Man, oh man, this 8th game was a tough battle. Again, I was playing a higher rated player, as I had no losses yet during the tournament. I had the black pieces, so it was going to be more difficult for me to get any initiative at all. Plus, my opponent started with 1. d4. This meant I was in doubt whether to transpose it to a Black Lion again or to go for a King's Indian defense, which I would normally play. During the tournament I wasn't happy with either game I played with these to be honest. I decided to go for the King's Indian though, as back in the apartment I did a review of my game and figured out what I should. have done differently at least.
So far everything was still a reasonably standard game I guess, where my next move might be a bit strange, although I consider it to be a logical one. I played
12. ..., Bf6 with the intent to trade it on h4. In general, the dark squared bishop has limited use in the position apart from some protection for the king. For me it tends to just be in the way for my rook :).
My opponent however didn't want to trade the bishop and played g3 instead. This led to the below position which looks somewhat strange as I'm locking up my bishop on h4, but I figured he would be able to avoid the pin, so it might just work.
My plan was to at least get my d7 knight towards h5 and see if I could break up his king side. Although it looks dangerous it doesn't really do that much damage, however. Plus, things can also backfire on my own king side.... which I didn't fully realize yet :). Next to that, in the below position Kh2, would actually force me to sacrifice my bishop, where I will have some compensation, but most likely not enough. He played 19. Nxf4, so I could continue to try and make a mess.
Now, some pieces + queens were going off the board and what was left, was not as I had imagined. My pawns were ok, should I be able to keep them as such, but my pieces on the back rank were far from active + blocking my rook on a8. Luckily enough he had just taken the g3 pawn with his king, instead of taking 23. Rxh6.
He continued with f4 and so we needed to exchange some pawns on g5. My problems were far from over, as in the below position, after logically defending the pawn with Kg6, this would be followed with the doubling of the rooks. Instead, I thought I saw the nice move Nf6, followed by Kh6, trapping his rook, but he can just defend with Kh4 of course.
Where this now had cost me a pawn, I was at least able to develop my pieces, which is worth something as well :). I figured that maybe I would be able to get a draw if I was able to hold down these pawns.
For that I wanted to at least keep one rook on the board, so took back with my knight after Rxg8. A couple of moves further where white was able to walk his king to the center and (as my king was cut off) I was at least able to activate my pieces a bit more, I thought of myself as on the good track. The engine is giving me a -2.4 btw, but I felt ok-ish.
I kept on moving my pieces to better positions, where in the below position I had a nice threat. When white takes the knight with 42. Nxe5, dxe5 the king can't take on e5, due to Rxe4+, losing the bishop. However, if the king goes to c5, the bishop is pinned and I can't take on e4 with my rook, due to Bh5. He missed this as well, luckily, so he played 42. c5 instead.
Finally, my perseverance was paying off, it seemed, when my opponent played 44. Rf4. This looked like a logical move, but something I had seen upfront is that I can now actually play Bh5. This puts additional pressure on the knight, when it moves, both the rook and bishop are up for grabs. This meant that I was gaining back some material, making it somewhat equal.
White's pawns are quite far advanced already and I would need to play very accurate to keep this a draw still. Playing Rh6 in the below position is far from accurate unfortunally. To keep chances, I should have played Rh2 and stay behind the pawns.
I did get the chance to play the rook to white's back rank after all. Nonetheless, to be honest, I don't know what I was doing here anymore. It would have been easy to just play Rd1+ and then play Rb1, but I played Rb1 right away.
This was followed by e5, sacrificing the pawn on b4, which soon led to the end position, where I needed to resign.
Full game can be found here.
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