This time I want to talk about my game with Mark. He is a boy of about 12 years old with an interesting and creative playing style, similar to mine. In particular, he constantly seeks complex positions filled with rich tactical and strategic play.
However, this style (or Mark himself, no offense to him) has one significant drawback. My opponent has no sense of proper time management for thinking; he often ends up in terrible time trouble, where he makes unforgivable mistakes. And most importantly (as I will demonstrate below in my game analysis), when he gets into severe time trouble, he continues to play in his complex style.
But it is well known that in such situations, a chess player should avoid choosing complicated paths in the game; instead, they should simplify the position as much as possible. If immediate simplification is not an option, they should at least go for the clearest possible variations, even if they are not the best (that is my own “rule of thumb”, about that – read below).
In our game I, playing White, had chosen my favorite Wing-Gambit in the French Defense, characterized by moves 1.e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. e5 d5 4. b4 cxb4 5. a3.
Usually Black accepts this gambit but after the clearance of verticals “a” and “b” (as a result of capturing white’s “a” and “b” pawns) he castles on the king side of the board (sometimes leaves his king in the center) but he almost never castles on the queen side of the board. I was very surprised and glad by Mark’s decision to hide his king on the queen side!
Another Mark’s dubious decision was to place his queen on c7 what had led to necessity of trading my queen side knight on
b5-square and to set a harmonic and active group of the white’s pieces. Just look at the black position 28 in the upper part of the picture. In it I had just played Qd1-a4 trying to exploit a bad coordination between the black queen and knight. In this position Black had to concede with a loss of the pawn, since all three acceptable moves,- Na5-c4, a6xb5, and Na5-c6 (leading to white positions W1, W3, and W5 respectively) resulted in the variants, where White comfortably would gain his pawn back.
I, while thinking about position 28, was worried about the continuation associated with a transition to position W3. But then I calculated a very attractive variant 14…axb5 15. Qxa5 Qxa5 16. Rxa5 b4 17. cxb4 Bxb4 18. Ra8+ Kc7 19. Rxd8 Kxd8 20. Bg5+ f6 21. Rb1 Bf8 22. Rxb7 fxg5 23. Rb8+ Ke7 24. Nxg5, leading to position B2 (in the central part of picture), where White would have had some compensation for the sacrificed material.
Of course, the variant above is not obligatory; it just shows some interesting possibilities for White. At the same time if I were Black, I would definitely choose the continuation connected with position W3, since Black in it still would hold his extra pawn as long as possible.
Mark chose the continuation connected with W1 position, but then he played passively and dubiously, because he had already been in a terrible time trouble.
Here are three critical examples, black positions 48, 50, and 52 (in the lower part of the picture). In any of them Black should make an active move b5-b4 trying to create some counter play.
But Mark discarded the rules of thumbs mentioned above. He tried to find better or the best variants not realizing that he was in big time trouble and he did not have time to calculate them (by the way, he only thought that such good variants existed but that could not be true at all).
Not surprisingly that our game ended with his critical mistakes and blunders. Nobody can play well if you have less than one minute, but your opponent has almost 30 minutes…
It is a pity that Mark, obviously a talented chess player, loses his games mostly because of his very bad time management. It concerns many other prospective players of ICA…
So, zeitnot guys, - please work on yourself in this relationship; so after that our games with me (or with anybody) will become more interesting!
Congratulations to Yefim Treger for winning this report contest. ! If you want a chance to win a free entry into our Saturday Quads, email a report to icanewjersey@gmail.com, following these guidelines. We will not have a quad next week, so enjoy your New Years and we hope to see you at our next Quad which is March 8.
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