Leeds Chess Association league
I play in the Leeds Chess Association (LCA) league for Rose Forgrove D. I'm new to club chess and I'm trying to improve as a player. One part of that effort is to do some analysis of my games. (Disclaimer: the fact that I play in the D team should give you some indication of my skill, currently my English Chess Federation (ECF) grade is 116, which is not high.)
The time control for the league is 80+10 (80 minutes each, plus 10 seconds per move). After making each move you must write it down in algebraic chess notation. This means you can go back through the game afterwards, which is what I'm about to do here.
On Wednesday I played my first game of the season against Leeds University B. It was a 5v5 match. I won my game and cliched the match decisively for our team 3-2.
Analysis
Opening
I started the game with a very simple game plan.
Think of it like a marathon.
Start slow, get slower.
I've noticed in my longer online games (around 15+15) that I have a tendency to play reasonably accurately until I think I have an attack.
Then I get too excited, overlook some critical detail and blunder a piece.
This time control is so much longer.
There is no rush!
Start slow, get slower.
And so, I began the game.
The first interesting moment was on the second move, black played Marshall's defence.
Black declines the Queen's gambit (2. c4) and tries to reinforce his pawn on c5 with 2... Nf6.
I don't like this defence for black.
Because after white captures 3. cxd5, black must recapture with either the queen or the knight.
White gets to develop naturally with tempo1.
In the game black took with the queen, 3... Qxd5.
Perhaps that's no worse than taking with the knight as black loses a tempo either way.
So I played 4. Nc3, simultaneously attacking the queen and developing the knight to it's natural square.
Black then played 4... Qd6.
This seemed like a bad move to me.
It's just too early to have the queen out and it presents quite a target there on c6.
Although the engine preferred a different continuation2, I decided to play more developing moves.
We had 5. Nf3 Bf5, 6. g3 Nd7.
Next I played 7. Bf4.
This was the culmination of a two move mini-plan, g3 protecting the f4 square before putting my bishop there.
This forces black to move his queen again, and to not make a better developing move.
After moving the queen black only has 1 piece controlling e5 (his knight on d7).
I now have three pieces (pawn on e4, bishop on f4, knight on f3) all controlling e5.
This makes an e5 pawn break by black difficult for now, and I have a comfortable position in the centre.
Black responded by putting his queen on the best square, 7...Qb6, targeting b2.
I considered 3 moves in response, Qd2, Qc1, Na4.
I didn't like Qd2 since it would force my bishop to a suboptimal square should it need to retreat in the future.
Na4 was what the engine liked, but I saw continuations where the knight got harassed by black's b-pawn.
Qc1 was solid without taking on much risk, and x-rays his pawn on c7.
I guess black felt the pressure of that x-ray and so played 8...c6.
With no immediate threats from black, I continued development 9. Bg2.
Black decided to castle short and pushed 9...g7 to make room for his dark square bishop.
Normal play followed, 10. o-o Bg7.
It's worth noting here that black is behind in development.
I have castled a move ahead of him.
I decided to try and take advantage of this with 11. Re1.
The threat connected with this move is to push e4 to attack his bishop, he only has Be6 to retreat, (Bg4 is met by a3), which further cramps his e-pawn.
At this point black voluntarily parted with his light square bishop for my knight with 11...Be4.
We had the first trades of the game, 12. Nxe4 Nxe4, followed by 13. Qc2 Ndf6 with black defending his knight.
I thought this wasn't the best move for black.
The engine analysis marks it with !?.
Black's e4 knight is defended by his f6 knight.
But black's problem is that my g2 bishop is also x-raying his knight on e4 and there's no other piece that can defend that square next turn3.
Though the position suggests tactics, they weren't quite ripe yet.
I can't unleash my g2 bishop by moving my knight to attack anything valuable.
At this point moving my knight would just provoke his knight on e4 retreat to d6.
So, following my mantra of slow, I played a useful improving move. As did he, 13. Rad1 Rd8.
Here I inserted 14. Be5 o-o with black castling.
The logic here is that black can't challenge my bishop on e5 without giving up his dark square bishop on g7, master defender of his king.
With my bishop stable, I embarked on a rook lift plan.
16. Rd3 c5.
I'm not sure what black's plan was with c5, trying to initiate some trades on the d-file?
I swung my rook over to harass his queen, and black made a mistake.
17. Rb3 Qc3.
Now the tactics I discussed earlier suddenly work, although I did not choose the most accurate continuation4.
I took his knight, 18. Bxf6 Bxf6, which was the wrong recapture for black.
I played 19. Ne5 attacking his queen and unleashing my light square bishop.
His queen and knight are both under fire, double attack!
Black takes 19...Bxe5 but it doesn't help 20. Bxe5 and I'm still on his queen.
Black retreats 20...Qa4, and I take the bishop 21. dxe5…
… and I'm up a solid piece with continued pressure on his position. Black never recovered and I went on to win the game comfortably.
Here's the entire game on lichess for you to click through.
Summary
The engine analysis of the game gives me 1 mistake and 0 blunders, my opponent had 4 mistakes and 1 blunder.
My mistake was not seeing the 18. Ng5 tactic.
Figure 1: Stockfish's summary: 1 mistake and 0 blunders for me.
After the game my opponent told me he didn't know how to play against the queen's gambit. So he arrived at Marshall's defence with real time calculation in the opening. Marshall's defense is basically never played at this highest levels5 because losing that tempo is so bad for Black. I felt comfortable for the entire game right out of the opening for that reason. The engine agrees with my assessment, saying I had a slowly accumulating advantage.
Figure 2: Engine eval vs. moves in the game (sorry physicists lichess doesn't put units on this graph!)
Some personal notes
I really enjoyed the game, it's always fun to win of course, but I won it with a more patient style than I normally have. Don't get too excited, don't wildly press for the attack, just incrementally accumulate an advantage until the opponent runs out of good moves.
Footnotes:
Figure 3: (Sideline) 3. e4
Figure 4: (Sideline) 3. Nf3
There were only a few points in the game where the engine pointed out a move I think I should have spotted.
If I have played 5.e5 that also comes with tempo, like 4. Nc3 did, as next turn I'm threatening to push 5. e5 forking the queen and knight.
To avoid that black would have had to move one of it's two developed pieces again!
After 5. Nf3 Bf5 black was in control of the e5 square.
Figure 5: (Sideline) 5.e4. White threatens to push the pawn to e5 so black must move either queen or knight immediately, so e4 is a free move.
His queen can defend but needs two moves to get there.
His f-pawn can also defend but he can't use it without moving his f6 knight, removing e4's only defender.
However, I did not pursue the most accurate continuation, shown here Ng5.
I had been considering that move earlier, before Black's queen was on c6.
I suppose this is why I didn't see it at the time.
With the continuation I saw the very best case was black losing a pawn and white having significant pressure in the following play.
Figure 6: (Sideline) 18.Ng5. The black knight can't move without white dropping his queen. It's triple attacked with only one defender. White wins a piece.