PoPChess

This Monday our team competition started. I was 6 weeks without competetive chess, so I was looking forward to play again. If you take into consideration that I really enjoyed live streams from the Corus tournament then you can’t imagine how ‘horny’ I was to play chess

Our opponent in the 1st round was a bit weaker team and we were supposed to win the match. The team competitions here are played in teams of eight. This time we were in six people from the basic line-up plus two players from the substitutes group.

The match started well for us as the opponent was only in seven players. As the waiting period here is one hour, we have to wait 60 minutes to score our first point. Then we won on the 6th board and there was a draw on the 8 th board (which I did not understand as our player was a pawn up and his opponent had no compensation).

The score was 2,5:0,5 and situations on other boards gave us a real chance to win the match.

We lost the battle on the 3rd board. It was very interesting game in blocade position. Unfortunately the opponent managed the situation better.

The score was 2,5:1,5. And then started the fourth hour of the match.

As you probably also experienced, if you play team competitions, sometimes a lit of games end at the same moment. Like in our case yesterday.

And all four of them were our wins! At first My opponent resigned after I reached the time control in the 40th move. Then we won the 7th board because of fallen flag. And immediately after that we won also on the two remaining boards.

The final score 6,5:1,5!

Here is my game. We played Ruy-Lopez. I do not know whether my opponent wanted to play the Marshal attack, but I did not want to check it that night, so I played 8.a4.

After a few moves he lost a pawn (11.Nxe5 – it was an oversight as my opponent told me after the game), but the game went to a clone of the Marshal attack. I believe it was better setup for white because of his kingside knight which was very useful defending piece.

The most problems for me were caused by darksquared bishop of the opponent, so I was happy to find a way how to erase it from the board (my 15th and 16th moves). Plus I gained second pawn up at the moment.

The rest was easy. Although black had some tactics, I was able to manage the win.

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