c-pawn and the knight. …Bxc5 was the right move:
My next move also wasn’t fantastic, although it has an interesting lesson:
Something I’ve noticed about my play is that sometimes I’ll do a bunch of calculation, and then when I decide on a move, I just go ahead and do it, and then I quickly scan the board to see whether I’ve made a mistake. Often, when I do make a mistake, I see it almost immediately after I make the move.
So, why not try to find it before I make the move? I’m trying to remember whenever I make a move to try to quickly visualize what the board is going to look like after I make that move. In this case, before I played …Qc8, I chose to play …Qd8 instead. But I remembered to visualize the board first, and quickly realized that …Qd8 would lose a pawn!
After realizing that, I adjusted, and playing …Qc8 instead. It turns out that capturing the knight would probably have been better, in order to remove the pressure from my c-pawn. But at least I didn’t make a serious mistake.
Not yet, anyway…
Guess what? I made that move …Rb8 and forgot to visualize the board before I did so. And sure enough, as soon as I made the move, I saw my mistake. And of course, so did my opponent.
The issue is that there is a discovered attack on the rook when the white knight moves. I had seen it earlier when I was thinking about where to move my queen, but I forgot about that tactic. I wasn’t really sure how to make progress, and felt that putting the rook on the semi-open b-file was a good improving move. Not so much.
And now I’m in “damage control” mode. I’m down an exchange, but there are still several pieces on the board, and the game isn’t over yet. At least if I’m going to lose, I’m going to make my opponent work for it.
Turns out Rh3 was a mistake, because I could capture the c-pawn!
This wasn’t possible while white’s rook was still on the e-file because of some tactics with my weak back rank. However, I missed this one as well.
The bishop move was to cover h6 so that white still couldn’t get their queen and rook lined up, but actually it wasn’t necessary. Even if white gets lined up and takes the h-pawn, my king is still safe, because it can escape to f8 and my bishop covers the h8 square! Better here would have been to push …e5 and maybe try to win the d-pawn.
At this point, we did a bit of maneuvering, I finally pushed the e-pawn, and I made a bit of a strategic mistake.
The mistake was on move 28, I shouldn’t have captured with my queen, initiating a trade. Since I was down material, I should have left the queens on the board, improving chances for counterplay and not allowing my opponent to simplify too much.
However, now we’re getting into the endgame, and for a while, I was defending pretty well.
I had been avoiding capturing this pawn because I realized that white could put their rook on the c-file and capture my c-pawn. I wanted to get my rook in with …Rxf4+ and have my bishop pointing toward the king as well. But it would have been better to make a move like …Bf6 instead, still opening up the attack from my rook, but leaving the c-file blocked by white’s pawn.
Things are looking a bit bleak at this point. There were a few more missed chances, and I caused some potential trouble, but alas, I didn’t survive.
Key Moments
- Missing white’s c4 push on move 10 was problematic. If I had realized its potential, I could have played a bit differently.
- I missed tactics on moves 15 and 24, each of which would have won me a pawn. In both cases, it was a matter of taking a pawn which appeared to be protected by another pawn, but it could still be captured because of the tactic. This is something to keep an eye on, since by “pattern recognition” I often discount the idea of capturing a protected pawn. Something to watch for.
- Of course on move 18 if I had visualized the move, I likely wouldn’t have noticed the blunder before I made it.
- Allowing the c-file to open up because of my capture on move 37 was a big endgame mistake. I should have tried to keep it closed, and keep the rooks from infiltrating.