Starting at my 7th game with no losses yet, while being in a pretty strong field, felt very good of course. I was again facing a higher rated player, where I was playing with the white pieces. It was quite a young French guy, so I was wondering to what extend he was currently underrated as well.
We started off with a Caro Kann, so I played my Hillbilly attack (played a couple of times by Carlsen as well by the way, so not fully absurd :)). He quickly gave back the sacrificed pawn however, so material wise we were equal and position wise as well. In the below position I played 8. f3. My thoughts were that it prevents Nc5 for now. Should black take on e4 to make it possible, it would open up the f-file and give me some more initiative. 8. d4 might have been better though.
After trading on e4 and chasing my bishop to a2, I actually like my position (although the engine doesn't :P). Half open f-file, white squared bishop is positioned ok, unless traded, with d3 opening up my dark squared bishop, have the center.
While continuing developing my pieces in the way I had planned out I played 18. c3, which was a bit inaccurate. It was my intent to at least keep the knight from coming to d4 and the b pawn advancing forward. A better plan would have been to just play Qg3 and advance the h-pawn. As my bishop was also protecting h6, it would have been easy to just march on.
We now both started wrestling a bit on the queen side, trying to gain space and make use of open files, after trading pawns there. In order to do that I played b4, trying to open up the c-file.
I was trying to double my rooks, but it didn't yet seem to lead to anything concrete. Staying on c6 and doubling the rooks on c1 was going to be followed by Bb7 and I couldn't play Rc7 yet. Although my bishop looks great on d5, it would be traded off soon anyway, so I figured it would make sense to just take on e6 followed by Rfc1.
Although my rooks were now in a good position, my light pieces weren't, and I was also lacking a plan to be honest. This was not a position I was enjoying much, so when my opponent offered a draw, I was quite happy to take it.
Full game can be found here.
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