« Which rules of chess offend you? | Home | The mysterious fading tactic »

Team 45 45 T35 - Round 5

By Steve | November 22, 2007

Capsule summary: Outplayed in the opening, misjudged the significance of a protected passed pawn, mismanaged the clock, and panicked unnecessarily in an almost even position. If I had held the draw, my team would have won the Round 5 match point. (See the end of the post for a replayable game board.)

Let’s start with the opening. After White played 6.c4 in the Portuguese Scandinavian, I found that I had forgotten how to proceed. Actually, I can’t remember the last time any White opponent followed a main Portuguese line so far against me.


After 6.c4

When I’m trying to decide what to do in a future game, it helps me to look forward a few moves, to see how the opening turned out and whether I was satisfied with it.

Well by the time we get to 18.c5, things look just nasty for Black, possibly lost already.


After 18.c5

So now I’m ready to start looking up lines in opening references. I noticed right away that Black never lets that white pawn just sit there on d5. It certainly did play havoc with my own attempts to develop my pieces. Usually Black plays …e6 at some point.

But I’m not sure really like any of the main lines for Black following 6.c4, so I’m strongly considering dropping the Portuguese variation.

But White let up on the pressure. Eventually I regained the pawn and equalized. Here’s the position after 28…Rad8.


After 28…Rad8

The position looks pretty solid on both sides. White’s protected passed pawn gives him the edge, but it is thoroughly blockaded. I did not realize, however, that if all the heavy wood gets exchanged, that pawn becomes much more of a problem. In particular, Black will never be able to successfully attack its protector, the pawn on b4.

So I did allow the heavy piece exchanges, not fully realizing the problem until sometime around here, after 36…Nxd8.


After 36…Nxd8

Now either Black’s king or knight is stuck permanently in the vicinity of White’s c5 pawn in order to prevent its advance. White has no such problem. But it’s possible that Black might have been able to hold the game with stubborn defense. Instead, I let my clock time run down and then panicked. After 47.g5, with a minute left, I thought my position was lost.


After 47.g5

So I played a desperation move: 47…Nxc5 48.bxc5 Kxc5. That was just silly. I should have stuck with stubborn defense and make White prove something.

Here’s the replayable game board. I’m trying ChessPublisher for the first time. It’s certainly more convenient and quicker to use than Palview, which I’ve been using for a while. It doesn’t look nearly as good, though, because of the aliased piece graphics. I wonder if the creator would let help him with the piece images?

3 Responses to “Team 45 45 T35 - Round 5”

  1. wagstaff Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 3:53 am

    I’ve just discovered the ChessImager and it’s very nice. Great work. I’m also using ChessPublisher for replayable games and agree with you that it doesn’t look as good as it should - it’d be marvellous if you guys could get together and make it all prettier.

    By the way, I’ve also raised an enhancement request (since you invite us to do so…) saying that a player-to-move indicator would be nice.

    Keep up the good work…

  2. Steve Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 7:08 am

    Wagstaff—Thanks for your comments. I’ll look into adding a player-to-move indicator.

  3. Trevor Says:
    January 9th, 2008 at 8:25 am

    Hi Steve, I hope you don’t mind me contacting you, but I am trying to write a blog on the Fischer-Spassky match of 1972..and I have managed to create game one on Palview…and I was wondering how I post it into my blog (as you have above). I am using Wordpress and was wondering if you could give me any advice…thank you in advance….Regards, Trevor

Comments