22 February 2025

Annotated Game #301: Cramping is never good

This next first-round tournament game demonstrated multiple themes in analysis, which are worth remembering for the long term:

  • The slightly cramped nature of the position for Black early on was unfortunately relieved by my poor decision to exchange minor pieces, which led to immediate equality.
  • Later on, I cramped my own position progressively, with misplaced rooks and (more decisively) with a misjudged f2-f3, which created dark-square weaknesses and blocked my own bishop on the light squares.
  • In this opening structure, the immediate d4-d5 advance to kick a black knight appearing on c6 is key.

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1.d4 Nf6 2.e3 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.Be2 0-0 5.0-0 d6 6.c4 c5 7.Nc3 logical development, but not the only possibility. 7.d5 7.b3 7...Nc6 8.Re1 while it's good in principle to get rooks into the game, there are more productive things to do immediately. 8.d5 immediately kicks the knight to a worse square. 8.h3 restrains ...Bg4 8...e5 9.d5 best and essentially forced, positionally. However, Black now has a better square for the knight to go to and a central pawn on e5. Ne7 10.e4 White has a space advantage and Black's pieces will take some more time to re-deploy. Ne8 11.Bg5 11.Rb1 would be faster with White's queenside expansion plan, plus the bishop is all right for now where it is on c1. 11...h6 12.Bxe7 exchanging simply helps relieve Black's more cramped position. 12.Bd2 the bishop's journey would not be completely useless, as White now could establish a Q+B battery on the c1-h6 diagonal. 12...Qxe7= 13.Rb1 here I thought a while about the best plan. I correctly identify that the b2-b4 break is what White should be aiming for. 13.a3 may be the better way to get in the b2-b4 advance, however. 13...f5 the standard King's Indian f-pawn lever. Black will play on the kingside, White on the queenside, and it becomes something of a race. 14.b4 cxb4 15.Rxb4 b6 I was surprised by this, but the engine agrees that it's the best move. The Rb4 is now awkwardly placed and should shift position. 16.a4 played with the intent to crack open the queenside as quickly as possible. 16.Rb3!?= 16...Nc7 at first this looks a bit weird, but the knight's path to c5 is now clear and comes with tempo, with the rook on b4. 17.Nd2 Na6 18.Rb2 the rook ends up being a bit awkwardly placed here. 18.Rb1 is the engine's preference, although humans have a problem returning pieces to their original squares, wanting to see at least some progress to show for their moving around. 18...Nc5 this is a key positional plus for Black, being able to occupy this excellent outpost. 19.f3?! I played this before in a similar position and it also turned out wrong; the ability to further reinforce e4 seemed to outweight the negatives, at the time. 19.Qc2 immediately accomplishes the same goal without the f-pawn move creating weaknesses and blocking the Be2. 19...Bd7 20.Qc2 Bf6 Black is now able to activate his dark-square bishop, while my light-square counterpart is walled off and my counterplay inadequate. 21.Ra1 Bg5 22.Nf1 at least I spotted the Be3-d4 maneuver that my opponent ideally wanted. Qf6 23.Bd3 Rac8 24.a5 here I thought I was doing fine, but I missed Black's simple follow-up, which keeps things shut on the queenside. bxa5 25.Rxa5 a6 now my backwards c-pawn will become more of a problem than Black's isolated a-pawn. Note how strong the Nc5 is at both defending a6 and pressuring d3/e4. 26.Qe2 Qd8 27.Raa2 Qc7 28.Bc2 this was the point of move 26, to try to exchange on a4. Rb8 29.Nd2 unfortunately this does not solve my problems on the b-file. Visually it's clear how Black's pieces are combining their efforts effectively, while mine are uncoordinated and desperately trying to cover weaknesses. 29.exf5 gxf5 30.Ng3 is suggested by the engine but still looks miserable. 29...Rxb2 30.Rxb2 Rb8-+ now I could see how exchanging rooks would let the Black queen in on the b-file, but the alternative turns out just as badly. 31.Ra2 Qb6 32.Kf1 Qb4 33.Ndb1 Bc1 34.Kg1 played to avoid tactics on the a6-f1 diagonal, but now Black gets a winning bind even more quickly. Bb2 35.Qd2 f4 sealing off the diagonal and protecting h6. 36.Bd3 a5 now the idea of Nb5 occurred to me, but in visualizing the variations I did not see that the Bd3 would be left hanging after the queen exchange. 37.Kf1 a4 38.Nb5 Qxd2 my opponent however saw this worked, and as soon as he played it I did too. 39.Nxd2 Nxd3 40.Nxd6 a3 and with more material losses coming, I resigned. 0–1
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ChessAdmin-Expert-0–1E61
Posted by ChessAdmin at 11:02 AM

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