At first I considered a tricky little line Mapleleaf had shown me some months ago called the "Haldane Hack". It starts 1.e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. Qh5?! and proceeds with a series of cheap tactical threats and unsound attacks. Sounds flakey and it probably is, but it's very difficult to meet over the board. Black's best defense is to play an early ... g6, and French players hate doing that. I spent a day or so researching it, but ultimately couldn't convince myself to commit to playing it. It's a real "All-In" move costing material for dubious returns.
Finally I settled on trying the Reti Gambit (to the French, not the other one!) where white gets a solid game although no real great hope for an advantage. It has other advantages in that it's fully sound but fairly uncommon (I've faced it only once or twice in hundreds of French games myself), Black will be unlikely to retain the pawn (certainly not with good position), and it gives White clear long term objectives to pursue.
I only really had one model game for the 4. exd5 exd5 line but there are worse guides to follow than Lev Aronian, and I was able to use a few ideas present in that game. I should've recaptured the Queen with the Bishop, but that's no big deal; next White sets about either opening the d-file and getting his Rooks there first, or artificially isolating the Black d3 pawn. The latter occured and despite the cramped appearance, the game has a hypermodern character that I'm comfortable playing. It was afterall Reti ("Masters of the Chessboard") and Nimzovitch ("Chess Praxis") who first explained Chess to me in a manner I could really understand.
I was particularly happy with my 18th and 19th moves. 18. c4 is a "now or never" thrust which only appears to weaken d4. I reasoned that White will actually get more value out of d5 than Black can from d4 from which there are no fixed targets and defense of d3 is masked. The sleeping Bishop at b2 suddenly dominates the board immediately threatening Bxf6 and Nd5+ so Black choses to eliminate it in exchange for his own erstwhile powerful Bishop.
19. Ne4 is another of those moves that used to cause me deep psychological trauma - it involves moving a perfectly strong well protected pawn from f3 and artificially isolating it on e4. As occured in the game, the idea is the dynamic plan of activating the Rook to chase after Black's weak f7 and c5 pawns. The more gratifying is that Rybka was largely in agreement with my strategy so far.
25. ... g6 I can only assume was a miscalculation that after 26. Nd5+ Kd6 would win at least an exchange for a pawn, and so I spent several minutes convincing myself that the unprotected Rook on e4 didn't have a Zwischenzug before snapping off the f6 pawn with a solid advantage and the prospect of more to come.
What followed unfortunately was some weak play (on both sides) in the Knight ending. I maintained an edge, but it all evaporated when this happened...
SimianChatter(1818) vs cytrus(1961)White to play and win!
There can be no excuse. I'm familiar enough with the Pawn Breakthrough tactical motif, after 46. c6 bxc6 47. bxa6 the c6 pawn interferes with the King's return to the corner. An elementary tactic in this sort of position. Rybka gives 46. c6 b6 47. Nf4+ Kd6 48. bxa6 which amounts to much the same. I said at the begining of this blog that "95% of all games below Master level are won by tactics". They're botched that way too, and I proved it here.
It was almost one of my better games against strong opposition. On a positive note, I'm 2/3 this season, already doubling my score for the previous two seasons combined. By teamleague's formula, my performance rating this season is 2127. I could almost rest on that laurel and neglect to mention to anyone that 3 games isn't enough for an accurate calculation...
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