Hi all,
I've just finished this game with a good friend. We've been discussing it as we played and the tactics involved quickly went well beyond the abilities of either of us and I was hoping someone better than myself could give me some points to what I've missed. Any comments much appreciated!
I thought that the opening was generally pretty much OK, maybe the rooks moving onto the b-file was a bit un-needed. Then ... Nb4 was significantly annoying, maybe I should have played a3 instead. Move 13 onwards is then a mess of tactics that I'm sure both of us will have had a chance to come out on top of. In the end I completely missed ... Qxd5, which ruined my plans. I'm pretty certain I could have made things much more awkward in the endgame as well.
Anyway, I'm very grateful for any help.
Well there is so much that can be said about a single game that it isn`t all going in this post.However starting from the beginning everything seems like no comment until blacks 5th move.
As soon as black plays 5..b5 my spider sense tingles because of that long white diagonal.
I would wonder if 6.e5 works but alas it doesn`t seem to quite work after 6...dxe5 7.Nxe5 Nxe5 8.Bxa8 Bg4
Seems good for black.
Perhaps 6.Nbd2 as in game isn`t as good as 6.o-o which might make 7.e5 work if black still plays 6...g6 ........uhoh no more room in this post🙂
As already stated both sides should have castled early.
I don't like 6.Nd2. I'm guessing you didn't play Nc3 because your knight
could have been chased off by 6...b4. But after 6...b4 7.Ne2 wouldn't
have been a bad spot for the knight.
7...Ba6 was an unnatural move but as it turned out the bishop played
an important role on this square.
A better defense to 9...Nb4 would have been 10.Nf1. From there the
knight could go to e3.
When black's knight was on c2 it would have been worth while to try and
trap it by a3 and Bb2
13.e5 leads to a backwards d pawn. More important might have been
trying to figure out how to free your king's rook.
After 15.dxc4 the c pawn is pinned to the queen and king. Breaking this
pin should have been a priority.
The knight on e5 is attacked twice after 17...Nxe4. Recapturing with the
queen would have been better.
Thanks to everyone for the comments, all very helpful.
I definitely agree about the castling, I was always planning to attack on the queenside and moving the King out of the way first does just make sense.
I chose Nd2 because I was intending to advance the c pawn and didn't want it stuck behind the knight. I thought that I'd be able to move it off from there to somewhere more useful but it got pretty stuck. Moving to f1 then out to e3 probably was better than Qe2, I went for that because I thought that e5 might be good at some point. Either way, I probably shouldn't have let him fork the pawns in the first place.
When I did eventually play e5 I thought I had some sort of combination I could win, alas I missed the pin on that pawn! Oh well.
Thanks again,
Nick