Tuesday, June 29, 2010

I make a lot of horrible mistakes, but get lucky in the end

Karl Escherbach - Elizabeth Vicary
marshall g/60, rd 2
1. e4 c6
2. Nc3 d5
3. d4 dxe4
4. Nxe4 Bf5
5. Ng3 Bg6
6. N1e2 Nd7
7. Nf4


7...e5!
I liked this move.
8.
Nxg6 hxg6
9. Bc4


how does black win a pawn here?

picture of a pretty tree to cover the answer!

with 9...Nb6! 10. Bb3 Qxd4. of course I don't even look at it and instead play

9... exd4 This is stupid and just develops white's queen for him. I'm happy if white takes on e5-- it centralizes my knight, so I should just develop something. or play Nb6.
10. Qxd4 Rh4
11. Qe3+ Be7
12. Bb3 Ngf6
13. O-O
what should black not do?

me at elementary nationals, covering the answer

Black should not play 13...Rxh2
. What happened was this: I thought about it for a while, and I became scared of the line 13...Rxh2 14. Re1 (threatening 15. Qxe7 Qxe7 16. Rxe7 Kxe7 17. Kxh2) 14...Rh4/8, and then Bd2, Rad1, Bc3 maybe, and it's not so easy for black to find a safe place for the king, even defending e7 can get tricky, and so I thought maybe I can't spend the tempi to take this pawn, then my mind wandered for a bit, just kind of idly touching on a few alternatives, but not finding anything concrete, and then felt annoyed with myself and told myself to stop wasting time and make a decision. I decided to just play Rxh2, then Rh4, then Kf8: how bad can it be?

13...Rxh2??
14. Re1?? (amazingly, he also overlooked 14. Bxf7+! Kxf7 15.Qb3+ Nd5 16. Kxh2)
14... Rh4
15. Bd2 Kf8
16. Rad1 Bc5
17. Qf3 Qc7
18. Bg5

18....Rg4?
I completely miss how strong his next move is.
19. Ne4! Ne5
And also his next move. I wasn't so much analyzing here, as looking at candidate moves and randomly picking one.
20. Qh3 20...Bxf2+ I realized I was lost here, so I was trying to play the most complicated moves.
21. Kxf2 Nxe4+
22. Rxe4 Rxg5
23. Qh8+ Ke7
24. Qxa8 Qb6+
White has six ways to get out of check. three of them lose. pretty much 50-50 who wins I guess.
25. Kf1 Rf5+
0-1
hahahahaa. poor dude. guess what he said to me afterwards?
"I just thought you were going to resign."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apparently R1d4 to block the check looks like white is holding the position.
I'm a little confused by your assessment black is "lost", unless white blundered a few moves ago, this position looks pretty unclear to me though maybe w/ fritz white can prove an advantage the position seems kind of unbalanced but there are attacks for both sides.

maybe white had something better somewhere in the moves preceding the final diagram

Elizabeth Vicary said...

I'm down a rook

Anonymous said...

lol

LinuxGuy said...

"and then felt annoyed with myself and told myself to stop wasting time and make a decision."

[chuckles]

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one doing this. This is also how I make my blunders. Somehow after the game, clock time seems so much more irrelevant, and it really is. I'm figuring on it being a confidence factor brought on by mental-fatigue. I need to learn how to ignore these thoughts.