After getting used a bit to the time control the competition is now starting to get into full swing. This time without pictures as I was facing Marcos this time and needed to use all my time for calculating through all the silly tactics we had on the board. So, this time a short analysis of the match, where you can see the impact of time stress and timely bio breaks.

We started off with a wing gambit against the French opening. As I like tactical play over positional play, I tend to go for gambits. What I like about this opening is that due to the c-pawn being of the board, all kinds of pressure that is normally there on d4, is now not applicable. Hence, you get a little bit more time to focus on a king side attack, without being disturbed, which you can see in the below position:

Now the dark squared bishop needs to retreat back to e7, blocking the knight and preventing castling kingside for now, so the pressure is building up. To create some room, Marcos played f6 in the hope to bring his knight to f6 or at least open up the center a bit for counter play.

Here I could/should have gone for castling king side. However, I wanted to increase the pressure, because after 10. 0-0, fxe5 11. dxe5, Nh6 I can't really take on h6 due to the rook putting on pressure via the h-file. Instead, I went for 10. Nh4. This looks tricky, threatening Qh5+, but actually after 10. ... ,fxe5 11. Qh5+, Kf8 there is not much wrong with the position (apart from the fact that it looks a bit like Swiss cheese). Marcos played 10. ... g6 instead and a simple Nf3 would have left me with a plus. However, I wanted to go for the juggler and continued attacking with Qg4.

This was being followed by 11. ... ,fxe5 and the (I though briljant) Bxg6+. My key point is that if black takes the bishop, I will take back with my knight. The rook then needs to go to something like h7 and I will play Nxe5. I then threaten to take the knight on g8 with my queen and all hell is starting to break loose. However, I did not consider that he could also play Kd7 and start running towards the queen side, as I didn't gain any pieces and was starting to lose quite some pawns.

After Kd7, I was out for blood and thought I was winning already, so went for Bf7. But black actually started to run further towards the queen side and my attack started to come to a halt. So, then the question is: What now? How are we material wise? Etc.

Instead of being an attacking piece, my queen was now actually under attack. So, I needed to figure out where to move my pieces. In the beginning of the attack black was struggling for room and where to activate his pieces, but by now my queen side pieces were very passive, my king was starting to be under threat and there were a lot of pawns heading my way on the queen side. Here I decided to castle short, which I needed to do for my king safety and to defend f2. That did cost me the pawn on c3 however, which was starting to get dangerously close to my side of the board.

So, by now time was starting to play more and more an issue and the below move I made with something like 10 seconds on the clock and Marcos was also down to something like 1 minute. Not the best probably, but I was still fighting, although the engine is giving me a -5.5 by now.

I was still struggling to get my pieces out and Marcos' pieces were all active by now. In a final attempt to at least survive (with the threats on f2, pawn on c3, strong rooks on e8 and f8) I played Be3, after which Marcos played d4. A mistake, I thought, because I could actually take on d4. When the bishop leaves c5, I can take Rxe4 and if black takes, the rook on f8 is hanging.

Although my variant above was true as you can see below, black doesn't need to take on e4. The rooks defend each other and hence c2 causes a world full of hurt. In the time pressure and with the lack of a timely biobreak not helping, Marcos unfortunally played Rd8.

This way I could also take on d4 and after Rxd4, Qxf8+, Kc7, Qg7+ the tables have turned too much and I was able to get away with a highly overestimated attack, never to talk about the game again... apart from now then ;). Full game can be found here.

As for the rest of the results. You can find them below:


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