Dear readers of my report!
Do you remember how, at the beginning of April, after playing terribly in the open tournament, I promised to take revenge for my defeat? Well, I kept that promise. I carefully analyzed my mistakes and came well-prepared for the games.
In the game against Ray I prepared a rather rare line of the Rossolimo variation in the Sicilian Defense, hoping that my young opponent wouldn’t fully grasp the essence of the arising positions. By the way, take a look at our photos! I look calm and content, while Ray appears nervous and agitated. That’s partly psychology, and sometimes it helps. I’ll illustrate that with three key positions from the game.
In white position 11 (which is conceptually linked to position 13), Ray spent more than five minutes thinking, and I realized that he was facing an unfamiliar variation and trying to choose a game plan.
There are various ways to respond to an opponent’s home preparation. Fischer, for example, always tried to refute what appeared to be dubious lines. That is the so-called maximalist strategy. But in my opinion, it is not the right one - clearly the opponent has spent more time preparing this line, and it will not be easy to match that level of preparation. The better strategy is to go for simple and clear continuations that effectively neutralize the opponent’s preparation.
So, in positions 11 and 13 Ray decided to sacrifice a pawn for an attack on my king. In position 11 he correctly avoided playing 6.Nxc6 because of the line “6. Nxc6 Qxd1+ 7.Kxd1 a6 8.Ba4 Bd7”, but in position 13, he should have played “7.Bxc6 Bxc6 8.Nxc6 Qxd1+ 9.Kxd1 bxc6 10.Nxe4”, simplifying the position and regaining the pawn.
Ray was hoping that the sacrificed pawn would give him a strong attack against my king. To that end, in position 27, he sent his knight to the corner of the board, to square a8 (although a better line would have been “14.Rxd8+ Kxd8 15.Rd1+ Kc8 16.Ne8”). After carefully calculating the variations, I parried his plan, exploiting the poor placement of the white knight in the corner. Ray resisted fiercely, even offering a draw at some moment, but I declined and brought the game to a win.
There is a conclusion. of course, many of you are young, and it’s hard to develop your own creative analyses (you’re barely managing to learn established theory!), but still - try to think through your overall tournament strategy a bit. In particular, don’t let your opponent play entirely according to his own plans and variations! Not all of us are maximalists like Fischer!
Congratulations to Yefim Treger for winning our report contest, and a free entry to the tournament. If you want a chance to win a free entry into our Saturday Quads, email a report to icanewjersey@gmail.com, following these guidelines. We hope you guys have had a great week and we hope to see you at our next tournament on May 10, our Quad. Enjoy and we hope to see you soon!
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