New Ladder Season

I played my first game in the new season of the Ladder tournament last week. I played an opponent that I've played a couple of times before (here and here). That's always interesting for me as it allows me judge if I've been making any progress at all. My answer after this game is I haven't a clue!

It was a strange game. I should have lost straight out of the opening, then should have been better, then traded into an ending which I knew was drawing and then lost that ending.

My previous games against the same opponent involved me firstly losing hopelessly without any real counterplay and then losing in an ending after an even enough game. So possibly getting an advantage at some stage and even getting to a drawn ending could be seen as progress, but I really shouldn't have gotten anywhere near that.

In this game I really should have lost in the opening. I played the wrong opening moves - I was hoping he would play c4 to transpose into a Bg5 Queen's Gambit Declined position as I had a game coming up against an opponent who tended to play that. When that didn't happen I played the wrong plan and got my pieces marooned on the queenside. Suddenly he had serious mating threats due to his bishop pointing at h7.

I didn't see how to defend myself and after Ne4 to block the diagonal. I assumed that he would take that knight and grab my center pawn. This looks lost with his queen and knight attacking my king and his rooks ready to swing over. Instead he preserved his bishop and traded off knights but this really dissipated his attack. That bishop turned out to be a lemon for the rest of the game. It did nothing until it traded itself for my good bishop.

After that I was able to get my Queen defending my only weak spot on f7 and then once I got my rooks active was even better at one point. I should have done better in the middlegame but I was in severe time trouble. The game time for this was 60m + 15s and I used up pretty much all of that surviving the opening. It's hard to know which of the missing tactics I would have seen if I had more time.

I initially missed Rd8 but saw it later - maybe I would have seen it earlier with more time. I could see that there were potentially g5 ideas but couldn't calculate those properly. I would never have seen the Rxh3 ideas. I could see afterwards that I was too focused on short range moves around the h-file. With the rooks and queen I should have been more focused on more long range moves - the queen on h4 can support the rook "slingshotting" around h8, d8 and to d1. I don't think I'd have seen this with extra time but it's something to be aware of in future.

I knew that the rook ending was drawn but the pawn being so far back confused me. In all literature on rook pawn endings they have the pawn on the 6th or 7th rank. In those cases you want the king on g7 or h7. However with the pawn so far back putting the king there allows the opponent to walk his king over to the pawn, drive away your rook as it doesn't have enough files to operate, then cut off your king on the e file, getting a winning position. The proper drawing technique here is to use the tempi that your opponent will spend getting his king over to your rook, to get your king over to the a file. Best case you can get your king in front of the pawn and then use the back rank defense and go to sleep. Worst case you reach the c file and then your opponent can't use b8 to swap his king and rook so you get a draw. I hope to write a more detailed explanation in a future post.

→ posted on October 28, 2017chess