Praxis Practice 3

I really haven't played as many practice games as I should have liked in deference to concentrating on the work of properly learning more basic tactics, so it was good to have the following training game (at 30' + 30") against our team captain yesterday.



The first big decision is at move 6, whether or not to allow the Bg5 pin. It will be more useful for White after Black castles, but after 6. ... h6 White might try to exploit his pin on the King-file by 7. Re1+ Be6 8. Bf5.

10. ... c5 is probably trying to be over-active, offering to allow the isolated Queen's pawn and thoroughly smash the symmetry when Black could just sit tight and plan to chop wood down to a "dead draw". Suprisingly, crafty starts to favour ... c5 at depth 10.

By move 18 I've managed to develop a nice space advantage on the Queen-side, though unfortunately it took me a minute or so to notice White's tactical threats against my castle (based on Bxh6 removal of defender / annihilation of defence ideas). So while 18. ... Nd7 is quite ok, it's a bit of a nervous move. In truth I was dreaming about weak back rank motifs based on ... b3, Bb1 (unprotecting Re1) Bg4 threatening the Queen and Rxe1 mate which anyway will fail to the Bh7+ defence. This "explains" 20. ... b3, yet another move that's playable, but chosen for the wrong reasons!

The same applies to 22. ... Kf8. 22. ... g6 forcing exchanges was fine, but I wanted to play a waiting move first, simply not noticing the self-pin I introduced on my f7 pawn eliminating the possibility of 23. ... g6 due to 24. Bxg6. I had assumed that after 23. Re3 threatening to barrage the e-file I could just start exchanging, but I hadn't even considered The Great Dictator's obvious actual move.

And so came 23. Re5. My first reaction was "Oh my God! I'm dropping the d5 pawn, and the other Queen-side pawns will follow like ripe cliches!". Pleased I am to report then that at least one good thing came from this game. I succeeded in overcoming my natural tendency to panic in such situations for long enough to see that I can still leverage White's weak back rank to defend the pawns tactically.

Finally at move 27... of course I'd like you to believe I had it all worked out to the minutest detail after 28. Rxd5 Re2 29. Ra5 Rxb2 30. Rb5 Rc2, and in fact Black is winning in that line. My reasoning in such end games is that you don't need more pawns, you just need promotable pawns. I was actually acting on the assumption that I'd likely be sacrificing my Rook for the a- or d-pawn to get connected b- and c-pawns on the 6th rank (turns out not to be necessary), although I had seen far enough that 30. Rc5 going after my c-pawn too was overly greedy and losing for White. Crafty wants to play 28. f4 =, but exchanging Rooks as played seems a somewhat simpler draw, neither King will be able to force penetration into the enemy camp.