After losing my first game in May Open tournament I had desperately needed a win. For this purpose I sacrificed the
d4-pawn in the Italian game opening (“1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. d4!?”). I had played this variation many times but you never know what may happen in a concrete moment. There are at least two essential positions (“1“ and “2”) in the opening illustrating our mistakes (there will also be two mistakes in an endgame, position 3 and 4). So, in position 1 Black had just played h6 and I quickly retreated - Bh4. But I forgot a rule “sometimes you do not have to parry the opponent’s threats; you create your own threats”. Indeed, White could have played “f-pawn takes e-pawn” and two black knights are hanging. So Black does not have time to capture my bishop, and after “d6xe5” White may capture f6-knight doubling pawns with much better position (some variants are in the comments to the game). After a couple of moves (see position 2) I had decided to do this (to worsen the Black’s pawn structure) and played “bishop takes f6-knight” assuming that Black could not play “a queen takes a bishop”. But Black could recapture my bishop by his queen not to be worried by the seeming confrontation of f6-queen and f1-rook.
Now I am describing our endgame mistakes. In position 3 I decided to prevent Black from playing f5 and placed my rook on f5 (at first I intended to play g4 but at the last moment noticed a move Rg8 winning a g4-pawn after h3 - h5). But this f5-rook does not do much. After Rc8 and b5 Black is much better. Yegna had found this and I had to defend my queen flank by returning my rook. So I forgot such a rule: “in an endgame move your pieces actively!” I had to play Rf3 and Rb3 attacking the black’s pawns first. At last (position 4) Yegna had committed a fatal mistake. He took h5-pawn but allowed my king to penetrate into his position, winning a d6-pawn. After it the Black’s position had simply collapsed and I won the game! He forgot the rule about the active pieces. So, there is one valuable piece of advice from this report. “Try playing actively, not only defend from the opponents threats but create your own threats”.
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