We have beautiful winter weather, almost too good to play or follow chess. The lake on the first picture is quite large, from one end to the other it’s more than 1.4km (0.9 miles). The other is smaller but closer to the place where I live and they don’t charge for skating.
In round 2 of the city championship I faced a young woman rated 215 points below me so chances for a win were good. Somehow I thought to remember that her sister plays the Alapin variation (2. c3) against the Sicilian and as I haven’t played it in ages I better prepared for it. Of course it came completely different, we played an Open Sicilian and I had the chance to try out my hedgehog:
The hedgehog setup looks quite unchallenging but once the position opens it gets pretty dangerous. Here, however, I had a tactical shot and played 13…Bxe4. I thought 20 minutes about it to make sure that the counter attacks don’t work. What I didn’t want to do was the allow some crazy sac that blows the position around my king apart.
White had the chance to cause some trouble after move 19:
20. Rxe5! looks very interesting because after 20…Qxe5 21. Bf4 the queen is trapped and only the brave counter attack 21…Bxb4 will save the day for Black. Very dangerous! In the endgame I had the advantage and was able to convert it into the full point. You can replay the game here.
Next week I will meet an opponent from last year - last time he had a rating of 1664, today it’s 1819. I will have White and after looking at the games from the other players I came to the conclusion that
- players of 16yrs or younger prefer 1.e4 and 1…e5
- players between 16 and 30, well, anything is possible, from Pirc to Reti.
- older players most of the time play 1.d4
I will spend some time this week to study the Ruy-Lopez. I am well prepared but I want to study some model games to understand the typical plans better, especially how to counter the attack on the queen side.
I assume you have 1 out of 2 at the moment? How many rounds left? Is it an Open or do you in rating categories?
Good luck in next weeks game. Hoping for an upset from your part.
I am indeed at 1 out of 2, there are 7 rounds in total. It’s an open tournament with 26 participants. Last year there were more, don’t know what has happened this year. Probably some clash with another, more popular tournament…
Here is the link with the results: http://www.chess-results.com/tnr63662.aspx?lan=1
” Probably some clash with another, more popular tournament…” you mean Wijk-aan-zee ?!
A good win.
Your variation after 13…h6 was particularly apt for me, as I had just suffered something similar with the Bxh6 and Qxh6 follow-up. In my case the white Bishop was able to pin the f-pawn. making it even more deadly ! The Bxh6 attack ( er,,,not the Greek gift ! ) can be just as nasty as Bxh7.
Not the one in Wijk-aan-Zee, maybe some local tournament. I have no idea and the organizers were also surprised. Last year there were more participants. I will meet some team mates from my club on Saturday (first league game of the year) and will ask them.
The h6 move often weakens the king and gives the opponent something to work with. He could for instance simply push his h-pawn if a sacrifice doesn’t work immediately.
In the Ruy-Lopez the situation is similar. h3 is played to prevent a knight (or bishop) to come to g4. If you look at master games, you need a knight close to the king as defender in such cases.